Chile's Atacama Desert is one of the driest places on the planet; some parts haven't seen rainfall for centuries. But the region is often shrouded in a dense fog locally called camanchaca, from which local flora harvest what little water they need to survive. Here, as in other places around the world, researchers have been testing nets that collect water from the fog in order to stop desertification and bring water to residents—and one tiny brewery has been reaping the benefits.

Since a particularly bad drought in the 1950s, now-retired physics professor Carlos Espinosa Arancibia has been testing nets that could help capture water in Chile's driest regions, the BBC reports. This current iteration of the net has openings less than one millimeter across around which water droplets condense out of the fog. The drops accumulate and grow until they drip into a pipe at the base of the net, from which it flows into a container, so clean that it's immediately ready for human use.