public function prepareDescriptionForPersist($description)
    {
        $description = html_entity_decode($description);
        $description = strip_tags($description);
        $description = filter_var($description, FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING);

        // remove the encoded blank chars
        $description = str_replace("\xc2\xa0",'',$description);

        $description = trim($description);
        return $description;
    }