Recyling sewage for drinking
Using sewage to obtain drinking water? It may look strange or disgusting but… Read our special feature article about water.
Which is the world’s driest continent: Africa? Asia? Not at all, it’s Australia. For long time the settlers have dreamt to find a way to turn costal rivers inland. Without success. Global warming and growing population have worsen the situation. Moreover an exceptional drought has made the lack of water supplies more severe and what has been the major problem for much of the rural economy is now concerning also Australian cities.
Since decades wastewater has been recycled and used for watering parks and golf courses or for agricultural and industrial purposes, however the need to find and adopt innovative, sustainable methods to slake Australian’s thirst for water has driven two towns, Toowoomba and Gouldburn, to propose to recycle sewage and use it to top up drinking supplies. The project, which couldn’t win the social acceptance, was rejected.
Filed Under SPECIAL FEATURE, Water
The renaissance of rainwater harvesting
Today, in our special feature article about water, we talk about the Barefoot College, and its work of empowering India’s rural poor to innovate their way out of poverty
Sometimes the drinking water shortage drowns in paradox. Cherrapunji receives 11,000 mm of rainfall annually which make the town in northern India the place with the highest precipitation on the planet. Nevertheless few drops run from the household taps. The people of this Himalayan town often walk long distances to get drinking water, limit their baths to once a week and have trouble irrigating their crops. As far as fresh water is concerned India is precariously placed.
Filed Under SPECIAL FEATURE, Water
Stories of happy water pumping
“The children now come early to school because they want to play. They think they are just playing but they are really pumping water. In addition the Play Pump is keeping them busy and off the streets”.
We talked about PlayPump, the merry-go-round powered by kids for a pump system to extract water invented by Trevor Field and used in some African countries.
We go into depth on it adding some stories.
The 22 flush toilets in the Regiment Basic Primary School nestled just off of the busy streets of Lusaka, Zambia, had stopped working long ago. Teachers and students used to rely on water from a neighbourhood school but since Play Pump merry-go-round was installed on the school grounds their live became a lot easier. Several times a day a simple hose is attached to the system tap so the pupils can flush the toilet and wash their hands in the buckets filled just outside the sanitary block.
Mrs Mutaka, the headmistress is delighted: “The children now come early to school because they want to play. They think they are just playing but they are really pumping water. In addition the Play Pump is keeping them busy and off the streets”.
Loveness Hikalungo, attending her first grade in a nearby school, is so enthusiastic about it that she told her mom that she wanted to be transferred to Regiment’s primary classes so she can play on the pump too
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Filed Under SPECIAL FEATURE, Water
Playpump, when pumping water is child’s play
How do you join leisure with the need to answer to the lack of water and infrastructure with a solution that is surprisingly simple? Playpump took care of that, the pump you play with. Basically, the ingenuous project consists of a simple merry-go-round powered by kids for a pump system to extract water from wells from 40 to 100 meters deep.
It’s so revolutionary that it doesn’t seem real. The idea to use the endless energy of playing children to turn it into blue gold came to Trevor Field, an Englishman who emigrated to South Africa making his fortune in advertising.
Filed Under SPECIAL FEATURE, Water
Kilimanjaro made thirsty by roses
The story of Paul Ole Nchake, Maasai rancher and Kenyan entrepreneur committed to guaranteeing, together with the organization AMREF, the right to water even for communities living on the slopes of Kilimanjaro. Indeed, it is here where roses are stealing water from the highest peak in Africa.
The Earth has 1.4 billion cubic kilometers of water and this is the most we will ever be able to have. The water we use today has circulated around the plant since it was young. If water is a renewable element it is also true that the system is closed and the asset is limited. The precarious balance between rebuilding and exploiting water resources is undergoing a hard test imposed by demand which has increased twice as fast as the population.
Filed Under SPECIAL FEATURE, Water
Solar Bottle, the intelligent design arising from need
Water: a common chemical substance that is essential to all known forms of life. Still, one sixth of the world’s population has no access to safe drinking water. Today we start publishing a series of articles about water, the blue gold. And we start from the designers Alberto Meda and Francisco Gomez Paz, who decided to put together the two main sources of life: water and sun.
Here comes the Solar Bottle (in the picture), a brilliant solution for treating drinking water at a household level…
Filed Under SPECIAL FEATURE, Water
BenettonTalk on holidays
BenettonTalk goes on holidays for about a week. We’ll come back with fresh news from August 20th.
Keep in touch!
Filed Under SPECIAL FEATURE