Smart sinking
Great ideas don’t need words. So I’ll keep it short and just state this is the best, simplest and probably most effective invention I have seen for saving water. Watch and learn!
Filed Under Environment, Water
Yemen: Arabia Felix?
They wake up and they have to go there. They’d like to have lunch, but first they have to go there. They’d want to have a shower, but first they have to go there. They’d like to do their work, but first they have to go there.
I’m not talking about the toilet (even if, also in that case, they first have to go there…): it’s women’s daily forays to the well in Yemen.
“We come here three or four times a day,” says Adiba Sena, a woman drawing water 6 metres (20 feet) to the surface and pouring it into jerry cans lashed to her grey donkey.
“We use it to clean, cook, wash — we have no pipes that reach us.”
Read more
Filed Under Environment, Human Rights, Water, World Health
Can a straw change the world?
The most prolific killer of human beings in developed countries is the automobile, followed by a host of diseases resulting mainly from an indulgent lifestyle.
As we are sitting at our desks, staring at the computer and drinking some diet soft drinks (because your partner said you’re getting fat) we forget that millions of people perish every year because they simply don’t have clean water to drink!
Could the last Saatchi & Saatchi Award for World Changing Ideas’ winner solve this problem?
Read more
Filed Under Environment, Food, Human Rights, Modern Life, Technology, Water
Show me your hair and I’ll tell you… where you have been
As privacy was not enough hard to maintain today! People can find out where you are about by observing your mobile, your credit card and the highways you’re driving on.
Now the water you’ve drunk can reveal the places you’ve visited by leaving traces in your hair!
Filed Under Food, Modern Life, Water, Wondering
The Thing is floating around
I had already heard about this plastic mass floating into the Pacific Ocean but in this article from the Independent the matter is treated so clearly that I ended up literally horrified by the Thing. The Thing is a vast expanse of debris stretching from about 500 nautical miles off the Californian coast, across the northern Pacific, past Hawaii and almost as far as Japan. Read more
Filed Under Environment, Water
Egypt turns the desert green
You live in a country where 95 percent of people are packed into just one valley. The population grows by about 1.5 million people per year. The unemployment is high and housing is scarce. Agricultural land in the valley is disappearing. Beyond this valley, just a wide silent sandy space: the desert. What do you do?
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