23 February 2006
Geometry
Q-Drum Rollable Water Bottle
“Water in adequate quantities is too heavy to carry. The burden of fetching water, invariably over long distances by cumbersome and far too often, unhygienic means, is all too evident in rural Africa.... The Q-Drum is a low cost rollable water container for developing countries. The idea of the Q-Drum originated in response to the needs of rural people for clean and potable water, as well as easing the burden of conveying it....
The Q-drum is user friendly and the unique longitudinal shaft permits the drum to be pulled using a rope run through the hole. There are no removable or breakable handles or axles, and the rope can be repaired on the spot or replaced by means available everywhere, such as a leather thong or a rope woven from plant material.”
More: http://www.qdrum.co.za
Watercone
The Watercone is a transparent, polycarbonite cone tuns salt water into potable water cheaply using the power of the sun. The system can produce one liter of clean drinking water a day. Salt water poured into the base evaporates and condenses onto the wall of the cone, trickling into a circular trough at the inner base of the cone. Then just unscrew the cap and turn the cone upside down to pour the potable water into a drinking device.
The cone is non-toxic, non-flammable and 100% recyclable. The black pan for the saltwater is made out of 100% recycled plastic.
More: http://www.watercone.com
Safe Bottle Lamp
“In his hospital alone they were seeing someone die from lamp burns three times a week and thousands of people horribly disfigured, their lives ruined by a preventable accident....
Lamp-burns, [Wijaya Godakumbura, a surgeon in Sri Lanka,] realized, are a disease of poverty. Only the very poor use makeshift lamps. And because they are very poor, no-one is much concerned to do anything to help them. Most of the victims are female and nearly a third are children. Yet, it seemed to him, the problem was preventable....
‘I decided the best design was based on a simple Marmite bottle – small and squat, with two flat sides – equipped with a safe screw-cap to hold the wick. That way, the bottle was more stable. The fuel does not spill if the bottle overturns. It cannot roll. It is strong enough not to break if dropped.’”
In these pages I’m usually down on depoliticized, product-based fixes for poverty. But then sometimes the impact of a simple change in form is astonishing.
23 February 2006, 4:27 PM | 
