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Sunday 13 April 2014

This Tower Pulls Drinking Water Out of Thin Air

Simthsonian

In some parts of Ethiopia, finding potable water is a six-hour journey.

People in the region spend 40 billion hours a year trying to find and collect water, says a group called the Water Project. And even when they find it, the water is often not safe, collected from ponds or lakes teeming with infectious bacteria, contaminated with animal waste or other harmful substances.

The water scarcity issue—which affects nearly 1 billion people in Africa alone—has drawn the attention of big-name philanthropists like actor and Water.org co-founder Matt Damon and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, who, through their respective nonprofits, have poured millions of dollars into research and solutions, coming up with things like a system that converts toilet water to drinking water and a "Re-invent the Toilet Challenge," among others.

Critics, however, have their doubts about integrating such complex technologies in remote villages that don't even have access to a local repairman. Costs and maintenance could render many of these ideas impractical.

"If the many failed development projects of the past 60 years have taught us anything," wrote one critic, Toilets for People founder Jason Kasshe, in a New York Times editorial, "it's that complicated, imported solutions do not work."

Other low-tech inventions, like this life straw, aren't as complicated, but still rely on users to find a water source.

It was this dilemma—supplying drinking water in a way that's both practical and convenient—that served as the impetus for a new product called Warka Water, an inexpensive, easily-assembled structure that extracts gallons of fresh water from the air.

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