A Bottle of Light
Remarkable video report on the BBC news today.
A light went on (pardon the pun) in the mind of an socially minded designer in the Philippines.
Millions of people in the developing world live in slums comprised of sheet-metal buildings with few if any windows. It's dark inside, even in the middle of the day.
Grab a discarded plastic water bottle. Fill it with chlorinated water. Add a collar of sheet metal roofing and drop it in a same-sized hole, and, shazam, a bright source of daylight into an otherwise dark dwelling.
The inventor says that the first one was installed only four months ago, and there are already 15,000 units. He claims that each unit produces the equivalent of 60Watts (incandescent) light.... I'm not sure of that, but whatever the exact illuminance, it beats an otherwise dark room, and turns trash into a treasure at the same time.
