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Clean Water from a “Hamster Ball”

- Adam Clare 1 Comment

Clean water is hard to access in a lot of places around the world. Sometimes water is accessible but not potable, this problem inspired a graduate student to create an easy to use way to purify water using something similar to a hamster ball.

Liow’s design was driven by a need to help the 900 million people around the world who lack access to safe drinking water. Over two million children die annually from preventable causes, triggered largely by contaminated water. It is an increasing problem in developing nations due to rapid urbanisation and population growth.

‘After visiting Cambodia in 2008, and seeing the immense lack of everyday products we take for granted, I was inspired to use my design skills to help others,’ Mr Liow said.

Mr Liow’s simple but effective design is user-friendly and durable, with a weather-resistant construction, making it well suited to people in hot, wet, tropical climates with limited access to resources.

Read the rest of the press release.

Plants Eat Pollution

- Adam Clare

We all know that plants are really good at cleaning the air and that’s absolutely a good thing. Nowadays more and more research is looking at using plants to clean more than just the air. Recently, a researcher in Ontario has used plants to clean up pollutants in a brown field site.

“Traditionally, we dig up the contamination and take it to a hazardous-waste dumpsite or incineration facility, but then the soil is lost,” she says. “But, in using phytoextraction … after we pull all the contaminants out, you’ve still got this natural resource of the soil itself.”

The composted material may still need to be disposed of as hazardous waste, but the volume of contaminated matter has been greatly reduced, says Dr. Zeeb.

Read the rest here.

Thanks Mike!

Oysters to the Rescue

- Adam Clare

Some people eat them while others use them to make the world a better place. I like using them to clean up pollutants and the like, be warned though oysters are not as plentiful as they were.

Hopefully after this talk you’ll be pro-oyster and spreading the word on how great they are at cleaning the environment! Let’s save the oysters to save our planet.

Architect Kate Orff sees the oyster as an agent of urban change. Bundled into beds and sunk into city rivers, oysters slurp up pollution and make legendarily dirty waters clean — thus driving even more innovation in “oyster-tecture.” Orff shares her vision for an urban landscape that links nature and humanity for mutual benefit.

Teenagers Should Get Dirty

- Adam Clare

Cleaning too much and using too many strong cleaning products can hinder the development of a robust immune system in teenagers. That’s right, it’s imperative that teenagers do what they do best: get dirty.

It seems teenagers are becoming over-exposed to a compound called triclosan, widely used in household products such as soaps, toothpaste, pens and nappy bags.
Allison Aiello, associate professor and principal investigator, said: ‘The triclosan findings in the younger age groups may support the hygiene hypothesis.
‘Triclosan may play a role in changing the micro-organisms to which we are exposed in such a way that our immune system development in childhood is affected.
‘It is possible that a person can be too clean for their own good.’ Adults also can suffer a weakened immune system because of exposure to plastics.

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World Toilet Day

- Adam Clare

World Toilet Day is today! For those of you who care about sanitation it’s time to celebrate this campaign to increase awareness of the plight of loos around the world. Access to toilets is a huge issue in poor areas that has cascading effects on all levels of society, particularly women.

It’s great to see this campaign get so much attention and there’s stuff you can do to help out!

WTO which has over 200 partners worldwide, 42 of which are in India is one of the few organisations that focusses only on sanitation and toilets instead of water. “Everyone clubs water and sanitation, and 95% of the funds go towards water projects. But good sanitation is the first step towards clean water,” he says.

Toilets weren’t really top of the pot for Sim, who ran a number of businesses from the age of 25. “When I turned 40, I realised that I had 13,000 more days to live the average Singaporean lives to 80 and wanted to do something useful,” he says. Sim started reading and “realised that the toilet is really neglected”. So he started “the other WTO” in 2001 to disseminate serious facts with a sense of humour. The logo is a toilet seat shaped like a heart. “I thought the best way to break the toilet taboo was to use lots of puns.” But the name, which everyone thinks is “really bad at first” sticks in people’s minds. “That’s because every mother has told her child not to talk about the toilet. It’s not polite’. And here we are talking about the loo quite freely,” says Sim, who is often called Toilet Man.

And it’s not just about getting toilets installed. “You have to keep them clean too. So Sim has started the World Toilet College in Singapore that provides training in toilet maintenance and design. “I’m hoping we can open one in India too to train toilet cleaners like technicians.”

Read more: The big squat’ to take a stand on sanitation

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