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This Cheap Box Helps to Keep COVID at Bay

- Adam Clare
Covid-19 Transmission graphic

The desinergs of the Corsi-Rosenthal box wanted to do something to help places deal with COVID-19. As we all know, the virus is airborne and spreads easily in interior environments. With this in mind, Richard Corsi, and air quality expert, and Jim Rosenthal, CEO of a air filter company created a simple box made up of filters and a single box fan. This cheap air cleaning box can be built at very low cost (filters and a fan) by people with no building experience.

Instructions to build the DIY box fan filter can be found here.

Within days, tinkerers and air quality engineers alike were constructing their own Corsi-Rosenthal boxes and sharing the results on social media. A vibrant conversation emerged on Twitter, blending sophisticated technical analysis from engineers with the insight and efforts of nonspecialists. 

By December, hundreds of people were making Corsi-Rosenthal boxes, and thousands more had read press coverage in outlets like Wired. In different corners of the world, people tweaked designs based on the availability of supplies and different needs. Their collective improvements and adaptations were documented by dedicated websites and blogs, as well as news reports.

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How Vertical Farms can Help During Disasters

- Adam Clare

fruit store

Supporters of vertical farms envision a future that has skyscraper farms beside work places and residences in urban centres. Their thinking is that by growing food where people are will help alleviate pressure on our soil and land use – and they’re right. Indeed, a recent realized spinoff benefit of vertical (or just indoor) farming is after a natural disaster these insulated farming systems can feed people in the impacted area.

In a way, Harvey was a test for Moonflower Farms. Founded by Marques in December 2015, it was one of the state’s very first indoor “vertical” farms—where plants are stacked in trays on shelves, instead of laid out horizontally across larger plots of land. In these high-tech structures, plants don’t rely on sunlight or soil, rainwater or pesticides, but LED lights and minerals instead. The goal of vertical farms isn’t just to save space; it’s also to find a more economical way of producing food for the growing population—and to reduce the costs and consequences of getting that food to where people actually live.
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“We are kind of at the beginning of a revolution,” Per Pinstrup-Andersen, a graduate-school professor at Cornell University’s College of Human Ecology, told me. “We’re at the beginning of a very rapid development in the use of indoor controlled facilities for producing vegetables and some fruits,” he said. “No matter what happens with climate change, you still have your controlled environment.”

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