Originally published on PlanetSave.
Fighting energy poverty for some 1.3 billion people worldwide is a primary goal for many innovators, including the Liter of Light campaign.
This open-sourced movement has launched a modest 30-day $27,000 Indiegogo crowd-funding campaign in order to help provide ecologically sustainable illumination to people who have none.
Liter of Light aims to provide ecologically sustainable and cost-free lighting for simple dwellings with thin roofs. The lighting device is simple: a transparent 1.5–2 liter plastic bottle is filled with water and fitted into a hole in a roof.
According to Wikipedia, “The device functions like a deck prism: during daytime the water inside the bottle refracts sunlight, delivering about as much light as a 40–60 watt incandescent bulb to the interior. A properly installed solar bottle can last up to 5 years.”
The My Shelter Foundation elaborates on this concept:
“What do you get with sunshine and an old plastic bottle filled with water and chlorine? Thanks to Alfred Moser and a group of MIT students, you get a 55-watt solar bulb that refracts sunlight! It’s powerful enough to light up a home but more than that it’s environmentally friendly, inexpensive, and easy to make.”
In collaboration with the organization AI4D (Africa Investment For Development), the campaign aim is to bring light into these people’s lives thanks to a simple and eco-friendly solution which promotes local economic development.
Odile Ano, coordinator at AI4D, sees much to praise about Liter of Light: “When I discovered Liter of Light, I thought it would be a great solution for my community back in Ivory Coast. This is how we started working together with the team of Liter of Light on this beautiful project.”
People with Liter of Light state they “…have created lighting systems which illuminate streets, households, shops, schools, medical centers at all time of day and night.”
The Liter of Light solution lighting systems are made of a simple circuit, a battery, an LED, a plastic bottle and a small solar panel. “The simplicity of this solution allows anybody to build it from scratch,” states the campaign.
Where the money goes for the Ivory Coast project:
- Buy the required materials to build the lighting systems
- Finance human and material logistics
- Install the lighting systems both in people’s homes and in the streets (2.000 villagers involved)
- Train the local community in order to guarantee the economic sustainability of their actions
- Measure the impact of our installation and our trainings with the help and support of our local partners.
We wish good fortune for this campaign and the people these innovative products will serve.
Image via Indiegogo
Reprinted with permission.
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