December 2014 - therotarymagazine.com

The answer to water issues isn’t always digging a well or building a toilet. Here are eight cost-effective innovations that could give more people clean water and better sanitation.

Every day in Ethiopia, women and children walk miles to collect water from shallow ponds, most of them contaminated with human and animal waste, parasites, and bacteria. When architect Arturo Vittori, visiting from Italy, saw this firsthand, he vowed to find an easy and affordable way to deliver potable water.

Vittori looked to biomimicry, a discipline that analyzes how wildlife thrives in nature, and that adapts those concepts to solve human problems. The Namib Desert beetle particularly intrigued him: It survives by drawing water from the air. When early-morning fog forms, the beetle tilts its head down and raises its back end toward the sky. The fog condenses on the beetle’s shell, and the water trickles down into its mouth. Vittori emulated the beetle’s strategy – relying on gravity and weather – to create the Warka Water tower, which harvests water from the air.

The structure is elegant and easy to build, relying largely on environmentally sustainable and biodegradable materials, many of which can be sourced locally. The outer shell, made from natural fiber materials like bamboo, provides structural support and holds up hanging mesh that’s coated to collect condensation, which drips into a container at the base of the tower. It can gather up to 100 liters of drinking water in a day and costs about $1,000.