Sustainable Design Update

Girl Drinking Water

Josh Kearns of Aqueous Solutions gave a great presentation on his Lindbergh Grant project - “Providing Safe Drinking Water to Rural Communities in Thailand Using Charcoal Filtration to Remove Pesticides” at the Lindbergh Foundation board meeting in Atlanta today.

Kearns has been working in Thailand at the Pun Pun Organic Farm which is also an appropriate technology demonstration center. His Lindbergh project will analyze existing contaminants in drinking water (lots of pesticides) and evaluate how different types of charcoal absorb the bad stuff.

From Aqueous Solutions:

The presence of dangerous chemicals in drinking water is a serious health problem in many parts of the world, especially in countries like Thailand, where heavy use of toxic pesticides is commonplace and regulations are lax.

For the residents of Pun Pun Farm, a sustainability center in the North of Thailand, the problem of chemical contamination of local water supplies is acute. Pun Pun strives to function as a living example of sustainability, and has attracted international renown for programs in natural building, organic farming and local self-reliance.

Sadly, although a stream runs through Pun Pun’s property, the stream water is contaminated with a carcinogenic cocktail of pesticide run-off from other farms.

For years, Pun Pun residents were forced to buy clean water that was trucked to the farm in plastic jugs – an unsustainable and financially burdensome solution to an intractable problem.

A Local Solution

This February, Pun Pun was chosen as the test-site for a new water filtration system designed by Aqueous Solutions, an award-winning organization whose scientists and engineers develop low-cost technologies to provide clean drinking water to communities worldwide.

Although established methods for removing harmful chemicals from drinking water already exist, the challenge for Aqueous Solutions was to develop a system for Pun Pun that would be effective, cost-efficient and simple enough for locals to replicate with existing materials.

More at Aqueous Solutions

Aqueous Solutions is an organization to watch. They have a very smart approach to providing high quality drinking water in parts of the world that are hard to reach.

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 17th, 2008 at 7:31 pm and is filed under Appropriate Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.