Zero Electricity Lighting With Plastic Bottles, Taken From Brazil To Chile (Video)
Photo: Miguel Merchand.
Almost ten years ago, during a blackout, a man from the Uberaba region in the outskirts of Minas Gerais, Brazil, invented a way to lighten the interior of houses during the day using plastic bottles filled with water and a bit of bleach, an idea Jaymi reviewed a couple of months ago. Inlaid in the corrugated iron roofs, the bottles concentrate and transport sunlight generating light equivalent to a 40 to 60 watt light bulb.
Inspired by this idea, Chilean photographer and filmmaker Miguel Merchand thought about bringing the invention to a town where he had spent a year shooting a documentary about the preservation of the native Pewen culture.
Three years after having left town, Merchand went on a trip to bring the idea and improve the day to day life of people who live isolated from electricity sources.
In the following video (via Eco Ideas) you can see Merchand's voyage to install the bottles in a Chilean town and the step by step for how to install this somewhere else.
Even if the idea is oriented to low-income areas and wouldn't be necessary with proper good building design (since it uses sunlight and wouldn't work at night), it's interesting to see how simple, even dumb ideas by people's 'instinctive design' can do a good job in improving people's lives.
More Low Budget, Recycled Design
DIY Homes Using Recycled Pallet Wood - Appalachian Gothic Architecture (Video)
Guy Builds Massive House with Recycled Glass Bottles, Teaches you How to Do It (Video)
Amazing House Made Entirely of Plastic Bottles from Argentina (Photos)