By Sustainability Hub Reporter Adriana Olaya
The Italian inventor Arturo Vittori started this year an expedition in La Guajira- Colombia, to solve the biggest threat in the department: the lack of water. He wants to turn the Colombian department into the new laboratory of his sustainable creation: The Warka Water.
His invention is simple but ingenious. It is a tower made of bamboo covered on the inside by a net of silk. It measures about 10 meters and can generate up to 100 liters of water per day. It retains about 3,000 liters. Its structure is designed to be locally handmade and takes a maximum of 10 days and 10 people working to build it up. This structure stores rainwater; it decants the mist and moistures the humidity of the wind in water drops that are collected and stored for the use of communities in need. Vittori designed it in 2012 in Italy and a year ago took a prototype to a village in Ethiopia to start the pilot project.
Vittori seeks to create viable and sustainable alternatives to change the reality of indigenous communities, like the Wayu tribe in La Guajira. The functionality is very simple. The Warka Water project is inspired in how nature does similar processes. We can see examples of how efficient nature collects water from the environment; there are all kind of plants and insects that do so.
For the moment Vittori is doing a tour around the Colombian region, to find if there are the appropriate work conditions for the Warka structure, because it doesn’t operate everywhere. It is a passive structure that needs no power, has no impact on the environment, but needs special conditions to work efficiently. However, this could be the starting point of a hopeful change of the water situation in this region that today has token many lives.
Pictures by WarkaWater and Arturo Vittori