Home-made biological filter: The concept
Uneducated and disempowered people are vulnerable to the tendency to become passive recipients of help from development organisations.
This tendency can be reinforced more and more by each project introduced that does not work on a self-help basis.
This water filter design developed by the Church Mission Society (CMS) produces very clean drinking water from very contaminated water.
The design is easy to replicate and it is cheap enough for people to afford themselves.
It is environmentally friendly and sustainable using local materials.
It uses clay pots and sand to host beneficial biology that naturally colonise the pots and purify the water.
It is home-made which means people’s self sufficiency increases so they don’t add to or suffer from market forces.
More than 1,000,000,000 people don’t have safe water to drink but it has been recently discovered that they easily could have, if they knew how to make a clay pot biological sand filter.
It’s a home made filter that poor people can afford so it will make them feel richer and more able as they make their own filter with materials they already have access to.
It will therefore strengthen the values that help people who are vulnerable to consumerist aspects of development: Valuing the responsibility to overcome our own problems; valuing what we already have; valuing knowledge we can share with others; our health.
More about the home-made biological filter:
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