Can They Peddle This Water-Purifying Tricycle in Developing Regions?

Okay, here's something different - a tricycle that purifies water 8 liters (c. 2 gallons) at a tme. View a 2-minute YouTube video to see it in action.

The Aquaduct was designed by Ideo, based in Palo Alto, CA. It recently won the Innovate-or-Die competition (read about it on the Google blog), which is sponsored in part by Google. The Ideo team admits that the Aquaduct is not commerically viable, and that much work remains to be done to make it so. It doesn't look rugged enough for the conditions you would likely encounter in developing regions.

"The vehicle is a very neat device, it gets you to the water, it filters while it's moving. So it has a dual function, but I think when you look on a larger scale, you want to know how many people can access this type of machinery," said Sarah Dobsevage, a programme development officer, with WaterAid USA.

"It probably wouldn't be effective for the poorest of the poor who live on less than a dollar a day because it's prohibitively costly. Also you have to look at what it's made of, and ask if it's made of locally available materials, so that a community or individual could build it themselves and repair it themselves, or is it something that can only be produced in the West," she added.

One of my colleagues, who works extensively on water projects in developing regions, was considerably less charitable than Sarah:

"This filters all of 8 liters? On so many levels this is what we've come to call "cubiclethink" around here. A woman carries 20 L on her head. She won't make the trip down the path for 8. If she had such a bike, she would want to pile 4 jerry cans and a bag of charcoal on it, and it doesn't look like much of anywhere to anchor the necessary rubber straps. The WaterAid spokesperson is being kind and encouraging. Our friends in Tanzania have great fun with such "bongo ideas". This would make their day. How many house-sized biofilters would this buy?"

The jury's still out on this one. Let's wait to see the final verdict.

Your thoughts? And I did mean "peddle".

"Imagination is more important than knowledge." -- Albert Einstein

Comments

[Gary]

How do I get hold of the team? I would like to take one to Burning Man.

Gary

[Michael]

Hi, Gary.

Try www.ideo.com - Palo Alto, CA, office.

[gertie]

It says it filters 8 liters at a time but I read the tank actually holds much more water than that. Also I was really excited by this idea though I have heard some negative comments that I agree with regarding it. Such as it probably wouldn't be practical for traveling on in developing countries. However I would like to add that I think personaly even if they didn't travel on it, it could store the water safely and provide a way to filter the water that they are storing in open containers by leaving it stationary at the waters destination. Cost is obviously a problem and people using it would need to be educated on how and when to change the filters and be provided with additional filters once the current ones were no good. I don't see a reason to be overly critical of this idea because I think it could inspire others to build off of it (even the original developers of it) and use the basic concepts of it to create something more practical.