Environment

Wednesday, December 21 2011

Eco-friendly bolts. As the saying goes, need sharpens the talent and imagination. A clear example of this are the eco-friendly bolts made from plastic bottles with water and bleach that, with the help of solar light, illuminates the modest houses in many Philippine towns where access to electricity is a luxury not available to all pockets.

The idea came from the United States, where a group of scientists from the Technology Institute of Massachusetts developed the bolts with the intention of bringing illumination to deprived areas around the globe.

Now, this invention is backed by the foundation “My Shelter” responsible for the launching of a programme that under the name of "Isang Litrong Liwanag", plans to impulse the use of this eco-friendly and economic bolts (each of them costs around 0.75 cents of U.S. Dollar).

So far, the foundation has installed free housing illumination in more than 25,000 houses that, from now on, will have lighting for at least five years. The single negative point of this device is that its life is very short at night as it is designed to illuminate houses throughout the day with the help of solar light. However, the initiative is being a success as most houses in the suburbs and small towns in the Philippines do not have windows. On the other hand, “My Shelter” expects that the installation of eco-friendly bolts provide employment to dozens of people in the area.