Appropriate technology

What is appropriate technology?

Appropriate technology is small-scale technology. Appropriate technology makes use of skills and technology that are available in a local community to supply basic human needs, such as gas and electricity, water, food, and waste disposal. Appropriate technology emphasizes the use of renewable resources, like the energy from the sun, wind, or water. These

energy sources are available almost everywhere and need

only the right technology to capture them.

Use of Appropriate Technology

The use of Appropriate Technology should be economically viable on a long-term basis for the community, and provide

suitable employment opportunities.

It brings a number of distinct advantages, such as an improvement in health and safety, education and training, regular employment and income for families. The use of high technology to solve a problem often involves

the use of expensive components, which usually need to be

imported. This normally requires specialist training, requiring additional costs and time.

 Use of local resources also cuts down overall costs.

The use of renewable energy sources is also encouraged. The use of renewable sources of energy reduces

the emission of carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide emissions, which occur when oil and coal are burnt, increases the Greenhouse Effect . This reduction of the emission of sulphur dioxide and nitrous oxides, by not using coal as the primary source of energy is also beneficial to both local and global

environments.

Goal of Appropriate Technology

The goal of Appropriate Technology (AT) is to increase the standard of living for the developing world without condescension, complication or barriers, or environmental damage. Typical AT inventions are more labor intensive, require fewer resources, and use low cost or readily available materials

wherever possible.

10 Cases of Appropriate Technology

One Laptop Per Child

Its XO laptop is about the size of a small textbook, with built-in wireless and a screen readable in direct sunlight (for children who school outdoors). The computer is extremely durable, energy efficient, and has a childlike industrial design. XO laptops have already been delivered to children in Afghanistan and East Africa.

Solar Powered Lightbulb

This clever product stores electricity from daylight. Designed specifically for use in developing nations, the LED bulbs can provide four hours of light when the battery is fully charged. The N100 is constructed from impact-resistant plastic and includes four solar panels, five LEDs and replaceable NiMH batteries said to last two years. Complete units cost $15 apiece, but may someday cost as little as $6 per unit in bulk.

Concrete Canvas Shelters

UK firm Concrete Canvas knows too well that temporary tent cities for refugees offer little protection from the elements, and a more sturdy solution is needed using local materials. Their solution is Concrete Canvas, an ingenious material for rapidly deployable hardened shelters that require only their product, water and air for construction. Just pump up the air bladder to provide temporary scaffolding, put the Concrete Canvas on top of the air bladder, and pour fresh or even salt water on the canvas. Let the canvas dry for 24 hours. Then remove the air bladder and you have a sturdy (25 or 54 sqm) shelter that can last up to 10 years. Its even waterproof and fireproof. Two people with no training can assemble the smaller CCS25 version in 24 hours.

Universal Nut Sheller

Prior to Jock Brandis Universal Nut Sheller, growing and harvesting peanuts in Africa was a time-and-labor intensive affair relegated to women and children. However, his simple hand-powered device capable of shelling 50 kilograms (110 lb) of raw, sun-dried peanuts per hour is now making African nut farming possible. The device requires less than $50 in common materials to make, lasts 25 years, and just one Sheller can serve the needs of a 2,000 person village. Thus it was no surprise when it won the 2006 Popular Mechanics Breakthrough award.

Pot-In-Pot Refrigerator
In 2001, Nigerian Mohammed Bah Abba won the 2001 Rolex Awards for Enterprise with his invention of a simple cooling system to preserve food in rural areas with no electricity. His solution was a Pot-in-Pot refrigerator, which relies on the concept of evaporative cooling. The system works by putting a smaller clay pot inside a larger one, separating the two by constantly moist sand. Evaporation causes a cooling effect in the inner pot. Eggplants are reported to stay fresh for 27 days, nine times their usual expiration date. Tomatoes and peppers can last for up to 21 days.

Free Wheelchair Mission(FWM)

After seeing a disabled Moroccan woman drag herself across a busy street, MIT grad Don Schoendorfer and his wife Laurie decided to do something about it. They reasoned that the key issue was wheelchair affordability, so they developed one with the lowest possible cost. The resulting FWM wheelchair uses elements already in existence, components currently in manufacture and off-the-shelf parts already being produced in very high volumes. By using this approach, FWM has an extraordinarily low $59.20 manufacturing cost. The FWM wheelchair is manufactured in China for maximum economy. FWM has delivered 481,655 wheelchairs to 77 countries, all at no cost to the recipients.

Hippo Roller Water Project

In some African villages, fetching potable water can take most of an entire day, and is typically a chore left to women and children. The Hippo Roller is a simple tool for transporting water from distant watering-holes back to homes and villages an alternative to the traditional 5-gallon-barrels-on-heads approach. The product itself is similar to a barrel with a handle that you push ahead of you like a steamrollers drum, and has a capacity of 90 liters / 24 gallons. Thats nearly a 5X increase in productivity. In the past 15 years, the Hippo Roller Water Project has distributed over 30,000 rollers, directly benefitting over 200,000 people.

Rocket Stove
A rocket stove is a super-efficient heater invented at the Aprovecho Research Center to reduce biomass fuel requirements in developing countries. It combines the stoves air-intake with the fuel-feed slot in an opening terminated by a combustion chamber, which in turn leads to a chimney and heat exchanger. The stoves are easy to build using local materials, and accept small diameter fuel such as twigs and branches. The resultant heat is directed to a very small area, and greatly reduces the amount of wood fuel needed for cooking and boiling water. Aprovecho won the 2009 Ashden International Energy Champion Award for its Rocket Stove technology.

Lifestraw
In 2009, an estimated 5,000 deaths from unsafe drinking water occurred every day. This is down from 6,000 in 2007, and Vestergaard Frandsens Lifestraw played its part in the decline. The Lifestraw is a personal, low-cost water purification tool, with a service lifetime of 700 liters, or about one year of water consumption for a single person. Unlike other water purification products, Lifestraw is intuitive to use, can be worn around the neck, and requires no training, special tools or electricity to operate. The sucking action of the straw pulls the water through a filter that traps 99.999% of waterborne bacteria (such as Salmonella, Shigella, Enterococcus and Staphylococcus) and 98.7% of waterborne viruses. The Lifestraw has won countless awards, including Time Magazines Best Invention of 2005, Europes Best Innovation by Readers Digest, and Innovation of the Year by Esquire.

Corn Sheller
Compatible Technology International visited Guatemala and observed women hand-shelling corn. They saw how laborintensive the manual shelling process was, and, being engineers with a problem in their sights, they quickly developed a corn sheller out of a piece of wood with a hole in the middle. The women pushed the ear of corn through the hole, shaving the kernels from the cob MUCH more quickly. So the engineers crafted and donated several of their devices, convinced of their good deed. But when they returned months later, they found the women still hand-shelling corn. The women told them, Thanks for your invention, its much easier. But this is the time we use to talk about men, school, and kids, and your device makes our work too fast for that.