The Liter of Light project, launched
to combat the rising cost of electricity in the Philippines, aims to
provide 1 million homes with light.
Plastic bottles are put in shanty home roofs to provide light. Photograph: Sunshine Deleon
Around 25,000 low-income homes in the Philippines have been lit up after the launch of a scheme to fit sunlight-powered "bulbs" made from old plastic bottles.
In a country where 40% of the
population lives off less than $2 a day, the rising cost of power leaves
many unable to afford electricity. Some use candles as a light source,
but when generations of family members share a small, dark space in
shanty towns, accidental and destructive fires are often the result.
The Liter of Light project
was launched six months ago by the My Shelter Foundation, a
Philippines-based NGO which aims to provide light to 1 million of the
roughly 12 million homes who are either still without light or live on
the threshold of having their electricity shut down.
The scheme uses plastic bottles
filled with a solution of bleached water, installed into holes made in
shanty towns' corrugated iron roofs, which then refracts the equivalent
of 55W of sunlight into the room – during the day, at least. It takes
five minutes to make, and using a hammer, rivet, metal sheets, sandpaper
and epoxy, it costs $1 to produce.
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