So we are conducting a survey of the households, sampling their drinking water, and passing out water filters, to half the participants now, and half in May of '08, I am learning a lot about how we conduct ourselves as scientists.
I will say this. I conducted water sampling for e-coli in Virginia, and the peak time is summer... and there has not been a single family we have interviewed who has not had diarrhea (sp) this month... I think only one family has an indoor toilet, and no one has an outhouse... No women and few men in my generation or older have been to any school (not because Guatemala is so backwards, but because of the 36 yr old civil war that ended 11 years ago... not long enough for a real infrastructure to take place...)
Yet, many homes have cable TV, and most families that have a man old enough to go, is getting money from the US in remittances and building huge homes... the translation of money to action is personal, not public, and the money is not helping the community to develop at all, or helping the water.
Will they use the filters? I wish I could convince some large bottled water company that their days are numbered, the cost to this earth of the plastic production in our landfills is devastating, and so they need to invest in, and support and promote filtration systems. Perhaps they can convert their industry to utilize this technology somehow... I am not certain many of these people want a low-tech solution... it isn't prestigious and doesn't indicate they are on the way up in the social hierarchy...
In Chile the fog collectors I studied four years ago were not only abandoned by the community they were placed in, designed to capture water from a natural source, where there was no water supply, but the community sabotaged the technology because they felt slighted, and wanted the government to pipe water in to their community like others.... they felt as though they had the same rights as other communities... many communities feel this way... what small steps can we take that will work?
Park yourself in front of a world of choices in alternative vehicles.
Visit the Yahoo! Auto Green Center.
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