MADEONEARTH

Sustainable Junkyard Wars

If you happen to live in rural Bolivia, building a water survey of the available trash you find in a university pump isn’t going to include a visit to the local hard- setting (lumber, metal rods, plastic piping, etc). ware store or being able to plug into a power grid A total of 12 teams were armed with a few power to operate a machine. So how do you get water? tools and given time to plan solutions. Their tasks This was the challenge given to Kara Serenius, varied from increasing peanut-processing efficiencies Hessam Khajeei, Galvin Clancey, and Gaby Wong, in Bangladesh to devising ways to lower carbon diox-a team of students determined to create a safe ide emissions in China to capturing fresh water from mechanism for groundwater recovery and hopefully the misty climes of coastal Ireland. win a prize at the same time. After frantic planning, a fairly detailed schematic The team was competing in the first annual of the treadle pump was produced. On the day of Designs for a Sustainable World Challenge, hosted the event, six hours of frantic construction culmi-by Engineers Without Borders and the University nated in the final creation. In the end, not only did of British Columbia’s Sustainability Office. the treadle pump win first prize, but it also generat-Student teams were asked to create an object ed the loudest cheer when Wong stepped up on the to address a social economic challenge, building it pump and demonstrated that it did, indeed, work. in a short time frame and from what could only be “The success of the event and the motivation of described as garbage. Basically, this was akin to an the students involved are both living proofs of the ultra-sustainable episode of Junkyard Wars, with a desire of today’s youth to have a positive impact heavy dose of social responsibility. on the world of tomorrow,” says Yifeng Song, one of The design process for their solution — a human- the event coordinators. And the possibility of a little powered treadle pump — necessitated a serious look more fresh water isn’t bad, either. at the development challenges in Bolivia, as well as a —Dave Ng

Photograph by Yifeng Song

16 Make: Volume 12