“Toilets, water, depleted tropical soils, and refrigeration are four of the myriad challenges of the developing world. Small fruit, vegetable, and meat sellers lose considerable stock to the sweltering heat. Farmers’ fields and drinking water get flooded by water contaminated with human feces. The water taps stop running for weeks at a time forcing people to drink fetid water. Consumers buy dubious products and suffer increased rates of sickness to top off the other challenges of poverty. Another challenge is processed goods, necessities such as soap or washing basins, cause money from a poor area to flow out to large foreign businesses. All of these challenges can be met by a community store.
roof water
Earthbag Cisterns
Since water is vital to life, and there is increasing scarcity of clean drinking water in much of the world, it makes sense to store this precious resource and use it wisely. Earthbags in combination with ferrocement offer a number of interesting alternatives for storing water. Three different methods are shown below. www.flickr.com/photos/10349013@N02/2798383930 www.flickr.com/photos/11222150@N02/1082496465 http://earthbagplans.wordpress.com/2009/06/24/earthbag-cistern/