First assignment of group n° 068
Resources used by the team[modifier | modifier le wikicode]
First description of our project[modifier | modifier le wikicode]
1. What Problem do we want to solve ?
The issue we want to focus on is water, water is a considerable issue in developing countries and in rural areas because everyone does not have access to water. There is also the problem of purification because in oder to allow everyone to have access to water, systems for reusing water must be put in place, this is also a way to avoid waste. This is an issue which concern mainly developing countries and rural areas because those are places where there are no systems which give access to water, indeed the WHO considers, according to the figures of 2010, that 2,6 billion people (38 % of the world population) have no access to hygiene and basic purification installations. Those 38% are mainly concentrated in developing countries, for example 884 million people have no access to water and a third of them are in sub-Saharan Africa where there are droughts. This is why this problem must be solved: it concerns a large part of the world population, because water is a basic need and is a sustainable issue.
2. Why does this problem exist?
We have realized that consumption of water at home is a real issue because it can be expensive for some families and people are not always aware of their daily waste of water. According to the UNESCO, the increase of the world population would raise 2-3 billion people in the next 40 years and the drinking water will be exponentially available in households. This is the reason why we must think about our own consumption and try to reduce it.
3. What breakthrough are we commited to creating?
We intend to create a real breakthrough: our objective in the long-term is to save more and more water by improving water purification in developing countries. To do that, we need to change the main point of view regarding water purification and reutilization. Nowadays, the states are controlling water purification, and they are worrying about economy of scale, which makes sense. However we believe that focusing on a smaller scale is a better option for saving the scarce resource that is water.
This is why our project relates to individual houses. Indeed, we aim at finding a way to make individual houses self-sufficient, and water providing. In other words, we want to reduce the water consumption of households, by enabling them to reuse the water. As a starter, we need to concentrate on creating an individual system of purification, which would enable houses to reuse a certain amount of water for a determined period of time. Ideally, the period of time would become infinite, and the amount of water would be smallest.
