Illuminating Window-Less Houses With a Plastic Bottle 240
New submitter DancesWithWolves writes "The BBC reports on Alfredo Moser, who came up with a way of illuminating his house during the day without electricity — using nothing more than plastic bottles filled with water and a tiny bit of bleach. In the last two years his idea has spread throughout the world. It is expected to be in one million homes by early next year.'"
Simple and zero energy cost (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Glass bottles (Score:4, Insightful)
It's a rudimentary light pipe [wikipedia.org] really. Clever but not much use unless you're directly underneath a flimsy roof. That said, I'd like to see more real light tube installations in multistory buildings. Sunlight beats both LED and fluorescent in energy efficiency and light quality.
So the solution . . . (Score:5, Insightful)
to illuminating a house with no windows is . . . to add windows? Wow.
I mean, some kudos are deserved for finding an inexpensive (almost free) way to add windows, and using windows whose shape provides some refractory scattering of the incoming light. Still though, his solution to no windows was literally TO ADD WINDOWS.
Re:Need to diffuse the light a bit... (Score:2, Insightful)
Like barbaric idiots we still have no laws mandating that anything produced be recyclable or biodegradable. Faced with the facts of how plastic kills wildlife and pollutes the environment, we just happily keep producing more.
Re:Lighting on ships... (Score:4, Insightful)
http://www.globalenvision.org/2011/08/18/used-soda-bottles-light-world-free [globalenvision.org]
So people in third world countries should just save up for 15 years to buy a commercial lighting system?
This isn't about commercial use in wealthy areas, it's about giving light to the various areas in the world with "shack cities", where a few thousand people just shove up tin roofs and live in close proximity.
It is both novel and beneficial to those people.
Please think before you spew.
Re:Lighting on ships... (Score:4, Insightful)
You must be the biggest idiot in the world. The pop bottle skylights aren't for you in your single family home in pasadena. They are for people who earn less than $2/day. The free/cheap. The light pipes cost hundreds of dollars.