In Cambridge marketplace, there’s one of those installations that I presumed was supposed to be art, and as I walked by I pondered all the other things that taxpayers’ money could usefully be spent on… It was labelled, so I thought, ‘Litter of light’.
Yeah, yeah, green eco modern art, blah blah…
But then I realised that ‘Liter of light’ wasn’t actually a typo — I’m so unused to the American spelling of ‘litre’ that I misread it initially. And looking at the sign got me interested enough that I went to the organisation’s website, only to find that it isn’t, well, ideal, for someone who’s trying to find out what this is all about. But with a bit of perseverance and some searching elsewhere, I pieced it together.
The story, in fact, goes back to 2002, when a Brazilian chap named Alfredo Moser realised that, if you live in a shack with no windows, you can still bring sunlight into your home using water-filled recycled plastic bottles as diffusing skylights.
Liter of Light is a foundation that, as well as installing and encouraging the installation of vast numbers of these around the world, is now bringing them up to date by adding solar panels, batteries and LEDs, meaning that your bottle can provide light at night as well as during the day.
All in all, a very nice use of simple technologies to meet a real and widespread need! I love this kind of thing.
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