Anteneh's Safa

Do you know that people in many part of the world wash their clothing in a river, lake or a stream? If you are not aware, well you are about to.  

This project is about building a new kind of cloth hand washing tank for peoples who wash their cloth in a river that filter the raw water and prevent the waste micro particles entering in to the river.  

In many rural areas of the world it is a common sight to see women washing their cloths in river or lake especially in areas where there is scarcity of water. This is because washing clothes require large volume of water and fetching water to home for washing clothes is impractical because you will need to bring large volume of water at once or collect on a many round trips. This is very tiresome task and all the people prefer taking their cloth in a basket to the nearest river or lake to wash them. Washing cloth on river usually does not involve in using detergent but using rocks as a friction to get rid of the dirt. When you wash cloth with river water you do not know what the upstream water is bringing with it. Usually there are many harmful bacteria and parasites come with the water and as you expose your cloth to that water when washing you are putting yourself at risk. When you are washing you are also putting the river at risk because clothes release microfibers by billions when washed and also you are exposing the river additional harmful waste from your dirty cclothes

This project is about building a new kind of cloth hand washing tank for peoples who wash their cloth in a river that filter the raw water and prevent the waste micro particles entering in to the river. This is done by creating a full opening in the two opposite side of the standard rectangular hand washing tank and installing filters on each opening that can sort micro fibers and similar sized micro particles just like the wash bag in washing machine to sort micro fiber like guppy friend and moorland rider pet wear wash bag. The filters have a key structures that is used in assemble and disassemble at will at the bottom and top side. When washing your cloth on a river using this tank you must place the side that have filter in parallel way so that the first filter can block the incoming bacteria or parasite and allow cleaner water protecting your clothes. The second filter act as filtration system from exposing the river micro fibers and other harmful waste coming out of the washed cloth. The filters can be later cleaned on land far from the river and disposed on some bin. 

According to reports some 2.2 billion people around the world do not have safely managed  drinking water services, 1.1 billion people lack access to water and 2.7 billion experience water scarcity at least one month a year. By 2025, two-thirds of the world’s population may be facing water shortages and countries with the highest percentage of the population lacking basic access to water are in great risk like Eritrea (80.7% lack basic water services), Papua New Guinea (63.4% lack basic water services), Uganda (61.1% lack basic water services), Ethiopia (60.9% lack basic water services), Somalia (60% lack basic water services), Angola (59% lack basic water services), Democratic Republic of the Congo (58.2% lack basic water services), Chad (57.5% lack basic water services), Niger (54.2% lack basic water services), Mozambique (52.7% lack basic water services) and so on. Therefore it is inevitable that people living in these zones will have to go to places where there is water source like rivers and lakes to wash their clothes and fetch water. 

This project does not completely solve their water need problem for washing clothes but it will it will protect their health from many potential risk from bacteria and parasite that come with the river water. The project also will protect the health of the aquatic ecosystem like the fishes, plants and other animals living in the river from micro particles that comes out of the washed cloths like micro fibers, parasites, bacteria and others. This project is very essential because water problem of the world can not be solved completely because there will always exist factory that create scarcity of water like population growth, war and many others and people will continue to wash their clothes on river as long as there is lack of water supply to their house.

To be addressed

To be addressed