clean water – Shanghai Metal Corporation

Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft literally threw millions of dollars into toilet as he together with his wife invested $42 million in a competition of designing toilet systems for developing countries. In the competition Duke’s Pratt School of Engineering presented a creative solution that uses shipping containers to sanitize human waste.

The university was offered a $1.18 million grant of its idea of turning human waste into energy. The sanitation solution that starts with the individual and the toilet, includes the storage, transportation and treatment of human waste, and ends, ideally, with safe, usable by products such as fertilizer, fuel or clean water.

As the diagram above shows, human waste goes to an underground shipping container. This 20-foot shipping container uses enough heat and pressure to drive the internal water into so called ‘supercritical phase‘. Supercritical water can oxidize the waste and produce a sterile combination of water, carbon dioxide and salts. It also produces a lot of heat that can be directed back to the system or, say, to a power generator.

The World Health Organization has stated that there 2.4 billion people that do not have access to any type of improved sanitation facility. In addition, about two million people die every year of diarrheal diseases; most of them being children under five years of age. Just like container hospitals and Coca-Cola’s container kiosks, the new container toilet system is a new example of how shipping containers can save lives!

Shipping containers are an excellent tool for conducting CSR campaigns in developing countries. As the examples of Coca-Cola, Samsung and now Bill Gates go to show, shipping containers are worth more than their steel structure. It is the value that comes from the creative minds utilizing containers that makes a difference. We in Shanghai Metal Corporation are really proud of offering these instruments. Please see more information about our shipping containers in our website or just send us an inquiry. Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram.

Tuomas P. // SMC Editor

Pictures and original articles: Top 10 rate, The World Health Organization, Duke University, Inhabitat, Treehugger

The United Nations together with all the world’s countries and all the world’s leading development institution agreed on eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). They range from halving extreme poverty rates to halting the spread of HIV/AIDS and providing universal primary education, all by the target date of 2015.

MDG 1 calls for the proportion of people who suffer from hunger to be halved between 1990 and 2015. In other words, MDG 1 is about eradicating extreme poverty and hunger. In a continent like Africa, where escalating food prices result of a 23 percent increase (in US dolar terms) in the FAO Food Price Index from 2006 to 2007, the number of people left hungry has increased. Nearly one billion people – equal to the populations of both the USA and Europe – do not have enough to eat.

A Kenyan farmer tends newly planted trees

A country where their people are starving and farming is the main industry, rural prosperity would be a development catalyst in Africa. But in order to create a prosperous rural Africa the promised aid is vital, which, in turn, can provide a springboard for development across the continent.

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Farm Africa is a NGO supporting farmers from dry rangelands to lush forests in five east African countries: Ethiopia, Kenya, South Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda. Farm Africa’s impact has benefited 30.000 people in Babati, Tanzania from doubled crop yields, doubled the number of children going to school, 770.000 hectares of forest now protected in Ethiopia, increased by 600% the value of wild coffee harvest in Bale, Ethiopia, and by 249% in sorghum crop harvests in Kitui County, Kenya.

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Nguuzi, his wife and three children didn’t have enough food to eat when his crops were badly affected by drought. But with FarmAfrica’s help, he learned how to water his crops by using the drip irrigation techniques and a water tank built to him. He earns money by selling his green gram crop through a farmers’ group, his family can eat porridge now, and he is able to pay for school uniforms so that his children can attend school.

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Nguuzi is only one example out of many others benefited from NGO’s help. By setting up water points to improve access to clean, safe water, for families, livestock, FarmAfrica added five dams and four boreholes, which improved farmers’ access to water and allowed drip feed irrigation sites to be established close to these water sources. Eight farmers are already benefiting through the sale of vegetables grown on these drip irrigation sites.

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Shanghai Metal Corporation is proud of initiatives of NGOs such as that of FarmAfrica, wich are crucial to help farmers get out of situations of extreme poverty and hunger. Shanghai Metal Corporation is specialized in aluminum alloy tubes/pipes widely used in irrigation pipes such as the ones used in the irrigation system build by FarmAfrica. For our full list of products that we offer check out our website here. Be sure to join the conversation in our LinkedIn group,Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Try also our new mobile application by scanning the QR code below.

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