Innovatioins  & technologies

Ten recent low-tech inventions that have changed the world

DC-power microgrid

Solar cells can provide cheap, decentralized electricity. But if you’re plugging them into conventional devices on a normal household grid, there’s a lot of overhead involved in converting the direct current they produce into alternating current and back again. A well-designed small DC network can save a substantial amount of energy by eliminating this need.

Better woodstoves

Deforestation is a major problem in much of the developing world, as is the harm to human health that comes from breathing in the particulate matter in smoke from woodstoves. Better-designed stoves like the Berkeley-Darfur stove use only half as much fuel to cook a comparable amount of food, and they cut the particulate emissions in half as well.

Simple, effective water filters

Hundreds of millions of people around the world lack access to safe water. Simple, cheap water filters use ash combined with silver nanoparticles to filter out impurities and pathogens; they have improved the lives of hundreds of thousands.

Hippo roller

Hundreds of millions of people, usually women, have to walk every day to get enough water for their basic needs and transport it home in buckets. The Hippo roller is a heavy-duty plastic barrel that can be flipped on its side and rolled home, via an attached handle, over rough terrain...