I have visited Chittagong region, the port city of the southern Bangladesh, for voluntary work in 2011. Bangladesh is located between the East Asia Mountains and Bay of Bengal also it has frontiers with both India and Myanmar. It is subtropical region during summer and winter. Most of the country is flooding during the rainy season when 80% of the annual precipitation is expected to fall between July and October. Chittagong region has lots of rain and has high humidity of 80 to 90 percent. I have visited mountainous area of North and East part of Chittagong where Mureung tribe is living. The people of Mureung tribe construct houses with bamboo leaves and their houses were situated on the high hill or on the mountainside. The village has no electricity and water facilities so that people in this village are moving their residence to look for the water. People can access to the clean water during the 3 months of rainy season only and they drink polluted standing water for the rest of the year. Stagnant water is getting polluted and corrupted over time. Since people drink the stagnated water and use this for cooking, they are exposed to water-born disease and easily got sick. People need to climb up and down the mountain to find water and mostly women are responsible for fetching water. Small gourd which can carry a liter of water is the only method of carrying water. Secondary pollution can be occurred due to high humidity, high temperature and absence of water storage tank and refrigerator.
CONCEPT
Items can easily and conveniently clean contaminated water and be compact since women usually carry water beyond the mountains, and it can keep sanitary in hot weather and high humidity environments. Lastly, it has to cheap as reducing cost and process of manufacture so that this people can buy it cheap.
SKETCH
A bent neck bottle makes to keep a bottle conveniently, and bottle and filter is connected into a one-piece foundation for simple use. The filter should be easy-detachable and made with materials that can be found in local so people can easily access it. Also the graduations, which show amount of water used, should be marked on the side of the bottle.
BOTTLE
FILTER
The filter is consists of five parts; cap, charcoal, net, container, mash. Contents can be easily changed by separating cap and container. Charcoal is made with bamboo trees which are easy to find in local. So, people can have the filter without buying it, and use the bottle sustainably using local materials.
Lock the filter to fit the hole of filer to that of bottle, so that water can be filled into the bottle. After then, soak the bottle in water. The filter part of the bottle should be soaked first. Water comes into the bottle due to difference of atmospheric pressure in the bottle. The contaminated water is purified after passing through the filter, and the bottle will be filled with clean water.
The half of filter is opened and the rest of that is blocked. If filter is screwed to the arrow direction, it closes the hole and prevents water from leaking. So, water doesn’t spill out of the bottle while moving or pouring.
