Human ingenuity always surprises.
People come up with the most remarkable ideas to overcome everyday life’s difficulties.
And it is not unusual to find that the most impactful transformations come from the most straightforward ideas.
The example comes from the suburb of Peru’s capital Lima.
There the inhabitants have developed the art of ‘harvesting’ fog in the desert.
Lima is the second-largest city ever built in a desert.
It is, therefore, not surprising that the residents have developed a technique to escape the lack of water.
Vertical nets catch the steam, which, condensed, drips into a holding tank.
The gadget can be a significant water source, formed by only two poles and a nylon net.
Every day, between 200 and 400 liters of water are collected.
For Lima’s peripheral region residents, the technique is the only means of obtaining water.
In the camps located on the city’s outskirts, trucks deliver drinking water at a price often a thousand times higher than tap water in other parts of the Peruvian capital.
Although not drinkable, the water from the mist collected in the nets can be used for bathing or, if boiled, for cooking.
Abel Cruz, an industrial engineer and president of Movimiento Peruanos Sin Agua, noticed the plight of the region’s inhabitants 20 years ago when he moved to a migrant settlement.
Cruz tackled the problem of how to turn Lima’s fog into water, and now he shares his homegrown strategy with others in need in the desert.
The whole story was published in National Geographic Brasil.
With information from Revista Oeste