The most sustainable strategy for improving rural drinking water quality is to provide solutions for treating and safely storing water at the household level.
Our award-winning Wood Mold™ is a low-tech, open-source tool that lets anyone, anywhere bring clean water to their community.
Much of the developing world grapples with lack of access to water that is safe for human consumption, an essential first step in leading a healthy and productive life. Our initial focus at OHorizons has been around development of a low-tech solution that empowers communities to solve this issue.
BioSand Filters (BSFs) are a water purification solution that use sand, gravel, and natural biological processes to filter out contaminants in water, making it safe for drinking. BSFs effectively eliminate cholera, typhoid, E coli, amoebic dysentery, and many additional pathogens that are harmful to humans. They’re a great low-tech clean drinking water solution.
Although BSFs have been in use as a simple, easy solution since the 1990s by various nonprofits, local governments, and other organizations throughout the developing world, the way they have been made is not.
Traditionally they have been constructed using a steel mold, which is still today the global standard. But the steel molds are heavy, expensive, and require a skilled welder, something that is difficult to find in remote areas of the world.
At OHorizons, we decided to think about this solution a little differently. We wanted to preserve the sophistication and impact of the steel mold but reduce all other factors that made it a challenge to implement around the world.
Using an 8 ft by 4 ft sheet of plywood, the Wood Mold™ was born.
Unlike other clean water solutions that end up providing a centralized access point to clean water, the OHorizons approach enables families to have clean drinking water inside their own home.
