A Small Charcoal Trial
Kevin, as a part of the Takachar team, visited Kibera, the largest slum in Nairobi, Kenya, with an interest in producing charcoal from organic waste. Kibera consumes hundreds of tons of charcoal per day, but unsustainable deforestation and increasing scarcity mean that charcoal is becoming more expensive. Over IAP, the Takachar team carried out interviews [...]
Installing a rain-water catchment system in Cambodia
Students in John Ochsendorf’s class, 4.472: D-Lab Schools, spent the fall 2010 planning to travel to rural Cambodia to work on school design projects. The class traveled over IAP, and a number of projects were undertaken, from installing new shutters to provide airflow during rainstorms, to building a latrine using rice husk ask (RHA) mixed [...]
Cleaning up the Charles River during CityDays
CityDays kicks off the school year as a traditional part of orientation at MIT. Groups of MIT students – freshmen and upperclassmen – venture into the Cambridge and Boston communities to complete service projects. Some of the community organizations (among the 42 total) that students work with include AIDS Action Committee, Big Brothers/Big Sisters of [...]
Designing the Cyclos motor
In the class Product Engineering Process, 2.009, a team of students designed an affordable system, Cyclos, that extracts oil from filters so they can be safely recycled. Cyclos is targeted to the small auto shops that often throw away their filters – leading to serious water contamination around the landfills. Pictured are Dave Foster ’08 [...]
Working for New Ecology Inc.
Community Service Work-Study student Shiva Prakash ’09 assisted New Ecology Inc (NEI) with background research on new technologies for public housing and other government sponsored projects in low-income communities. NEI works with its constituents to help them integrate sustainable development into their ongoing work: development that protects environmental quality and eliminates pollution and waste, provides [...]
