Salt and Light

SEAWATER ILLUMINATES RURAL VILLAGES

'Waterlight', an innovative 'lamp' that creates electrical energy using only salt water has just been named 'Best World-Changing Idea in Latin America', in Fast Company's 2022 World Changing Ideas Awards (3rd May 2022). Every year these awards honour the most amazing ways that businesses and organisations are tackling the biggest challenges of our time. This follows the two silvers for Product Design and Sustainability and a bronze for Innovation, awarded to the Edina Waterlight and partners Wunderman Thompson on 28th April 2022 in the Clio awards in New York.

Columbian renewables start-up, Edina, recruited creative and technology agency Wunderman Thompson from a project born back in 2016, to help design the portable device in which saltwater sparks an ionization reaction, producing enough electrical energy to light and charge phones and radios. Just half a litre of seawater can produce 45 days of electricity.

The Wayuu people of northern Colombia have played an active part in the lamp's design, such as requesting the weighted base to keep it upright in their fishing canoes and in high wind and sandstorms. Living in small rural villages near the Venezuelan border, the Wayuu, who rely on fishing and artisan crafting for survival (the women have crafted the Waterlight's hanging straps) join an estimated 840 million people in the world who have little or no access to electricity.

Edina's future plans include making plants on beaches to produce significant quantities of energy with the effluents becoming fertilisers or drinking water.

Waterproof and made of 100% recyclable materials, Waterlight is currently on sale with restrictions for large orders from NGO's, organisations and governments, to make them accessible to the vulnerable populations that need them. However, there are plans for it to be sold retail in the future.

For more information you can visit their website Here.