This is one of those achievements I admire because it uses waste materials to do something useful. Really useful. From IT News Africa:
Using orange peels and avocado skins, [Kiara Nirghin of South Africa] has managed to create a material, that can hold hundreds of times its weight in water, in the soil. This super absorbent polymer then acts as a water reservoir in the earth.
By saving water this way, her idea could have a massive impact on how the continent manages the effects of climate change in years to come. And, because it’s made from orange and avocado skins, it won’t break the budget of local farmers, like so many other water storage devices currently do.
I do wonder how this disturbance in water movement will impact the environment. Water – potentially a lot of it – won’t go somewhere that it was going. This could have effects ranging from someone else going thirsty or hungry to impacts on weather systems.
But it’s still really cool.
