Repurposing Waste Into Interior Lights With Liter of Light

Huge swaths of the world exist without access to electricity, and in many of these places, people rely on diesel-powered generators, or old-fashioned lamps and candles. The former create health hazards, as well as environmental hazards, and the latter can result in fires that claim homes and lives every year. One organization has been going to these places and creating a unique solution; repurposing old plastic bottles into interior lights.

Liter of Light’s Mission

Liter of Light is an organization with a simple purpose; provide lighting solutions to the more than 1 billion people living without electricity access, and do so by turning trash into a resource. What they do, according to Yahoo! News, they take plastic bottles (between 1 and 2 liters), fill them with water, add a touch of bleach, and then install them in the ceiling. These bottles act like prisms, diffusing the daylight throughout the interior, providing light without compromising the protection of the roof.

Perhaps just as importantly, though, these skylights are all locally sourced. So Liter of Light is turning local trash into something used by local people, to solve a local problem. Not only that, but these simple lights can last 5 years or more. And though the organization will have moved on, the knowledge of how to make and install these lights is something they leave behind. So, while the organization may only be there for a short time, the impact they leave will go on for years as more people adopt this simple solution for lighting their homes and reducing their reliance on other forms of energy.