Gearing up for Laundry
April 25, 2009
For the 600 kids at La Sagrada Familia Orphanage in Peru, laundry day was hours of hard work washing the more than 2 tons of dirty clothes each week. Much of that has changed with the introduction of the bici-lavadora, a $125 washing machine that is gaining more and more use in third-world countries. As Daniel Sieberg of CBS News reports, the bici-lavadora was created in MIT’s experimental D-Lab where students look for simple solutions to third-world problems. The bici-lavadora is a steel drum filled with clothes, water, and soap and then powered by a person riding an attached bicycle. (Bici is from bicicleta, Spanish for bike, and lavadora, Spanish for washing machine.) click here for limerick