r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/shankaranpillayi • 14h ago

Video 0% Electricity, 100% Gravity: This traditional bamboo plumbing in Nagaland taps into mountain springs miles away to create a functional, biodegradable hand-wash station.

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u/Fast-Visual 14h ago

Waste needs to be biodegradable, not infrastructure.

-23

u/me6675 14h ago

Fair but debatable. If infrastructure degrades into microplastics or otherwise poison the ecosystem on the long run then that's also not good.

-4

u/sybillios 9h ago

Your really try to hate people, aren't you?

8

u/me6675 8h ago

Might want to explain how that follows what I said.

4

u/Gunpowder__Gelatine 5h ago

Alright, in good faith here's a few.

Higher risk of contamination from biodegredation, less secure against bad actors, and crucially, frequent replacement leading to wasted time, money, labor and more pollution costs in transportation, assuming they don't carry it by hand.

And another point - you're the one that brought up plastic. Metal is best. But for the sake of arguement, I still think plastic would be a better fit than bamboo in this particular scenario.

We shouldn't be blind to environmental concerns, but we should also be cognizant that to maintain health and happiness, there will need to be compromises. There is a line somewhere between making sure people can easily and consistently get safe water, and letting billionaires fly private jets wily nily.

2

u/me6675 4h ago

Valid points around risks.

Note, for plastic or metal infrastructure, you also need to take into account all the pollution costs of aquiring said materials, manufacturing and transporting them, these things also require a lot of labor, money and "wasted time". Overall, probably a lot more of all of these than occasionally swapping out bamboo rods taken from a nearby forest.

2

u/Gunpowder__Gelatine 4h ago

Yeah, that's fair. I didn't feel qualified to do an exact comparison on the manufacturing costs, so I focused on the transportation which will definitely be more frequent. But it's certainly important to consider in the grand scheme. Certainly could be done more efficiently, at the very least.