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From Guatemala: "Banana mulch" water treatment initiative

Water treatment systems in developing countries often fail. Many times systems are designed with inappropriate technologies. They use expensive components that are difficult to obtain and contain complex systems that require maintenance beyond the financial and educational capacity of the local community. Furthermore, communities often lack the incentive to use or maintain systems, regardless of simplicity. This tends to occur when the educational and cultural component of water systems are overlooked.

At Lake Atitlan, Guatemala, many international organizations have built large centralized wastewater treatment systems that ultimately failed. The continued lack of water treatment has manifested in the spread of diarrhea and cysticercos infections from pork tapeworm. as well as cyanobacterial blooms within the lake that are indicative of degrading water quality.  The blooms threaten to derail the economic health of the basin, which is built on tourism. If Lake Atitlan continues on its current trajectory, its economic, human, and environmental health are all threatened.

With these failures in mind, the UC Davis Chapter of Engineers without Borders has begun testing a new technology  that has yet to be implemented on a large scale : Banana Rings. In partnership with a local NGO called Ati’t Ala’, we are planning a pilot project constructing fifty banana rings in a town on Lake Atitlan. The technology consists of a mulch basin that receives greywater effluent and the planting of fruits and vegetables around the basin, including banana trees. Although this technology uses established components - a mulch basin, soil infiltration, and phytoremediation - this project combines these components in a new way and makes them appealing to households.

This system is designed to be extremely marketable. The first incentive to use this system is not cleaner water. Rather, the incentive is to supplement the diet and incomes of households using nutrient-rich greywater to increase crop yields. This incentive-based system would allow for maximized sustainability and spread of our technology.

by Imaan Taghavi, UC Davis undergraduate student in Environmental Engineering.
Other team members are Kevin Dumler, Wayne Leu, and Catherine Fong.

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