

Recycled plastic bottles bring light to homes in Filipino slums - jonknee
http://uk.reuters.com/video/2011/07/11/bringing-light-to-the-poor-one-liter-at?videoId=216968892&videoChannel=82

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measure2xcut1x
I use this technique on my bike at night. I have rear-facing red LED tail
light on the post of my bike seat, but it is not visible from the sides. I
attach a clear small-size coke bottle of water to the fender over the rear
tire, with a bungee cable - in line with the LED light. The light from the red
LED lights up the water bottle and makes it visible from both sides, as well
as from the rear, like a big red tail light. It's cool and quite eye catching
(that's the goal) when I set the light to "blink" mode.

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ColinWright
Three weeks ago: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2757047>

Last week: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2816556>

Not much discussion. I'm sure there was at least one other with more
discussion.

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gavingmiller
For those that think this is cool, checkout Garbage Warrior[1]. It's a
documentary about a man building sustainable houses out of old tires, plastic
& glass bottles, and the like. It's like startups meets home building!

[1]<http://www.garbagewarrior.com/>

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PlanetFunk
Thanks for the link.

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gvb
This is actually a _very_ old technique to light windowless places. The
cleverness is using a bottle of water for a nearly zero cost implementation.

On sailing ships, they would install deck prisms to get light belowdecks. You
can still buy replicas: <http://www.scientificsonline.com/deck-prism.html>
(note that the flat side is on the deck, the pointy side goes down to spread
out the light). A more modern implementation: <http://www.boatdeckprism.com/>

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JimmyL
Any ideas what the adding of the bleach does - it is just to keep algae from
growing in there, or does it have some optical properties?

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dmooney1
The reporter said it was just to prevent algae growth.

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dmlorenzetti
This actually _reuses_ plastic bottles, putting it one step higher up the
"reduce-reuse-recycle" priority chain.

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dawilster
My question is how would they deal with light as soon as it gets dark?

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jdnier
Intuitively cool as soon as you see the video.

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georgieporgie
I'm quite tempted to do this to my shed.

