By Hillary Ojedga
Peru This Week
Remember that cool innovation that UTEC did involving a billboard that produces pollution-free lettuce? Well, the university’s researchers are at it again with another sustainable project. This time in the Amazon.
Lima’s University of Engineering and Technology (UTEC) has created technology that uses the nutrients released into the soil by plants during photosynthesis and converts it into electricity.
In other words, UTEC has created plant lamps that offer electrical light to an impoverished community in the recently created National Park of Sierra del Divisor.
UTEC professor Elmer Ramirez, told EFE, that their intention “was to offer a source of clean electrical light to people by making use of their surrounding resources,” reports Latino Fox News.
The community Nuevo Saposoa was without light for months after a flood in March destroyed their electricity source. Now with the “plant lamps” the 173 members of the community can carry on with activities through the evening, improving their social and economic quality of life.
Nuevo Saposoa is a Shipibo-Conibo community, located in the eastern Amazonian region of Ucayali. The National Institute of Information and Statistics (INEI, Spanish acronym) reports that 65% of the population lacks access to electricity.
