[nchmy]

This is the sort of comment I was hoping to find. I have focused in this area - improving lives of the poorest as efficiently as possible - for a long time and my immediate thoughts about this washing machine was that it was overcomplicated and definitely far too expensive (for many reasons) to ever really make a difference. Though, that won't stop these folks from doing this and receiving donations for it into perpetuity.

So much is possible if you just look at how nature, in one way or another, can do the work for you. No knead bread (or, better, periodic stretch and folds over the course of a few hours) is a perfect example. Or making a composting toilet/latrine by just adding sawdust, ash etc. Or simple and cheap rocket stoves that burn the smoke. Or cover crops and cultivating soil structure and microbes. Etc

The key for what you shared (and, i suppose this machine) is how little agitation you actually need, and how there's plenty of ways to do it with no fancy equipment. Can you share more about your experience, or even share some links, about the amount of agitation needed, how "cleaning" actually works (you said time and chemistry - but how?), and how to make effective, low-cost detergents anywhere?

Thanks!

[ffuxlpff]

This is so interesting! I'm the only one using the grandparents' old posser at our summer cottage (boomers love hi-tech and electric appliances) and even after I made lots of experiments didn't realize the importance of time. Now when I think about it it seems obvious.

[nataliste]

Your heart is in a better place than the NGO-contraption market, but what you also need to understand is that when you change a local optima in minimal ways, you also disrupt the rest of the local economy inadvertently.

Take the rocket stove as an example. It's an "improvement" over three stone and hearth fires, right? Less particulate in the air, less smoke, less ash, and more efficient use of fuel, all good things, right? Everyone has to work less to gather fuel, everyone's lungs are happier, and so on.

But not quite.

The rocket stove reduces ash yield, reducing one universally useful by-product. The rocket stove minimizes smoke production, so instead of creosote deposits on the walls acting as a general biocidal agent and lowering air humidity, there's now high humidity with exposed walls, an ideal climate for mold growth. Ever wonder why traditional pit-houses and earth-lodges rarely had issues with mold and damp and typically annually fumigated their entire homes with smoke? Or why women in some Northern and Eastern Europe peoples gave birth in saunas even prior to the advent of germ theory? The answer is smoke is useful, not only for creating relatively sterile environments, not only from molds, but also bugs.

Chronic smoke exposure imposes real respiratory costs, but traditional societies tolerated those costs because smoke simultaneously provided insect control, food preservation, fumigation, and moisture regulation. Interventions that remove smoke without deliberately replacing those functions often trade one health burden for several others. And the simplest way to achieve all of those functions is the same way humans have been doing it for hundreds of thousands of years.

The rocket stove minimizes fuel use, so instead of heating and cooking, you just end up with cooking (and note that the rocket mass heater doesn't solve this problem, which is just banking heat rather than using it more efficiently). This separation "works" in hotter climates, but at that point, why are you cooking indoors to begin with? And again, the reduction in smoke makes insects (namely mosquitoes) much more likely to discern where breathing humans are and able to reach within biting distance.

Generally, traditional practices often encode systems-level knowledge that modern interventions ignore. Diffusion of traditional practices will generally be better than trying to invent a better mousetrap.

As far as cleaning goes, as in the saponification and misculation of fats, the gist is to treat a fat with an alkali with agitation and time. Heat speeds up the process (hot process), but enough time completes the reaction (cold process). Soap and detergents are just rapid versions of this process, but aren't at all necessary, so long as you have water and ash.

This understanding is called the sinner's circle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinner%27s_circle

It's the same reason when washing your hands you're "supposed to" sing happy birthday twice while agitating your hands. The soap is engaging in a chemical reaction with the fats on the your hands that takes more time because the human body can only tolerate so hot a temperature of water. You can use cold water and wait longer and have the same effect. The same thing is true of washing clothes, dishes, or whole bodies.

The Romans understood this. The baths were alkaline. They rubbed themselves with olive oil, used a stirgil (something like a frosting knife) to squeegee off the oil, then went in the pool. The alkali in the warm water combined with the residual olive oil and basically creates soap on your skin that is then rubbed off.

It's the same reason that Romans were able to have lily-white togas despite not having modern enzymatic cleaners and chlorine-based bleaches. They had lant and wood-ash alkali:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lant

In short, my experience is that I've improved my own life by observing what the time-rich resource-poor peoples of the world do rather than the inverse.

[infinet]

Sticking head into a barbecue oven for 10 minutes might get rid of lice, but expecting cooking smoke kill bugs is absurd. People use the three stone and hearth fire not because they want the smoke, but because they do not know better. Combustion is a complicated process, it generates CO2, H20, CO, H2, CH4. The higher the temperature, the more thorough the burning. It requires the right amount of air, enough to burn all the biomass, but not too much that carries heat away thus lowers the temperature. Higher temperature also transfer heat more efficiently to the cookware. Only a well designed stove can do that. These are not things that can be figured by meditating in front of an open fire.

Saving fuel is a matter of life and death in the ancient world. Winter is brutal to the poor largely because gathering fuel is difficult, especially in areas that have supported large population for centuries.

[nchmy]

I really thought that cookstoves would be safe from hacker news' erroneous self-importance and condescension, but here we are.

You've evidently never left your ivory tower to live in a sheet metal (or worse) shack, which a significant proportion of the world's poorest try to eek out an existence in.

And especially haven't carried the load of smoke-fueled, sleep-deprived women who exist to serve as household appliances.

There's so much so disgracefully wrong with what you said that i don't even know where to begin with setting the record straight.

I'll simply point out the absurdity of saying that there's wisdom in filling homes, eyes and lungs with creosote (and worse) when more people die from smoke inhalation than malaria and aids combined. And saying people shouldn't reduce their biomass consumption 4-fold, which saves forests, erosion, co2, and extremely limited and time/money - just so they can have a bit more ash to make some lye with.

Go live in extreme poverty somewhere for a while - it'll do you some good.