Turning children's roundabouts into village waterpumps

By harnessing the energy created when children play on the sort of roundabout or merry-go-round found in playgrounds, PlayPumps International, a South African company, enables villages to pump water from the ground.

Costing around US$14,000, the pumps are not the cheapest, but in 2006 the Clinton Global Initiative announce a plan to install 4,000 of them across Sub-saharan Africa by 2010. Currently there are around 1000, already providing clean water to more than one million people.

As children turn the roundabout, the energy created powers an underground pump, lifting water from wells up to 40 metres below ground into an above ground tank. According to the manufacturers, the Playpumps can lift up to 1400 litres of water to the surface each hour.

For more information, read this Wikipedia article, or go to the Playpumps website.