33 Buckets

When the founder of Rahima Hoque Girl’s College in rural Baher Char, Bangladesh contacted EPICS at ASU in need of clean drinking water, five EPICS students went straight to work. The water in this rural town was contaminated with arsenic. The team developed a system using sand, oxidation tanks, and carbon steel shavings in a 5-gallon bucket to filter out the contaminants from the water. Their mission was to filter out arsenic (atomic number 33) one bucket at a time, giving way to the team name 33 Buckets. Once the team had reached their funding goal through crowdfunding, they traveled to Bangladesh to establish their water filtration systems. Back in the states, the team became a finalist of the Dell Social Innovation Challenge and received $10,000 from the Pakis Family Foundation. With this extra funding, the team was able to establish two other water filtration systems in Batey Sabana Larga, Dominican Republic and Huillcapata, Peru. The group plans to focus their efforts on Peru. Their next plan is to establish water filtration systems at two sites near Cusco, Peru where there is evidence of water contamination.