Summer and its heat are unavoidable, but the heart’s desire to get a bit of cool breeze is inescapable. Although the main sufferer, mainly the rural Bangladeshis knew nothing could change their situation. Hence the intention was to provide a sustainable solution at a minimal cost.

So, the insight was actually a very simple science. If you blow with an open mouth slowly on your hand, it feels warm. But if you do the same lips pursed, it feels cold! This is all to do with what's happening with the air. If you're blowing through very narrow pursed lips, the hot air is compressed and turned into cooler air. Contrariwise, when you breathe with wide open mouth, the airstream is much wider and slower and doesn't grab as much ambient air.

Based on this simple principle, the creative idea was, Eco cooler – The World’s First Zero Electricity Cooler

As the huts are made with corrugated tin sheets, the inside and outside temperature were same. The hut’s window does not help much, but that’s the only place from where air can get inside the hut. So window is the place where it needs to be implemented.

So, the cardboard having the cut bottles on it was placed on the window for the trick to work. Hence some plastic bottles, a cardboard and simple physics did the work. The actual users were very surprised as the solution came to them like magic, although a trick which they themselves can do.

As the technique used were taught to these people, making it a public property so whoever wanted could make it by themselves.

A small scale survey was conducted to understand how much a rural person can afford to spend to improve on the current situation. The findings suggested that if they don’t have to spend anything it’s the best for them!

Considering this fact, the technique was to re-use the used materials where one has to hardly spend anything. Plastic used bottles were cut from the bottom end keeping the bottle neck and mouth intact. The bottle end forming a larger circular hole and the bottle mouth having a much smaller hole would help to compress hot air. A good number of similar size plastic bottles were cut and pasted in a cardboard, so that the hot air outside passes through the cardboard, compresses the air and releases the cooler air through the smaller opening on the other side.

The campaign was implemented in 5 villages around the northern belt of Bangladesh – where a team of Grameen Intel officials had village sessions on how to build the Eco-Coolers. Due to the simplicity of the product design, the product soon started to be mimicked by villagers and be adopted by villages across Bangladesh.

Imagine you are living in a place where almost 9-months of the year are extremely hot and humid. That’s Bangladesh - a country having subtropical monsoon climate where mostly the temperatures during this period range between 30°C and 45°C, along with a high percentage of humidity. These 9 months become horrendous for almost everyone, especially the rural population who construct 70% of the country’s population and live in the corrugated sheet covered huts, having very limited or no access to electricity. When the scorching heat of the sun falls on these roofs, the huts burn like farness under the summer sun, making it unbearable to live inside.

Grameen Intel Social Business Ltd. believes that everybody has the right to live a better life. So, it wanted to harness the power of innovation to solve this problem in the simplest possible way so that the rural people get some respite.