Appropriate
Technology (AT)
At Aprovecho we work to develop energy-efficient, nonpolluting, and renewable technologies. Our designs use readily available materials, many of them recycled, to create devices that can improve the quality of life while lessening environmental degradation.
Our classes, projects, and research concentrate on meeting basic needs with the smallest ecological footprint possible. Such needs include cooking, sanitation, heating, cooling, and shelter. Interns learn not only how to build specific designs, but more importantly, they gain experience in how to be designers: how to adapt basic principles to the use of locally-available materials, while taking into account the social and environmental factors unique to each situation.
Topics covered in our AT program include solar cookers, solar water heaters, fuel-efficient wood stoves and ovens, hayboxes, composting toilets, solar housing, alternative building techniques, dehydrators, and bio-diesel. Because we incorporate many of these devices into everyday life at the Research Center, we develop a familiarity that allows critique and further refinement of each design. In the end interns at Aprovecho learn to put together the theoretical ideal of first principles with the real world application of those principles in user-friendly designs.