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LIMA, Peru — A first-of-its-kind billboard that doubles as a reverse osmosis system is making a difference by giving people access to clean water.
The billboard is the result of Mayo DraftFCB ad agency's work for The University of Engineering and Technology, and one answer to the Lima, Peru's struggle to get clean drinking water.
The coastal desert receives less than one inch of rain a year, but the air humidity is 98 percent. Most of the city's residents get their water from polluted wells.
That got the ad agency and the school thinking.
Together, they created a reverse osmosis and storage system behind the billboard and in its scaffolding. Air filters behind the billboard capture the humidity, generators move the moisture to a condenser, through a carbon filter, and into 20-liter storage tanks.
Residents can access the water through a tap at the bottom of the billboard.
As of Feb. 19, the billboard's system had produces 9,450 liters of clean drinking water.
