School in Chile a role model in energy and water conservation

HANGA ROA, Chile : A school in the capital of Easter Island (Rapa Nui, in the local indigenous tongue) gives an example of clean management with the use of solar energy, rainwater recovery and an organic vegetable garden, as well as rooms and spaces built with waste materials.

Rapa Nui is a Chilean territory in the Polynesian triangle of Oceania: Hawaii to the north, New Zealand to the south, and Maori and Rapa Nui to the east. The island has about 8,000 permanent residents, most of them families from the Rapa Nui indigenous people. In addition, some 120,000 tourists visit the island every year.

With an area of 163.6 square kmandatriangle-likeshape,the island is nicknamed the “navel of the world” in the Rapa Nui language. It is 3,800 kilometers from Chile. On Easter Island, formally classified as a “special Chilean territory”, the Toki Foundation emerged seven years ago, created by 11 young people, including awardwinning local pianist Mahani Teave, 35, the daughter of an American woman and a local artist.

Thanks to the Foundation’s school, located three kilometres from Hanga Roa, the island’s capital and only town, hundreds of Rapa Nui children have taken music workshops.

Some study classical music (violin, piano, cello or trumpet) and others traditional music, playing the popular ukulele. Children from the age of six attend the workshops in the afternoon, after school.

Michael Reynolds, an American nicknamed the garbage architect, designed the 850-square-meter Toki school house with eight classrooms plus a small auditorium and a roofed terrace. Reynolds spent about two months in Hanga Roa building the unique facility with 80 volunteers, using tires, glass bottles, cardboard, cans and compacted earth.

“They built the main structure using garbage,” Carla León, 30, coordinator of the Foundation’s school, told IPS. Last year it served 120 students, who will return to the classrooms in March after the southern hemisphere summer vacation.

For the last three years, the house has had 18 solar panels on its roof to take advantage of the island’s strong sunlight and convert it into electric power. The panels generate 10 kVA and supply all of the electricity required by the school.

But Enrique Icka, 34, director of the Foundation and Mahani’s partner, told IPS that they want to extend the experience to a nearby site where the cultural organisation will operate, thus creating a microgrid.

The generation of solar power is important on this island, where the electricity supply depends on the 300,000 litres of oil that tankers bring each month from the continent to meet the consumption needs of the local population: 2.5 megawatts (MW).

The generation and distribution of electricity is the responsibility of the company Sasipa, which in November 2018 inaugurated the first solar power plant, Tama Te Ra (which means “first rays of the sun”, in Rapa Nui), which only generates power in the daytime, using 400 photovoltaic panels to produce 105 kilowatts.

It covers between two and eight percent of Rapa Nui’s energy needs.

The Toki Foundation is also a pioneer in rainwater recovery. The curvilinear rooftop collects rainwater, which runs into eight ponds in the shape of stone towers, each of which has a capacity of 5,000 litres. “It’s time to take care of the water,” Easter Island Mayor Pedro Edmunds Paoa told IPS.

“Since four governments ago (for 16 years) I have been calling for metering wells to know how much water we have and how dangerous is the way we are getting it. That information is important today and the investment is not being made,” he said.