Children bring water home with a Hippo Water Roller. Both photographs Grant Gibbs

The Hippo Water Roller literally lifts the weight off the shoulders of millions of people—mostly women and children who have been collecting water at distant sources and carrying it home in five-gallon (20-L) buckets on their heads. The component parts are a 23-gallon (90-L) polyethylene barrel and a clip-on metal handle. The roller allows one person to collect four times the amount of water she could with a bucket. And because the roller is designed to be pushed across the ground, it feels like you are managing 22 pounds (10 kg) instead of the actual 200 pounds (90 kg) the barrel contains. The design saves time and energy and eliminates unhealthy skeletal stress.

Traditional method of water transport