Assam man turns waste plastic bottles into solar safety lights to warn of hidden flood hazards

Sivasagar: Every monsoon, flooded roads in Assam hide deadly dangers. Open drains and deep potholes vanish under murky water, leading to accidents that claim lives each year.

To tackle this, 38-year-old Abhijit Dowarah from Sivasagar has built a low-cost solar safety device using discarded plastic bottles. By day, the reflector makes submerged hazards visible. At night, a solar-powered light switches on automatically to warn pedestrians and motorists.

An Arts graduate and self-taught innovator, Abhijit has already created more than 50 products from waste. His past inventions include a wearable device for visually impaired people, shelters for stray dogs made from old TVs, and a motorcycle converted into a mobile solar charging station during this year’s Sivasagar floods.

For this latest device, he used plastic bottles and other inexpensive materials. The goal is simple: provide an affordable warning marker that can be placed near open drains and potholes in flood-prone areas.“During the day it reflects sunlight, and at night the solar light turns on by itself,” he told The Better India. “It’s a small thing, but it could stop a big accident.”

Abhijit says innovation for him has never been about expensive technology. It’s about using what people throw away to protect the community. He now hopes local authorities will adopt the device across waterlogged towns and villages in Assam, where a simple marker could mean the difference between life and death.