Each year literally hundreds of thousands of old shipping containers have to be scrapped. Having reached the end of their useful safe working life, as containers.

The cost of scrapping them is barely recovered from the value of their scrap material. They are no longer safe or fit for purpose as shipping containers though, and are quickly replaced by new.

However, most are still structurally sound and watertight. Those that are not could viably be made so for repurposing for static use.

Why?

To be transported by WHO, in the frequently ineffective UN, to regions of the world where populations are suffering in tents or primitive mud huts, or worse still - nothing! Not as a permanent or a long term solution and certainly not to be seen as racist or some pious insult.

A perhaps temporary expedient to a pressing problem but an inexpensive one. One which might just act as a catalyst for some good to come out of it.

Improvement starts with incentive and with initiative. People displaced and poor does not mean they are indolent, lazy or stupid. People in such impoverished conditions can be innovative. Half a day with a $1 hacksaw can create a window opening in the side of an old shipping container. A shipping container is more resistant to a hurricane or a typhoon than a tent!

If 'modern', 'civilised', 'middle class' labelled people in Ealing or Surbiton or San Francisco can appreciate a trendy 'novelty' and the 'art' of pretty hamlets created by 'colourful' ex shipping containers, aesthetically arranged around a village pond, then so can cold, wet, starving people displaced or disadvantaged by insurrections, famines, floods, disease and viscous wars, for which they bear no blame or responsibility.

Click!    Transport a few thousand (a few HUNDRED thousand?!) obsolete 20 foot, 30 foot and 40 foot shipping containers into Somalia and Ethiopia and similar places of catastrophic suffering. Totally for free. No conditions. No questions. Throw in a few pots of (preferably white) paint, some planters, some gaffer tape and lots of pillows at the same time.

Think my ideas are stupid? People, especially Wokes, often do. So come up with a better idea then!!!

Or deafen me with silence. Again!

Mistral's commitment:
Bringing the benefits of computerisation to our industry - without the historically associated problems.