Four Turkish students collaborated to design Washit – a combined shower and washing machine that makes those 15 minute showers almost guiltless. Responding to the combined woes of water scarcity and excess water use in the bathroom, Ahmet Burak Aktas, Adem Onalan, Salih Berk Ilhan and Burak Soylemez created a shower box that collects, cleans, and recycles greywater, which is then used to either wash clothes or the next person to enter the box.
Wasted shower water (which contains the remnants of your phosphate-free soap and shampoo, we hope) goes through a multi-stage cleaning process before it is recycled.
But for the majority of people in the MENA region who are still using mainstream varieties of body cleansing materials, the water will need to go through a rigorous filtration process.
Each of the incorporated carbon, organic and chemical filters give the soapy water a good scrubbing before it passes through a UV filtering phase. Once it is suitably rid of various contaminants, it enters a storage tank.
Both the shower and washing machine can draw from this source, although we’re uncertain of how much water the tank can hold or whether there is sufficient water to provide for both functions at once.
Mechanically, however, it is possible to wash and shower at the same time. In the domestic version of Washit the machine is on the outside, while the public version keeps the washer inside and uses advanced technology to cleanse clothes in double quick time.
The Turkish students originally designed Washit as part of a university assignment. But then they decided it could be a worthy contestant in the Hansgrohe Prize 2012: Efficient Water Design competition.
This year’s theme was “My Green Shower Pleasure” and Washit was one of six contestants to win a shared prize of €5,000.
In the steady aftermath of the heady international exposure, the students are now working with their university mentors to develop a prototype to move this modern design from concept to reality.
This is the second water-saving concept we have featured from Turkey this week. The last, a waterless dishwasher, washes dishes after every use using CO2.
:: Inhabitat
Author: Tafline Laylin
As a tour leader who led “eco-friendly” camping trips throughout North America, Tafline soon realized that she was instead leaving behind a trail of gas fumes, plastic bottles and Pringles. In fact, wherever she traveled – whether it was Viet Nam or South Africa or England – it became clear how inefficiently the mandate to re-think our consumer culture is reaching the general public. Born in Iran, raised in South Africa and the United States, she currently splits her time between Africa and the Middle East. Tafline can be reached at tafline (at) greenprophet (dot) com.
Reuse of scarce resources is an important key to survival and progress at all levels. An inspired concept!
Neither “Wash-it” nor any other invention will avoid the absolute necessity of reducing the human population with family planning education and safely recycling all human-generated waste materials.