A student’s water reuse design, which aims to filter washing machine water for reuse, has won an international award and funding.
Coventry University student Joe Baker, aged 20, entered DesignSpark’s People Planet Product competition as part of the Washing Machine Project – an initiative aiming to make low-tech washing machines accessible to low-income communities with limited access to water and electricity.
Baker design consists of a platform that raises the washing machine, allowing water to flow through a filtration system which would remove contaminants such as dirt and micro-plastics and enable the water to be reused for purposes such as cooking.
Baker was the one and only winner from Europe crowned in the Planet category of the competition, with the other two winning designs coming from Africa and Asia respectively. Along with the award itself, Baker has now been granted £1,000 ($1,356 USD) to invest in developing the design concept, which he is setting out to do next semester as part of an individual project.
“I’ve always wanted to get into humanitarian and sustainable engineering,” Baker said. “This was a project that really appealed to me — as it presented an opportunity to make a real difference to people’s lives as well as contributing towards a concept that could make an everyday necessity, like washing clothes, far more sustainable moving forward.”
Baker now has long-term ambitions and hopes to develop a prototype of his design at Coventry University, eventually building a business around it in a bid to help both people and the planet.
“We were absolutely delighted to see Joe’s innovation and hard work pay off with this award,” said Nick Golsby, Associate Professor at Coventry University. “We now look forward with excitement to helping Joe develop his prototype at Coventry University.”
