Sustainable Development Goal 6: Clean Water and Sanitation
According to SDG6, clean, accessible water for all is an essential part of the world we want to live in and there is sufficient fresh water on the planet to achieve this. However, due to bad economics or poor infrastructure, millions of people including children die every year from diseases associated with inadequate water supply, sanitation and hygiene.
With the aim of accomplishing this goal, many problems related to accessibility to water, scarcity, pollution, wastewater and sanitation need to be solved.
Initial approach to our challenge: Using the 6W tool, our team decided to focus on water waste, more specifically looking at domestic water consumption. We realized that water waste in households is the field where we can impact most and where we have more information to work on. In fact, finding a solution to sensibilize users in water usage, both on a psychological side and practical savings could facilitate reaching our target.
The challenges that we choose to approach are:
- “How might we manage greywater so users can increase their domestic water-use efficiency?”
- “How might we design a smart solution in domestic water supply so users can be aware and limit their consumption to improve their economy?“
Based on SDG6 the WaterWall solves the problem of the single use we give to clean water for domestic purposes.
WaterWall reduces the amount of water that an individual requires for day to day activities in a domestic context by recycling grey water. The solution integrates various sources of greywater and produces potable water, allowing recycling of up to 80% of the water that passes through WaterWall and reducing up to 43% of an average citizen individual consumption. It employs latest technology water filters, uses sensors to capture data and ensure water quality. Through IOT, it encourages better use of water and control of the overall functionality and maintenance.
This is our final WaterWall design. Our product consists on a set of filters. The filters we use follow this order: sand filter to remove solid particles, carbon activated to filter chemicals, plasma discharges to kill bacteria, and a chemical dispenser in the drinkable water tank. It is known and proven that these filters work properly in water purification systems; however, we propose to gradually change our actual filters to more disruptive technologies (e.g. HEFP, Graphene).