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Rushes and Reeds Could Recycle Your Shower Water Naturally

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Sustainable design is something new to our species; homo sapiens, but plants like reeds and rushes learned the basics of it millions (or even billions) of years ago.

Now designers  Jun Yasumoto, Vincent Vandenbrouk, Olivier Pigasse, and Alban Le Henry invite natures  experts into your shower to recycle your water sustainably.

After you have washed in this shower the water passes down into filters and is treated by the reeds and rushes growing around your feet. This cleans the shower water naturally. As Jun Yasumoto puts it:

“These plants have been proven to be able to remove the chemicals from your shampoo. Using a natural filtering principle called phyto-purification, the bathroom becomes a mini-eco-system by recycling and regenerating the waste water. With this project, we tried to combine the pleasure of taking a shower with the satisfaction of recycling water. We wanted the recycling process to actually interact with the use of shower.”

As you see in the diagram after the jump, you would stand on a platform and the reeds would only grow around the sides comprising the “walls” of the shower. You don’t have to share your standing room with the plants!

The waste water would pass into a chamber below the shower floor and go through a maze of filters. The system includes sand, reeds, rushes, a mesh filter, water hyacinths and lemnas, and finally a carbon filter.

They actually conceived of their idea seven years ago. It was only after posting the concept on the internet recently that they realized that the level of interest warranted another look at their concept. They have been inundated with  queries about where their shower can be bought.

“No prototype has been made as the project is just a concept for the moment, but it is interesting to see the positive feedback we are getting since we put these images online,” Yasumoto said “It has made us think we should keep on developing this idea and start thinking of ways to integrate it and bring it closer to reality.”

Perhaps it is time for a patent and commercialization of the idea. Kudos go to these graduates from the French national design school Ecole Nationale Supirieure de Creation Industrielle.

Via The Daily Mail