A design student from Hungary has won the Electrolux Design Lab 2007 competition with this concept washing machine that uses natural soap nuts in place of conventional detergent. Levente Szabo's E-wash was a response to the brief to design a product that's both environmentally sound and commercially viable.
Taking his inspiration from India and Nepal where soap nuts - a.k.a. sapindus mucorussi - have been used successfully for centuries, Szabo designed the E-Wash to lessen the pollution of the washing process as well as reducing packaging and transportation of detergents. The alternative soap would be helpful for people with allergies and a kilogram of the nuts would last the average person a whole year. The machine itself was also reduced in size and flattened so that it would fit into a small flat and yet take a large load of clothes.
[via Shiny Shiny]
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