Project Details

The Challenge | Rise to Resilience!

You are a newly appointed Regional Green Engineer. Your challenge is to develop green infrastructure solutions for complex challenges in water management and risk reduction.Create a tool to assess the characteristics of an urban or rural area of your choice, and integrate green infrastructures, or nature-based solutions, into that region’s development plans to1) reduce flood and/or drought risk2) establish sustainable land use practices3) support water management, and/or 4) produce local economic opportunities.

Comfybath

‘comfybath’ proposes a redesign of the way we use the traditional bathtub to help save water usage, globally and in space. Ensuring water availabilty for future generations.

Comfybath

Help save over a trillion tons of water by 2025-2030.

‘comfybath’ proposes a redesign of the way we use the traditional bathtub to help reduce the total amount of water usage globally.

By 2025, two thirds of the world’s population will be living in water stressed regions.

Water scarcity is expected to intensify as a result of climate change. It is predicted to bring about increased temperatures across the world in the range of 1.6°c to as much as 6°c by 2050. For each 1 degree of global warming, 7 percent of the global population will see a decrease of 20 percent or more in renewable water resources.
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

This could increase to almost half the world’s population by 2030

https://www.un.org/waterforlifedecade/scarcity.shtml

What to expect in a world of water scarcity:


Science (and today’s real-life weather conditions) show us that the situation is urgent. We do not have twenty or thirty years to find solutions to the water crisis – according to IPCC special reports, the time we have to act in to prevent severe changes to the climate for millennia ranges from right now to thenext decade (by2030). As such, we require collective, collaborative solutions to give both current and future generations a chance at a better life.

Help to reduce water scarcity in our shared future.

Bathing Statistics Around the World

On average…
British citizens have 5 showers and 3 baths a week.
French citizens have 7 showers and 2 baths a week.
Spanish citizens have 7 showers and 2 baths a week.
Chinese citizens have 5 showers and 3 baths a week.
India has the most weekly baths globally. Indian citizens have 7 baths a week.
Japanese citizens have 5 showers and 6 baths a week.
Mexican citizens have 8 showers and 3 baths a week.

1 Trillion Gallons of Water: The amount used solely for showering in the United States with showers lasting for an average 13 minutes.
Infographic and statistics from soakology.co.uk

Design

Comfybath - A ‘bath cushion’ which can safely increase the comfort of traditional baths with the purpose of reducing the total amount of water used globally. Reducing water use and improving the conventional bathtime experience by several factors, benefiting both ourselves and the environment. Ideas to expand upon (suggestions welcome!):

  • Lets us take a bath even when there’s a water shortage
  • Retains heat, making your bathtime warmer for longer (ambient heat retention)
  • Customised bath ‘cushion’ – molds to your shape
  • Saves time – don’t just wait till the bath’s full, just get in
  • Non-plastic / biodegradable and sustainable materials
  • Economical and good for the environment
  • Circular economy design
  • Expandable shape shows how many litres you’ve saved per soak
  • Makes bathtime fun

COLLABORATION

  • Open co-design with nature-based solutions
  • Workshops/facilitation to encourage collaboration and participation
  • Circular economy (product life cycle)
  • Prototyping, research and design
  • Creating a clear sustainability criteria that promotes ecological restoration, eco-labelling and best design practices
  • Innovation/conservation grants or project funding opportunities
  • How ‘comfybath’ might fit in with the circular economy and similar value-added systems
  • Website

Space

Comfybath might have a potential application in space! See here

Image Credit: NASA

(Category: Water resource management)