It’s easy enough to tell people to use less water and turn off the taps when you’re not using them but to actually get the message through can sometimes be a bit harder. Designer Yan Lu has come up with a, slightly non-fish friendly, new idea to get the significance of water saving into people’s minds.
His new wash basin, Poor Little Fish, features a sink below a fish bowl complete with live fish swimming happily around and around and around. As you use water, the fish bowl slowly drains away – although never completely, reminding you in quite a vivid way of your H2O consumption. But before you get too distressed about the poor little fish, the water draining away from his bowl isn’t actually washing your hands and gurgling down the plug hole. Your water comes from the mains whilst his drains into a hidden reservoir. After the tap is turned off, the fish bowl slowly refills.
Even though the fish is in no danger of being sucked down the plug hole, I can’t imagine he’s all that happy at his ever changing water level at home. Any design that makes people rethink their water consumption is fantastic and although we think this idea is fab as a concept, it’s not the most practical of solutions.
A less scaly concept is the +-Water meter. Easily slotted onto your tap, this design doesn’t just tell you how much water you’ve used but converts it into how much money each splash will cost you. Measuring water usage in terms of pounds rather than litres is so much easier to comprehend and much more likely to get you saving not only your pennies but also the planet, one hand wash at a time.
(Spotted on Yanko Design)
Katherine Hui is currently the Social site editor at Green Thing, a web-based public service in London that inspires people to lead greener lives through creative content.
Before this, she worked as the Development Manager at Social Innovation Camp, an organization that encourages people to use web and mobile-based technology to mobilise social change. She oversaw 300 ideas submission and helped build 20 prototypes – five of which have gone on to get further funding or investment.
Katherine’s came over to the UK form Canada in 2007 for an MSc program at the London School of Economics. Before arriving in London, she managed a small environmental start-up in Vancouver called the Canadian Climate Change Alliance.
Katherine is football mad. She is a loyal supporter of Arsenal FC, plays for Islington Borough Ladies FC and coaches for Gunners in Islington in her spare time. Her second favourite hobby is kite surfing and she can sometimes be found chasing the wind.
