The problem of water shortage is not new. For the last few decades, recycling water has been identified as the only way to tackle the issue of ever increasing water consumption. Concerned over the awful waste of water down the sink, Juliana Lopes has designed the Equa to reuse the wasted water from the wash basin as water for the toilet bowl. The modeling and rendering for the concept was done by Michael Passos.
The Equa is an integrated toilet and sink that catches the water flowing down your sink drain, filters and stores it ready for your toilet flush. It is designed to easily fit into toilet enclosures and boasts low maintenance. This toilet system is environmentally ingenious as it helps to reuse the wasted water into our daily necessary practices. Along with making us more responsible, it also offers a simple way to cut down on water usage with negligible personal impact. This clever design not only increases efficiency by reusing grey-water, it also reduces water demand, and the volume of sewage to be treated.
The product, Equa, was designed for the final project of graduation in Industrial Design at the Mackenzie University, by Brazilian product designer Juliana Lopes with the support and help of Michael Passos. The product comes as a twin set of a sink juxtaposed to a toilet bowl connected by a rectangular block. It reuses the water discharged from the basin after a mouth rinse, face wash, teeth-brushing etc and stores it to flush next time you use the toilet. The rectangular box uniting the toilet bowl to the sink conceals two reservoirs and the connection between the two sets.
The water used in the basin is stored in a reservoir below the basin of three liter capacity and gets treated for disinfection. Then it travels to the cistern reservoir attached to the bowl which is of about six liter capacity. When flushed this water runs out and new water from the basin reservoir fills up the cistern. However as the demand for water for flushing is definitely more than is getting discharged from the basin, the cistern has also got second connection to clean water that fills up in absence of used water.
Nonetheless, if the water discharged is more than the capacity of the reservoir, the third outlet attached to the reservoir, releases the extra amount into the sewage system keeping the entire system free from leakage, spillage or any such mishap. The households especially concerned for water conservation will find the Equa quite useful. We have to remember that the sources of clean water are limited, and unless we discover newer sources of clean, potable water, projects like these to make wastewater a reusable resource is going save us both economic and environmental expenses.
Thanks Michael Passos