Free Flush
Sustain our Nation inspired us to combine our design responses to a number of issues into a social enterprise that could deliver our vision in an environmentally and financially sustainable manner.
The Free Flush team
To kick the project off we worked with our fellow second and third year 3D design students from the Falmouth School of Design to research the 5 core themes of the competition. This involved a huge amount of community engagement as the groups sought to uncover the major issues affecting people in Cornwall.
This research highlighted a number of issues but for us, the issues of high water bills, water security and poor job opportunities really stuck out.
The more we looked at water use, the more ridiculous one fact became; we flush our toilets with drinking water that has gone through a carbon intensive and costly cleaning process!
So we developed a system that allows rainwater to provide up to 75% of water used for toilet flushing and can easily be retro-fitted into existing buildings. This has the result of drastically cutting water bills and reducing the wasteful use of treated drinking water.
By tying the installations of the system into a training and employment programme with local people, freeflush will also help to bring skills and jobs to the area.
We are now testing and developing our system and aim to be ready to run training courses and begin installing the systems in 2011.
Links
www.freeflushcornwall.co.uk