Water shortage is a common phenomenon in India, especially in summers when groundwater levels deplete further in both urban and rural areas.
In urban areas, citizens use RO (reverse osmosis) filter machines which wastes water, three times the amount that is purified. To help conserve this wastewater, a few Class 10 students from Gurugram have come up with a simple solution.
Aditya Tanwar, Arjun Singh Bedi, Jeiya Khurana, Mohammad Umar, and Piya Sharma from Shiv Nadar School, Gurugram, have focussed their Class 10 project on the ‘water wastage from RO systems.’
“One of our prime concerns was the rapid depletion of groundwater. While it all started as a school project, soon we realised that we can come up with something that could make a huge impact on water conservation,” Arjun Tanwar told The Better India.
During the pandemic, when the World Health Organisation (WHO) made 20-min handwashing mandatory in its COVID-19 guidelines, the students made it a point to find a solution to this problem.
These team, which is also known as the ‘Fluid Force,’ have come up with a solution that redirects the wastewater into the kitchen tap that can be reused.
“We were shocked to realise that a standalone RO wastes three litres of water for every litre that it purifies. Our first step was to design a prototype, and test multiple prototypes in our school, including testing various taps, motors to arrive at the best possible setup,” the students told News 18.
The Shiv Nadar School financed the team’s design, while the teachers helped in the process from designing to implementing it, the students said.
The project was initially implemented successfully in the school premises, followed by homes of friends and relatives to further test the solution’s effectiveness. The students also placed it in other public places which helped save 900 litres at Tamil Nadu’s Dosa Corner, 150 litres at Saumya Ayurvedic, and 300 litres at the Commissioner’s Office, among others, on a daily basis.
The design was developed as part of the school’s annual fest – ‘Colloquium,’ where students with different skill sets work together to understand similar problems and find a solution.
The team has managed to save over one lakh litres of water in just 15 days.
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