For those who haven’t followed along from the very beginning, this web log is ultimately, in the short term at least, about producing a design solution to be entered into the James Dyson Award competition. For the past two weeks I’ve been deliberating and deciding on what problem I believe is worth solving, and what my plan of action will be for the next sixty days of the competition. Today is a follow up to yesterday’s discussion about the a problem worth solving; for those that missed it, here it is in it’s entirety.
-SM
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“How do we localize water usage to individual regions, communities, and, ultimately, households?”
This is very much a problem exclusive, and some ways endemic, to the latter 20th and 21st century. In the bygone BCs a civilization could not exist without proximity to a source of water. Even the mighty Roman Empire, with their labyrinthine aqueducts, rarely constructed their cities more than spitting distance from a body of water. It just wasn’t possible to live more than a few miles from that most precious of liquids.
No longer the case. With the power of internal combustion and flight now at our disposal, entire countries are now free to import their water in bulk. Take the UAE. In it’s decadence, it imports it’s water from Southeast Asia, among other more local venues, not just to provide drinking water, but to grow food and enjoy year-round indoor skiing, quite possibly the most decadent thing a desert nation could ever aim for (Hoth on Tatooine. And yes, that is another Star Wars reference).
Yes, it’s a fucking desert.
Unfortunately, it’s a little ambitious to try to alter the course of an entire country from such wasteful and permanently detrimental water usage. There are, however, much more manageable methods of localizing water usage. And the inspiration comes from something as simple as a soda fountain.
We typically consume our pop through one of two means - by purchasing it in “bulk” at the grocery in cans or bottles, or at our favorite restaurant where it’s typically dispensed from a soda fountain. But soda fountains aren’t just magically connected to two liter bottles of beverage and dispense on command, staying fizzy all the while. As anyone who’s sipped on soda dispensed past prime, the drink is mixed – flavoring, water, and carbonation – entirely on site; and when the flavoring runs out before it’s replaced, you end up with less than stellar pop. The entirety of water usage is localized to the fountain; Coke or Pepsi or whomever need only supply the proprietary flavoring and the carbon dioxide necessary to carbonate the beverage, cutting down massively on transportation strain, because, after all, Pop is still mostly just water.
Why can’t we decompose our household consumption in a similar manner? I don’t mean to suggest we put a soda fountain in every person’s kitchen. But what if we could modularize pop cans, so that, just as soft drink companies do commercially, we are provided with pre-dispensed amounts of flavoring and carbonation and add the water ourselves?
There is no technical infeasibility to this solution. We merely design an aluminum pop can top that houses the flavoring and CO2 cartridge, and screws into to a reusable aluminum housing. It can even keep the pop tab for novelty and to start the mixing/carbonation. Is this a practical solution? I think so. IS it implementable? Let’s find out. Follow-up in a week and I’ll have a theoretical model in place.
Until then, sláinte.
-SM
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