Wash Your Clothes Without Water.. or at least 90% less water

Now here is an invention worth blogging about; a washing system that cleans your clothes using 90% less water than a normal washer! This would not only conserve water, but potentially eliminate or minimize drying needs leading to reductions in energy consumption.

The product was actually created by a team of students at the University of Leeds in the UK. The team formed a company called Xeros and hopes to conquer the American market with this hot new invention.

How does it work? While this product is this in the development phases, essentially what it will do is use little nylon beads (to the right) to capture and lock in stains in the molecular structure of the nylon. This product is said to use less detergent and 90% less water, potentially eliminating the need for dryers. These little beads can even be recycled.

What does this mean? Well the company claims this machine would save 1.2 BILLION TONS of water each year, enough to fill 17 million swimming pools. They also claim "if all US homes converted to the Xeros cleaning system, the reduction in carbon footprint is equivalent to taking 5 million cars off American roads."

If you haven't notices, with these new technologies, I have been focusing on costs. Now how much will this product cost you? Well, since it is still in the development phase, there isn't much about the costs of this new system for washing. However, according to the company website this product, should save some $$, 30% of direct operating costs to be specific (according to the company website). I think the image to the left does a great job at displaying the savings. Not only would this save us as consumers money, but it would save the environment as well which is a pretty sexy thing to be doing these days.

Its hard to see a downside in saving water, energy and money. However, who knows how well these will even work? Considering they are still in the testing phases, it is hard to tell. We'll just have to wait and see.

If you want to learn more about these products visit the Xeros' website.