OSWash project

 

This long term project tend not only to invent a hundred technological designs adapted to different contexts, but also to promote the building, the maintaining, the control of the technology by the people themselves. 

The project to rethink the way we wash clothes around the world has several aspects:

  • Sociology: in many communities, washing days in collectivity (most of the time gatherings of women and children) are also the way to exchange information, to evoque some problems, solve some conflicts and stenghtening a collective (gender) identity and energy. Theese gatherings have also strong cultural and artistic aspects through storytellings and songs. Collective washing is networking. Collective washing is culture. The Open Source Washing Machine project must not destroy this harmony, but simply facilitate the work of washing itself. Collective washing systems are a key point in this project.
  • Technology-in-context: How to adapt the technologies to the different climatic, sociologic, technologic, environnemental, energetical, political contexts ?
  • Environemental issues: How to find, clean, transport, recycle water for washing ? how to find, process, recycle biologic or chimic detergents ? how to preserve and grow ” washing plants” ?
  • Pedagogy, dissemination: Firstly: how to present our works in a non-colonialist way ? how to manage workshops, how to implicate the users ?  how to implicate the users ( mostly women) in the complete building and maintaining of their machines ? how to impulse “dissemination workshops” ?
  • What else ? participate !
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Hello, I think the main problem in washing machine is not

Bernard

Hello,

I think the main problem in washing machine is not the mechanic : a drum with a bicycle is ok, turning a drum is easier than moving the clothes by hands. Better doing bicycle and talking while clothes are washed than looking at brainkilling TV :-)

The main problem is having clean water at input and at output. A real green solution would be to recycle the water, which could be quite easy if there is no need to drink this water…

Solutions for swimming pools using slightly salted (NaCl) water could be used, as they allow to create very efficient and “natural” subproducts that become back to salt. Thus no other product would be needed, that would at same time clean and cheap.

You can even imagine doing closed recycling bathes on the same principle, as soon as there is no cross contamination between different uses.

I think using solar concentrators like large fresnel lenses could also help a lot, by allowing to heat water very efficiently, even to boiling point.

Hoping to help :-)

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