Winners of Water
GOLD WINNER – UNLEAK
Team 16: Emmanuel Marfo, Jon Kornik, Meseret Dawit Teweldebrihan, Priyank Hirani, Yael Zvulunov, and Yajun Wang
Solution:
Leaks inside homes lose enough water to serve 600 million people each day. UNLEAK will fix this in water stressed cities by offering free leak detection and cheap repairs to all. Using a method to check for leaks from outside homes, UNLEAK will audit entire neighborhoods at once. UNLEAK will coordinate bulk discounts from plumbers and offer heavily discounted repairs to leaking households. Plumbers will pay a referral fee for driving business to them. UNLEAK expects each 100 houses to cost $13 to audit and generate $30 in revenue. In this way UNLEAK will profitably and scalably reduce water consumption in water stressed cities.
SILVER WINNER – Alter: Alternatives to water
Team 17: Lily Saporta Tagiuiri, Karlijn Arts, and Avijit Baidya
Solution: Freshwater sources are become increasingly depleted, and the costs of new technologies such as desalination remain high and energy intensive. Collectively, the world needs to preempt increased scarcity through untapping alternative sources. Hidden around us is a water resource with limitless potential; Condensation. Alter focussed on methods of capturing condensation to use as potable water on a domestic and an industrial scale.
BRONZE WINNER – How much water do you eat?
Team 22: Zoi Konstantopoulou, Hussam Hussein, Aline Saraiva Okello, Andreas Scheidegger, Yoke Pean Thye, and Serena Leka
Solution: Given that 70% of water resources are used by agriculture, and that extensive research has been done on the water footprint of agricultural goods, it is surprising that consumers are not aware of how much water is used for the products they consume. This project aims to inform consumers of their water footprint when making an online purchase decision – focusing on the growing online grocery shopping market – and educating them with personalized water footprint report cards.