Water scarcity, according to the World Health Organization fact files, affects one in three people on every continent around the world. In developing countries like China, the lack of water has become an everyday reality, as some villagers in Western China only bathe once a month or even not at all because of water scarcity. Meanwhile, China’s Ministry of Water Resources reveals that 300 million rural residents have insufficient access to safe drinking water (http://www.mwr.gov.cn/english/sdw.html) and 400 out of 663 cities are dealing with water shortage with the affected 40 million people coming from the urban population. In response to the water crisis, CINTEP, a Brisbane-based cleantech company, developed a patented recycling shower technology has shown reductions in water consumption by 70 percent. Invented by industrial designer Peter Brewin, who is also co-founder and director at CINTEP, the patented shower system also uses less energy than traditional showers without having to reduce flow rate at the showerhead, water pressure, and water temperature. Essentially, the CINTEP shower system, while only using about 2.7 liters per minute, does not diminish the simple pleasure of showering. CINTEP’s patented system captures shower water before it reaches the drain then pumps it through a recirculation circuit, which features three separate types of filter and a pasteurization system. The entire filtration and pasteurization process happens in less than 25 seconds.
