Olympic size swimming pools
Every day, washing machines in the UK use enough water to fill 145 Olympic size swimming pools. Now, researchers from the University of Leeds have developed a product which may radically reduce water wastage – a virtually waterless washing machine. ’The idea really emerged about four years ago‘, explains Dr Rob Rule, a Director of Xeros, the company created to commercially develop the technology.

The founder of the company, Professor Stephen Burkinshaw, is internationally recognised for his expertise in textiles. Rule explains, ‘The inventor Stephen Burkinshaw has 25 years of experience in textile and coloration dyeing science. It was his observations of the way different types of materials behave in a typical wash that lead him to consider that if you use a lot of one particular type of material, it might do a good job of picking up the dirt’.  

Plastic pellets absorb
This new washing machine will use less than two per cent of the water used by a conventional machine. Rule explains how it works, ‘After the clothing has been dampened, it is tumbled with a fairly large quantity of plastic pellets. The water does the work of loosening and dissolving the dirt and plastic pellets do the work of absorbing it and locking it up’.

Clean technology
The washing machine requires a fairly large drum in order to accommodate the number of plastic pellets. The technology has captured people’s imagination because it’s a clean technology with an energy and water saving element, which is an important issue across the world.

‘A lot of interest has come from places like Australia and the Middle East where water is an increasingly scarce resource’ says Rule, but ‘there are increasing constraints around water usage for domestic purposes in the UK as well. There are targets around the building of sustainable housing in the future, which include pretty dramatic reductions in the potential water usage per household. Washing machines currently consume around one sixth of the total water usage in the household.’