Our thinking

Use water twice

21 October, 2022

Let’s stop flushing the loos with drinking water. This is the message of Arthur Valkieser, the inventor of Waterloop, a new system of greywater recycling at a household level. 

What is greywater? It can be all shades of grey really: it is the lightly contaminated water that comes from shower, bath and washing machines. Hydraloop cleans and stores this water, so that it can be used again. 

For those wondering if we can do more to save water than turning off the tap while brushing our teetheth, this gives us an answer – yes, we can! The UN World Intellectual Property Organisation has even recognised the Waterloop as a tool to help reduce water consumption – up to 45 per cent of mains water consumption. This kind of solution is very exciting  because it pushes society in the right direction, away from single-use products and from a consumerist mindset, towards a sustainable way of living.  

35 litres of drinking water per person per day are being piped into cisterns to flush loos. Today this hushed scandal has found a potential happy outcome and we are grateful to Arthur Valkieser for making this non-renewable energy a little bit more renewable. Now let’s flush the loos with clean greywater. 

By Flora Gicquel