Over 5 billion people have to hand wash their clothes. An average village spends about 15 years of man-hours on this highly repetitive arduous task. That’s 15 years of lost productivity, opportunity and thus, development. How many of the remaining 2 billion of us understand the effort it takes to hand wash our laundry?

In a TED lecture, Hans Rosling claimed, "The washing machine is the single most important invention of the modern age." And so we asking, "Why can't the whole world have washing machines?”

We’ve spent months in conceptualizing and fine-tuning a system that could change the standard of living of a considerable part of the human population while remaining profitable, sustainable and environmentally-friendly.

We introduce Dhobi – a modular system that will provide access to clean, safe and hygienic laundry washing facilities to millions of people in developing countries. Using cheap, yet reliable components we are able to provide this machine at low cost so that the services it provides are affordable even for the most underdeveloped sections of our population. This translates into greater opportunities for local communities to substitute the hard, time consuming and unproductive labor of washing clothes with meaningful tasks such as education, childcare and additional income from work. At the same time our system will improve hygiene standards and preserve fresh water from both wastage and contamination.

The ease of transporting Dhobi without disassembly allows it to be setup with minimal oversight. A system that will enable 5 billion people to work, learn and spend time on things that truly matter. In addition, with the increase in productivity and hygiene, the system has palpable scope for long-term returns. It’s easy to ignore something as basic as washing clothes when it’s automated. But how many of us can go a week, let alone a lifetime, without a washing machine?

Help us change lives, one cycle at a time.

組長
Team Leader

Ashwin Goyal (HKU)

組員
Team Member
陳梓豪
CHAN Tsz Ho Derek (HKU)

Paul Schmitzberger (HKU)

唐浩僖
TONG Ho Hei Alex (HKU)

黃子華
WONG Tsz Wa Sam (HKU)

院校顧問
Faculty Advisor
Dr. XU Pai (HKU)

Website
http://www.dhobi.hk/