Awards for eco-friendly inventions

The International Exhibition of Inventions is held every year in Geneva. It showcases a variety of inventions and new products presented by companies and inventors from around the world. Over 700 representatives from 45 countries participated on this year´s edition. Many of the projects presented reflected the reigning concern with environmental issues.

Incidentally, the Grand Prix was awarded to an automatic control system for money spent on electricity, thanks to a system called checktap, created by the Korean inventor, Mr. Lee Jeong-soo, from the company Incasolution Ltd. In fact, this is a multifunction plug linked to a computer by a USB cable. Once it is in the computer, it starts to work, monitoring and interrupting electrical appliances completely or with a time-lag, according to the instructions programmed by the user.

There were prizes for many other ecological inventions:

• Clothing from bamboo fibers (Pegase Sport Design, France)
• Recycled wood product from the oil palm tree (Wan Tarmeze, Malaysia)
• Water purification systems (Svarog, Russia)
• Low-consumption heating radiator (Wolfgang Kerschbaum, Austria)
• Autonomous solar ice fridge (Heig-Vd/Solaref, Switzerland/France)
• Compact portable devices for biological and aerobic treatment of waste water (Duro Horvat, Croatia)
• High-performance biodegradable thermoplastics from starch-based films (Industrial Chemistry Research Institute, Poland)
• A building material from recycled crystal glass (Branko Gnjidic, Croatia)

Another environmentally-friendly invention that did well at the event was the device for reducing daily water and power waste by the company Disesta-JP, from Spain. It received four awards: one from the Geneva Tourism Agency, another from the Foundation King Abdelaziz (Saudi Arabia), the event´s gold medal and the special mention from the jury.

When installed in faucets and the piping system, this system is designed for the short wait for hot water (or not so short, depending on the boiler and the distance to the tap). It blocks the release of water until it has reached the optimal temperature (normally 100.4 °F) to avoid wasting it while we wait.

Francesc Alemany, the company´s representative at the convention, estimates that this allows for savings of water consumption of around 20% per year.