Smart technologies have been recognised in the Smart Approved WaterMark Product of the Year Awards for 2011, announced during National Water Week.
The Commercial Product of the Year Award was awarded to the Geosentinel Wash Box — a mobile unit which can clean tools and items such as paint brushes, recycling the water and extracting wastes, instead of them ending up in sewers or in landfill.
In the commercial category, other finalists were Eco Rain from Maccaferri, a sub-surface geotextile irrigation mat; ESP-LX Modular irrigation controller from Rain Bird Australia; and iNTELLiWEB from MAIT Industries, an irrigation monitoring system which allows users to monitor moisture, weather, flow, soil temperature and other information from open spaces.
The Consumer Product of the Year Award went to ‘Ecoskim’, an innovative system which attaches to existing pool skimmer boxes and allows a much longer operational time before top-up is required, saving thousands of litres of water each year for the average pool owner.
Both winning products were granted the Smart Approved Watermark in the last 12 months and were selected from many contenders by the independent assessment panel.
The two winners scored highly on all criteria for selection for the awards — innovation, marketability, sustainability and good design.
The Ecoskim was developed in Brisbane by Paul deGroot and Mark Davies with expertise in pool installation and engineering.
Its primary role is to allow for pool skimming to continue as water evaporates and would normally fall below the skimmer box level. Reducing the need for top up from mains water supply, rainfall can do that saving potable water and money.
The WashBox is produced by Sydney based company, GeoSentinel and is being used on construction and industry sites where wet trades need to clean up and can save up to 3,000 litres of water a week, reducing water use by up to 90per cent. In addition it has other environmental benefits, including the elimination of storm water, sewer and ground water pollution, reduction of trade waste to landfill and 100 per cent recycling of liquid waste.
The Awards were presented by the ABC’s New Inventor’s host James O’Loughlin at the 2011 Smart WaterMark Stakeholder Forum held in Sydney to coincide with National Water Week.
The other finalist in the Consumer Award was the Ezygrow raised planter box which catches and recycles water which drains from the pot.
The Smart WaterMark Expert panel has now assessed more than 600 products and services since the scheme began, awarding more than 260 with the Smart WaterMark.
Smart Approved WaterMark is the national not-for-profit scheme providing independent professional certification of water efficiency.
The Smart WaterMark industry web site is at www.smartwatermark.info
