Kaf Mountain holds a giant mystery in the consciousness of Middle Eastern people like myself. Nobody knows what is behind the Kaf-Mountain, it is situated on the edge of the world, and maybe it is the edge itself. Climate change holds an unfortunate resemblance to this mountain, looks quite unsolvable and unpassable. Yet, we as a team of 5 high school girls at the time– Avjin Aktop, Nujen Yüksel, Yagmur Delal Cengiz, Irmak Zelal Cengiz, and Damla Zerya Aslan found our way to the Mountain by looking at Tigris River. And realized, we are not alone in tackling the Kaf-mountain-like climate change.
Every journey starts with a grievance. Our story is no exception: the dying out Tigris River, a river that is more than 6000 years old. We had already heard about other various climate-related problems; however, directly witnessing the drying up of this natural beauty passing from our city, Diyarbakir, deeply influenced us. Tigris has always symbolized the interconnectivity of our ancient history of Mesopotamia and extended beyond national borders, going to Syria and Iraq. Yet, the flow in the Euphrates-Tigris River system has decreased to almost half of the average annual flow during dry years over the past decade, and we wanted to fight against this. Nonetheless, we didn’t know how we could do it as only high school students. Yet, in the beginning, only thinking about these problems was more than enough because this awareness supplied us with the motivation and excitement to look for an innovative solution.
One day, Zerya was talking to her grandmother, as it was their usual. She witnessed her grandmother reusing the dirty water from the washing machines to water her plants. Zerya was astonished, how could we not think about reusing the water? When Zerya told us about the situation, Yagmur shared her idea of developing a technical system to enable the reusing of dirty water for the washing machines. Zelal and Nujen added their thought about the system design and project outreach, and Delavo, our initiative, unofficially kicked off. Then, days passed researching on the internet. Membranes? Filtration techniques? Through our literature review, we realized how beneficial it is to create a strong basis of knowledge, and we saw how the UN’s SDG goals 6, 5, and 13 ideally define the problem we aim to solve.
Finally, we designed ECaundry. ECaundry revolutionizes laundry by integrating an innovative water filtration and reuse system directly into washing machines, reducing water waste by 90%. Instead of disposing of laundry water after each cycle, ECaundry stores it in a 7-centimeter tank atop the machine, where it undergoes advanced filtration using an activated carbon pre-filter and hollow fiber ultrafiltration membrane. These filters remove contaminants like fibers, sediments, and pathogens while optimizing water quality and reducing energy consumption during hot cycles. The purified water is then redirected to the washing machine for reuse, with an additional pressure switch ensuring optimal water levels. With this design, ECaundry saves up to 820 liters of water per person annually and also addresses microplastic pollution by preventing the grey water from mixing with clean water resources, offering a sustainable and efficient solution for both water conservation and wastewater treatment.
We implemented virtual and face-to-face expert meetings and even went to the industrial region of our city, a place that is quite male-dominated, to verify the sustainability of ECaundry and build our prototype. The owner of a white appliances dealer gave us a non-used washing machine so we could implement our system there. Yet, we knew that we wanted to get more mentorship and funds to even apply for patents. We presented our project to the R&D center of one of the three most valuable companies in Turkey, Arcelik Garage, which also operates in washing machine technologies, and they invited us to their laboratory. We received their help in testing our product and achieving technical advancement.
That’s when we applied to The Earth Prize, an environmentalist project competition supporting young entrepreneurs to realize their innovations. Every year, the winner and three runner-up teams are awarded a $100,000 educational grant after the three stages of the competition: the submission phase, the scholars' phase, and the awards ceremony which respectively involves forming a team and a fresh idea, building up on your fresh idea to create a final idea, and the announcement of winners.
What is great about Earthprize is how it connects you with global changemakers through one-to-one monitoring sessions that provide personalized feedback. As a part of the scholars’ phase, we were matched with Tom Szaky, the founder of TerraCycle, a global leader company in recycling hard-to-recycle materials. His insights and experiences with recycling techniques motivated us to do better on our project: we learned how we can recycle ECaundry after usage, how to avoid the filtrated microplastics mixing with nature again, and how to effectively market our product.
Winning The Earth Prize competition was one of the best moments of my life. Moments of joy, relief, pure inspiration to do better, and the responsibility of being believed in. Winning the USD 100,000 prize makes you believe that only complaining about some problems among friends can make you recognized as a changemaker. Furthermore, apart from the personal honor of winning, all the resources and connections we acquired through this journey enabled us to give back to our underprivileged community. Today, we are using the grant we received to set up a scientific laboratory in our school and sustain our relationship with Arcelik’s R&D department, assisting us by implementing high-precision requiring tests on our prototype in their laboratories and sending us the results.
There was more to the story: As part of The Earth Prize & Villars Institute partnership, we were invited to the Villars Symposium 2023, happening in the Alps of Switzerland. Hearing about changemakers from WTO to the World Economic Forum, and meeting with Nobel Prize Winner scientists and young climate activists like us made me witness that there are people out there caring about climate catastrophe as much as I do, fighting battles against the frameworks of the destructive economic systems and policies. We also found the chance to present our initiative Delavo in the symposium. It was one of the most exciting moments of my life, I still remember my heartbeats while talking about the business plan of our initiative!
We acknowledge that we have a long way to go. There is still so much to learn, improve, and achieve— not just as a team but as a part of a global movement. Yet, we have already witnessed the incredible power of youth-led innovations. Creating once-seemed impossible solutions— reducing wastewater by 90% and transforming the approach toward wastewater— allowed us to contribute to solving global challenges. We believe in the potential of our generation to drive change. We believe in us. We believe in youth.
For more information about our system, you can visit our website at https://www.delavoco.com/
For more information about the Earth Prize Competition, check out their website: https://www.theearthprize.org/
