In the struggle to convince consumers to adopt more sustainable habits, finger-wagging produces little more than resentment. But Hydrao, a new product from French company Smart & Blue, adopts a softer approach.
The Hydrao is a smart shower head that helps consumers conserve water. It contains colored LED lights that are powered by the motion of water through the device, which alert users as they approach water usage targets.
“It helps you change your behavior without constraints,” says CEO and founder Gabriel Della Monica. “When you say ‘stop, you have to change,’ it’s not very effective. With Hydrao, you see the color changing slowly and you say ‘oh it’s purple, I don’t want it to turn red so I need to turn it off.’ That’s better.”
Della Monica was inspired by the Greek island of Hydra, a place with abundant tourists and little water, where water needs are satisfied by a daily boat shipment. In contrast to this arrangement, the Hydrao device is both sustainable and cost effective, Della Monica says, considering the cost of heating water over the course of a year or more.
In The Future 100, our recent roundup of trends for 2016, we cover Worldbeing, a wearable band that tracks a wearer’s carbon footprint. In the future, devices like the Hydrao could be part of a larger connected system that encourages sustainable behavior, says Della Monica. With the Hydrao, for example, “a light in the kitchen could flash to tell parents when children are using too much water,” he says.
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