Bid to save city water with ‘Flush Buddies’
A PRODUCT which could save Cape Town 40 to 60 million litres of water a day has been developed by three friends in Kuils River to help the city get through the drought.
The city is on level 4B water restrictions. About a year ago, three buddies, Dylon Burgess, Trevor Maasdorp and Wesley Miller, decided to develop the “Flush Buddy”.
“We have one million toilets across our city,” Maasdorp explained. “With this product we can easily save the city between 40 and 60 million litres of water daily and for decades to come.
“With the worst drought in over a century, the most stringent water restrictions are being imposed on Cape Town’s nearly four million residents. With dams at critical levels, this water crisis should not be treated as shortterm but rather as long-term.
“After realising at first hand the impact of the drought by visiting some of our dams, including the Theewaterskloof Dam, a key source of water for our city, we decided to approach the City of Cape Town to present our solution. The city has been very responsive and continues to keep us up to date with its efforts during this time,” Maasdorp said.
“We also launched a crowdfunding initiative and call on the public and corporates to please pledge their support,” said Miller.
Maasdorp said the Flush Buddy is made out of durable material. “Unlike the bottle and brick solution, this product saves a minimum of two litres of water per flush, does not build up any algae and does not disintegrate or float around in your toilet cistern.
“We took months to develop it, as we sourced products for testing purposes and had three key factors to consider. It was how easy the product would be for consumers to use, and it also had to be effective and affordable. Once we found the water displacement unit, we contacted our manufacturing agents to adapt the product for the South African market,” Maasdorp said.
Burgess said a big retailer who sells wholesale products would soon start selling the product in their stores. “But to meet minimum order demands with our manufacturing agent, we can only roll out this initiative through a crowdfunding platform to the public.”