Unilever is reaching out to consumers to crowdsource the design of an environmentally friendly shower that uses less water and has a smaller carbon footprint than current models.
Unilever will award €10,000 ($13,000) and a trip to London to develop the winning idea. Submissions for the "shower of the future" competition need to be cost efficient and affordable to the end user, have an innovative design that fits within a typical modern bathroom and should use no more than 10 liters (2.6 gallons) of water in a single use.
The competition will be managed by Unilever partner eYeka, a crowdsourcing portal that acts as a liaison between consumers and brands. Unilever announced in June it would partner with eYeka to tap into the crowdsourcing site's open creativity platform across Asia-Pacific, Middle East, Russia and South Africa.
In July, Unilever was chosen as one of the 2013 winners of 2degrees Sustainability Champions Awards, an annual program that recognizes success in the execution of sustainability initiatives.
Winners are selected from categories including built environment, supply chain management, solution of the year, energy and carbon management, waste and resource management and water management. The judging process is entirely based on online votes from peers, 2degrees says.
Unilever won the supply chain category for its efforts to redesign and improve its distribution network for homecare, personal care and food products in the UK and Ireland.
Unilever expanded its existing food distribution center to include homecare products to enable options for combined deliveries. Unilever says it now intends to broaden its larger scaled distribution networks to expand the carbon emissions reductions and delivery improvements realized in this project.
