Waste-free start to shower pours prize money on student innovators

Letting the shower run for one minute to warm up before you step in wastes almost 10 litres of water, say engineering students Eric Parker and Stephen Passador. They estimate their solution — to heat the water in the pipes — has the potential to save as much as a trillion litres of water a year, at a cost of less than $10 per shower to install.

Their entry claimed top honours in the third annual EPIC Blue Sky Competition, March 23 at the Entrepreneurship Practice and Innovation Centre. The competition saw students from 18 different academic disciplines pitch their ideas through two-minute videos.

That cross-disciplinary approach was no accident. Organizers required each team of two to four members to span at least two programs of study.

The three top teams earned Sushil Jain UWin Triple I Awards cash prizes as well as a free trip to Toronto to attend the Ontario Centres of Excellence (OCE) Discovery Conference in May. Parker, Passador and partner Sean Santarossa will share $1,000 for finishing first overall. Runners-up Aron Coccimiglio and Sonia Coccimiglio won $750, and the third-place team of David Collins and Noah Leschyna split $500.

Watch the winning video presentation:

See photos from the event on the EPICentre Facebook page.