eco-friendly
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Background: Back in the days when fireplaces were a common method of heating a home, houses typically consisted of a number of smaller rooms with doors between them. However, modern homes tend to have open floor plans with large rooms that cannot be sealed off by doors. The Issue: In the open-floor-plan home-design world, heating…
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The issue: When a person takes a shower, it is often the cast that some fraction of the water leaving the shower head lands directly on the shower floor without hitting the shower-taker (Figure 1). This “off-target” water is totally wasted. Proposal: Thanks to advances in computer vision and inexpensive electronics, it is now possible…
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Background: As civilization reaches an apex of decadence not seen since the days of Caligula, new and exotic labor-saving schemes have arisen. Specifically, you may soon be able to order food directly to your refrigerator, thus saving you from having to be present for delivery. Deluxe! The issue: While the process of delivering food directly…
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The issue: Once in a while, people accidentally forget to turn off a water faucet (e.g. a bathroom or kitchen faucet) and leave it running all day. This wastes water, and is unacceptable. Proposal: There are existing solutions to automatically turn off faucets, but generally they are either incredibly annoying (the motion-activated faucets that work…
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Background: Some cars have a “remote start” feature to start a car before you actually get inside. This feature is typically used in regions with extremely cold weather. The issue: Some people like to entirely turn off their laptops when traveling or over a weekend. But then they have to wait a couple of minutes…
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The issue: Dental floss has a serious problem with unnecessary waste: each length of dental floss has a “dead zone” at the ends that is used to wrap around fingers. This unused region is thrown away without ever having been actually used as dental floss (Figure 1). Proposal: Instead of wrapping the dental floss around…
WorstPlans: updated every Monday since July 2014! 