Crowdsourcing Challenge to Find Innovative Ways to Air Dry Clothes

Published Jul-05-11

Breakthrough:
Levi’s crowdsourcing contest to find an innovation that would encourage people to ditch their clothes dryer for an environmentally friendly alternative.

Company:
Levi Strauss & Co, United States

The Story:

Crowdsourcing Challenge to Find Innovative Ways to Air Dry Clothes On the face of it a solar powered dome, a windmill and a dryer hidden behind a work of art have very little in common. What links them is that they were all creative submissions to a crowdsourcing and open innovation competition created by jeans manufacturer Levi Strauss & Co.

Crowdsourcing Contest

In 2010 the company launched the Care to Air Design Challenge to find the most innovative and sustainable air-drying solution for clothing. Drying clothes out in the open air is definitely the cheapest and most eco-friendly method but the problem that Levi's wanted to address was that there are many people who live in small places without a garden or terrace, or in a rainy country or who are busy or forgetful and therefore line-drying is impractical for them. And in any case most households in the US and other countries opt for a dryer even though air drying is the most effective way of reducing the carbon footprint of clothes drying.

According to life cycle assessment research of a pair of jeans carried out by the company, almost 60% of the climate impact comes during the laundry phase when the jeans are with the consumers.


According to life cycle assessment research of a pair of jeans carried out by the company, almost 60% of the climate impact comes during the laundry phase when the jeans are with the consumers.

So participants were challenged to come up with an idea that would get people to ditch the dryer and reduce the environmental impact of drying jeans and other clothes by machine.

Levi worked with Myoo Create, a community that uses crowdsourcing to help find innovative solutions to environmental and social challenges. At stake for participants was USD $10,000 to be distributed amongst the finalists.

The panel of judges evaluated entries according to the following criteria:

Aesthetics: Line-drying is considered ugly in some areas/urbanizations and is therefore banned, so an aesthetically pleasing concept was required.

Scalability: The innovation had to be adapted for widespread use.

Environmental sustainability: Designs needed to be self-sustainable at every part of the process - manufacture, materials use and end of life.

Ingenuity: The line and clothes peg would be hard to beat so participants were encouraged to really tap into their creative power.


Winners

After two months nearly 140 designs were received from all over the world and six finalists were selected, and then narrowed down to three by the Myoo community. The overall winner used a piece of art to masquerade as a drying rack; it easily unfolds to reveal the rack. When not in use it folds up into a compact space and is designed to be produced from salvaged wood and hemp. The designer, Caleb Hill of Canada picked up a check for $4,500.

The $1500 second prize went to Jeff Munie and Marlow Baca of the US for their Evaporation Station, a modular and expandable dryer made from stainless steel that can be easily set up and taken down every time it is required. It was designed with nesting pieces to minimize the amount of waste during production.

Crowdsourcing and the Environment

Time and again crowdsourcing has helped companies to get their products to market in shorter time frames than the traditional R&D route, but it’s also found a natural home in helping companies to tackle environmental problems because many participants are passionate about the issues and want to see rapid changes implemented as well.

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