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"It's not a punishment device," says designer Todd Metlen of Ventura, California. We don't turn off the water, we don't make any loud noises or become obnoxious.

"What we're doing is trying to be a gentle reminder and a partner for people in conservation. People react very badly when they're being told what to do. It they feel given a choice, then they actually do the right thing."

Metlen points out that hotels have seen a substantial response to "towel recovery" appeals, the ones that ask guests to voluntarily re-use towels rather than having them all washed every day, saving water, detergent, labor and costs.

Metlen, in approaching hotels, creates a placard to explain to guests what the ShowerMinder is about in their rooms' bathrooms.

"If people just say, 'Try to take a shorter shower,'" Metlen says, "well, how many of us know how long we're in the shower? The ShowerMinder actually reminds them when it's  time to get out.

"We have these models installed at a health club with 16 showers. The owners of the club called us, ecstatic, because they were immediately seeing not only people positively reacting, but they witnessed people taking shorter showers. Some of the kids were having games, trying to beat the lights -- 'I got out while it was still green.'

"We've been talking to universities for dorm rooms, to government installations, everywhere from corporate settings to individual homes and back to the hotels.

"Water conservation is a very quiet pursuit. Consider a low-flush toilet" designed to use less water than older models. "You're not reminded about water conservation by that, it either works or it doesn't. So this design, we think, is important because it engages you in the conservation effort."

Metlen says the ShowerMinder unit will last easily five years in a hotel environment before it needs replacing. The unit's photovoltaic cells recharge its lights with energy from ambient room lighting.

Mettle’s background is in industrial design. "I used to work for BMW in their design group, I used to work for Nokia in their design group," he says.  "I've had my own product design group for about five years now.

"One of the things that came to me a few years ago was that I had a personal  responsibility for the things being put into landfills. Products that were plastic and lead and cadmium and mercury. All the things that were in the products I was planning, consumer electronics and other things.

"So I decided I was only going to do products that were meaningful and green and worth doing. The ShowerMinder is one of them. I have other products I'm working on in  agriculture, energy conservation and water conservation. I have manufacturing facilities here (California) and in Malaysia."

Metlen says several major hotel chains are in the process of evaluating the ShowerMinder. To help potential hospitality industry companies test it, Metlen has developed a version of the unit in which the lights are not seen working. After a 30- day test of shower usage times with that version, then a working model goes in so a hotel can see the difference in the time guests use the shower when they have the information the ShowerMinder gives them.

"And one outfit doing this kind of testing," he says, "is the U.S. Navy." The results of the Navy's tests, he says, should be ready around the end of the year.

"We've made the product completely passive. No buttons to push, no setting, nothing."

The current all-metal edition of the product, Metlen says, is a unit that sells for some US$120 on a single buy. The product is far less when bought in large numbers, as for hotels. And a version is in the works, he says, made of plastic, primarily for home installations -- it's about two months away -- and will sell for around US$39.

Metlen would like to see the greatest weight of distribution eventually done by municipalities or water utilities that provide it to their water-account clients.

And ironically, he says, when homeowners are surveyed, they want a more tough-love version, one that actually turns off the water after a certain amount of time. "So we're in development with a version that will crimp the water gradually as time runs out.

"We find that shutting off the water is interesting," Metlen says with a laugh, "not only to the U.S. Navy -- which sets it to three minutes -- but also to homeowners who have teenagers."

Designed by:
Todd Metlen, Ventura, California, United States.

www.showerminder.com

Written by Porter Anderson