Device to make washing machines lighter and greener could help truckers

© Mariagroth

In one of those “why hasn’t this been done already?” moments, a team from Nottingham Trent University has come up with a device that could reduce fuel costs and carbon emissions for truckers. By their very design, washing machines require ballast – otherwise they tear up floors and walls during aggressive spin cycles. Until now, the typical means of providing ballast was a 25kg slab of concrete. The team from Nottingham found replacing this with a sealable plastic container, the weight of each machine would be cut by a third. This, in turn, would remove around 44,625 tonnes of carbon emissions in the UK alone. But what about the ballast? Well, as the BBC reports, the empty container would be filled with water when installed in its new home.