The Laundry Transformation Challenge

This challenge aims to identify and pilot innovative, affordable, and inclusive laundry solutions that could address one or more of the laundry issues - reduce women's unpaid workload, improve health, and significantly decrease water use and pollution across diverse contexts in Asia and the Pacific.

Laundry is still predominantly manual in many communities, with women carrying a large share of the time and labor involved. At the same time, inefficient systems drive water use and environmental pressures. With rapid urbanization and changing consumption, there is an urgent need for scalable solutions that improve livelihoods and reduce environmental impacts. Across Asia and the Pacific, more than 50% of the population still washes clothes by hand, with women spending up around 20% of their productive time on laundry, exposing them to physical strain, while untreated greywater including detergents and microfibers, contributes to pollution of rivers and lakes, underscoring the urgent need for scalable, inclusive solutions that reduce time, poverty, improve livelihoods, and protect increasingly stressed water resources.

Therefore, this challenge asks: 

How might we use innovative technology for more inclusive laundry that reduces water use and pollution across Asia and the Pacific? How can we use innovative technology to solve one or more of the issues in laundry - reducing women's unpaid workload, physical strain, water use and pollution in Asia and Pacific.

Across Asia and the Pacific, a billion daily wash cycles are waiting to be reimagined. Join the Laundry Innovation Challenge and be part of the solution.