With more than 1.2 billion people lacking access to clean drinking water, a tremendous amount of waste and energy must be saved to clean without conscience. And every drop helps. Showerloop, a recycling and filtering eco-shower system from an engineer from Helsinki, Finland lets you water run without the worry of waste. Instead of being poured down the drain, water goes back through a system of sterilisation, looping back over and over again.

Jason Selvarajan’s circular shower system collects and indefinitely pumps recycled water through a series of pipes and filters made of micro-fibre, sand and activated carbon, and then sterilizes by UV lamp. The average shower use only 10 litres of water instead of 100 and reduces the energy used to heat water by 70-90%.

The first “IKEA-like” home kits will be released in February/ March 2016, which – for 1500 euros – will let people build their own ecological shower. As Selvarajan wants to educate the public on global issues around water responsibility, people can share tips through his site. The hope is to loop a complete water cycle for an entire household to reduce water and energy demand, and ease the transition to more sustainable, self-sufficient houses to deal with climate change.

But this is not simply about being able to take endless showers without feeling guilty. In the future it could also be available in refugee camps and emergency scenarios: “We plan to reduce the cost of the system so that it’s applicable anywhere in the world to bring sanitation to everyone that needs it,” says Selvarajan. “Also we’re expanding the concept to other domestic appliances that use water like sinks, toilets, washing machines and dishwashers – and working on coupling them with low-cost renewable energy systems such as solar thermal for heating water.” The engineer has ideas on repeat.

Showerloop was mapped by Tomás Diez in his AtlasChart Top 6. The Director of Fab Lab Barcelona at IAAC transports us from 3D printing prosthetics in refugee camps to the greenest school on earth.