At least that’s the impression one gets after reading Elizabeth Harrington‘s latest Washington Free Beacon report on questionable federal government spending.
The Environmental Protection Agency is investing $75,000 more into a wireless device that can monitor how long hotel guests spend in the shower.
The project, first reported by the Washington Free Beacon last year, is attempting to “assist hotel guests in modifying their behavior” by spending less time in the shower to reduce their water consumption.
A team of researchers at the University of Tulsa first received a $15,000 grant through the EPA’s P3 program, or “People, Prosperity and the Planet,” a competition for college students to create green technology. Teams that are selected by the EPA then display their results at the “National Sustainable Design Expo” to compete for additional grants worth up to $75,000.
Past projects include a color-coded light system to track energy and water use of office workers and walls made out of trash for the poor.
The hotel shower monitoring project received $74,999 in December, bringing its total to roughly $90,000.
The purpose of the project is to create a wireless device that can be installed onto hotel showers to transmit how much water a guest uses to a central data system located in the hotel.
“This technology will provide hotel guests with the ability to monitor their daily water online or using a smartphone app and will assist hotel guest in modifying their behavior to help conserve water,” the grant for the project said.
The initial goal of the study was to nudge hotel guests into reducing their showers to seven minutes or less. A University of Tulsa researcher did not respond to a request for comment on an update of their work.
