By Enos Phosa
JOHANNESBURG, June 18 (Reuters) – With inspiration from a
friend too lazy to take a shower and a few months of research on
the Internet, South African university student Ludwick Marishane
has won global recognition for an invention that takes the water
out of bathing.
Marishane, a 22-year-old student at the University of Cape
Town student invented a product called DryBath, a clear gel
applied to skin that does the work of water and soap.
The invention, which won Marishane the 2011 Global Student
Entrepreneur of the Year Award, has wide applications in Africa
and other parts of the developing world where basic hygiene is
lacking and hundreds of millions of people do not have regular
access to water.
The product differs from the anti-bacterial hand washes by
eliminating the heavy alcohol smell. It creates an odourless,
biodegradable cleansing film with moisturisers.
He came up with the idea as a teenager in his poor rural
home in the winter when a friend of his said bathing was too
much of a bother, made all the worse by a lack of hot water.
“He was lazy and he happened to say, ‘why doesn’t somebody
invent something that you can just put on your skin and you
don’t have to bathe’,” said Marishane.
It was his “eureka” moment.
He then used his web-enabled mobile phone to search through
Google and Wikipedia in pursuit of a formula. Six months later,
he came up with DryBath and a obtained a patent.
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