Over in Leeds, students aren’t washing their clothes with water, they’re washing their clothes with chips. Students eh? Is there nothing they won’t stoop to? What next? Cleaning out the toilet with road cones? Using chemistry text books as toilet paper?

Well, she wouldn’t put the last by them, but a new invention from Leeds Uni spinoff Xeros really does use chips instead of water to clean clothes.

According to the Uni, the Xeros process uses plastic chips (alongside one cup of water) which, when tumbled with the clothes, just whips the stains right out.

Tests on the system show it can tackle “everyday stains” like lipstick and coffee as well as a normal washing machine. (Who decides what an everyday stain is? I’d say I get coffee stains on my clothes only six times a week, not everyday.)

Xeros says it working with washing and dry cleaning companies to get the technology out and on the market. If all goes well, we could be ditching water from washing machines by 2009.

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