Dopper Water Tap

Change Behavior

An IoT-powered water tap designed to change behaviour by: talking, standing out and showing impact.

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General Description

The Dopper Water Tap is the latest innovation from social enterprise Dopper in their mission to empower people to choose reusable bottles over single-use plastics. Millions of single-use bottles are sold every day around the world. If this behaviour continues, it’s estimated that, by 2040, 27 million metric tons of plastic waste will enter our water systems annually. The Dopper Water Tap is designed to combat this by inspiring behaviour change.

As well as an IoT-enabled tap that displays positive messages and feedback that encourages users to return, the tap also tracks insights on the device usage and displays them on the droplet-shaped interface. These insights are in turn translated into relatable impacts, such as the amount of plastic bottles that have been avoided, or the carbon emissions reduced.

Everything is geared towards triggering emotional responses that stimulate behaviour change and future use, all for the purpose of reducing single-use plastic use.

Sustainability Impact

In 2021, Dopper approached Tabula Rasa, an agency specialising in behaviour change, to discover what makes people buy bottled water, rather than refill from the tap. They found that people find refilling at public taps a hassle, and unhygienic. We set out to solve this with the Dopper Water Tap by making refilling a water bottle easy, fun, obvious, and hygienic. To achieve this, we created:

• An IoT-enabled tap that tracks impact and provides insights to inspire future use.
• A droplet-shaped interface, curved faucet, and iconic Dopper bottle-shaped vessel making use obvious.
• Laser-activated to maximise hygiene and increase user control.
• Innovative drip tray that minimises spills.
• Maintenance-free design.

The tap also measures the number of litres tapped and translates this into the impact made, such as the number of plastic bottles prevented, or carbon emissions reduced. This is reported in an online dashboard for the owner-organisation, giving easy and comprehensive insights into their impact.