Team Delavo is composed of four girls: Yagmur, Avjin, Damla, all tenth graders, and Irmak, a ninth grader, from Diyarbakir in southeastern Turkey. They attend the same school, Bahçeşehir Koleji Fen ve Teknoloji Liseleri, where they take part in an after school club on Ecology and Sustainable Development Goals. It is their shared interest in the environment that brought them together to work on their project and participate in The Earth Prize.

Team Delavo has a special bond, and two of the girls, Yagmur and Irmak, are sisters. Even though they have all been friends prior to The Earth Prize, they agree that this competition brought them even closer together and allowed them to meet many new friends along the way. Outside of school, the girls have many talents; Irmak and Yagmur play basketball for their local team, while Damla is an avid bridge player.

Inspired by the problem of water scarcity from droughts in the Tigris River basin where they live, the team was determined to prevent water pollution, especially from microplastics. It was only when they started to explore plastic pollution that they discovered how laundry machines shed harmful microfibers in their large quantities of wastewater.

Delavo’s winning idea is the “ECaundry” device, which addresses the fact that 20 gallons (50 liters) of toxic waste water from every load of laundry in the world’s washing machines contaminate the soil and groundwater. Once the ECaundry is hooked up to the machine its integrated hollow ultrafiltration tubes and carbon filter treat and reuse laundry waste water, thus conserving more than 90% of it. The name of the project emphasizes their main purpose: in latin, ‘‘Delavo’’ means freshwater, and in Kurdish, it means to clean up and wash.

Seeing how communities like theirs are so impacted by water pollution was their biggest motivation for bringing this project to life. Team Delavo aspired to take action and make an impactful change to protect future generations. The project currently focuses on their region in Turkey, but Team Delavo hopes to expand use of their device to other markets, especially ones that are just as affected by water pollution.

Sustainable projects are not widespread in developing countries, so the girls are grateful that The Earth Prize provided them with the platform and opportunity to develop a project that can change lives. Even though the submission process was challenging given the restricting geographical and financial boundaries, the four girls were thrilled to bring this project to life. The Earth Prize slogan of solving the unthinkable is exactly what team Delavo did; they took a chance to contribute to helping save the environment.