SafeTap

2.2 billion people lack basic handwashing facilities.

The self-initiated project for a water-saving, hygienic and inexpensive tap was developed in response to the outbreak of COVID-19 and represents social design’s sphere of impact – improving hygiene conditions effectively curbs the spread of disease.

In our projects in the Global South, we have repeatedly noticed how important safe, hygienic taps would be – but they are not found there. We therefore decided to develop a model that doesn’t need to be turned on and off with your fingers, that only dispenses a set amount of water and that is inexpensive to produce. REDpreneur, the Red Cross’s global accelerator program, helped us to analyze the market for SafeTap, build up networks and organize field tests.

2 in 5 schools worldwide do not have basic hygiene services with water and soap, affecting 818 million students.

Design requirements changed in the light of feedback from field tests, along with input from the first institutions that took an interest, a presentation at World Water Week in Stockholm and potential production partners. The ideas of activating the tap with a push button and stopping the water automatically were still on the agenda as unique selling points. However, the SafeTap also had to be adapted to specific application contexts. That meant we had to fundamentally revise the entire structure once again, as well as developing a pithy design idiom.

In 2026, SafeTap received the Green GOOD DESIGN™ Award and the Austrian National Design Prize, an award presented every two years by the Federal Ministry for Economy, Energy and Tourism to honour three-dimensional design from Austria within the framework of a biennial competition. For the first time since the prize was introduced in 1962, a social design project received this recognition.