Beading the dirt out of your clothes

That's not a typo - beading, not beating.

New ideas for appliances to conserve their use of water (and detergent) just keep coming. There is a new clothes washing system that could save 90% of the amount of water used. This new system uses special nylon beads to tumble wash clothes with significantly less detergent and eliminates the need for tumble drying. Xeros claims that if everyone in the US switched, "it would be like taking 5 million cars off the road and would save 1.2 billion tons of water per year – the equivalent of 17 million swimming pools".

The beads can absorb dirt over hundreds of washes, and once they’ve been used they can be easily recycled.