Toilet seat wins design accolade

The occasion was the Design Innovation in Plastics 2005 Student Plastics Design Award and the reason the toilet seat won was because unlike most of the other 344 entries, it had been fully designed, prototyped, tested and thought about as the possible basis of new business. We all use toilet seats in the UK and the Stingray Toilet Seat, designed by Derek Muir of the University of Huddersfield, has been designed to reduce the noise of toilet flushes by some 40 per cent by blocking the gaps round the top of the bowl. It also has a "Non flat" shape and is more comfortable to sit on. The constraints of the competition were that students had to design a product related directly or indirectly to sound, made out of Bayer's 'Baydur' and/or 'Bayflex' polyurethane materials. PDD was another of the other companies supporting the competition. Paul Pankhurst's remark came at the end of an address in which he observed that in addition to China having overwhelming manufacturing advantages in terms of cost and scale, that country has lately also been making inroads into the UK design industries. Annual overall turnover in this sector has dropped over five years from £6 billion to £3.9 billion in 2003/4. However, the UK is still relatively good at innovating and we should take advantage of this fact in the knowledge that as well as being a massive exporter, China is also the world's third largest importer and therefore a huge market opportunity. Other companies and institutions providing support to the competition were: The Worshipful Company of Horners, the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining, Du Pont, PTL, Albis, newdesign, Polymer Engineering Plus, Plastics Design and Modelling 2005, Mould Technology and bigHead Bonding Fasteners. More information from www.iom3.org/students/iomhorners2005.htm. TS