Could washing machines soon be cleaning our clothes without using any water?
The entrepreneur, Sam White, hosts Dough - the BBC Radio 4 series which looks at the business behind profitable everyday products and where the smart money might take them next.
In each episode, Sam, and the futurist, Tom Cheesewright, are joined by product manufacturers and industry experts whose inside knowledge gives a new appreciation for the everyday things that we often take for granted.
Together they look back on a product’s earliest (sometimes ridiculous!) iterations, discuss how a product has evolved and the trends which have driven its profitability.
In this episode on washing machines, they hear from expert guests including:
- Teresa Arbuckle - Regional Managing Director for the UK and Ireland at the washing machine manufacturer, Beko Europe - John Elliott MBE - the founder and chairman of Ebac which make washing machines in County Durham - Paul Hide - chief executive of the Association of Manufacturers of Domestic Appliances
They trade opinions on the washing machine's 'game-changing' innovations and its most pointless, or least effective, ones too, before Tom draws on his expertise as a futurist to imagine what doing the laundry might be like in the decades to come.
Dough is produced by Jon Douglas and is a BBC Audio North production for BBC Radio 4 and BBC Sounds.
Sliced Bread returns for a new batch of investigations in the spring when Greg Foot will investigate more of the latest so-called wonder products to find out whether they really are the best thing since sliced bread.
In the meantime, Dough is available in the Sliced Bread feed on BBC Sounds