Do you know how long it should take to wash your hands? I became enlightened as to this incontrovertible bit of hygienic info. about a year or so back when word hit of the impending H1N1 bug. As all school children know, the first defense against that nasty malady is regular, thorough hand-washing; and, as all school children also know, the answer to the opening question is 20 seconds–just the time it takes to sing one refrain of “Old McDonald Had a Farm”–and also the time required to do a thorough bacterial cleansing (don’t forget the nails!).

Turn Faucet. Designed by Eun Ji Byeon.

If you’d like to keep yourself as bacteria-free as feasible, but don’t feel like humming a kiddies ditty in the public restroom, you should definitely check out Designer Eun Ji Byeon’s Turn Faucet. The millennial answer to unreliable push buttons and flighty motion sensors, Eun’s rotary-style spigot couldn’t be more timely.

The idea behind the piece is what I’ll refer to as “eco-precision.” Sort of like how Vegas and the nation’s banks make profits off the individually miniscule margins, so too can we collectively staunch resource depletion by wasting nary a drop of H20. Turn invites us, then, to customize water usage with pinpoint accuracy. Just dial your selected flow time (for those Generation Y’ers who think the word only refers to that nauseatingly bright yellow soap, it means “put your finger in the hole and turn”). With settings of 5, 10, and 15 seconds, the feature gives you the peace of mind that comes with conservation–you can also just set it to flow with abandon if you so desire. And before you scoff at the absence of the magical 20 second setting, consider: you could set it to five, wet your hands, dispense the soap, then set it to fifteen and scrub, scrub, scrub the microscopic buggies away. How’s that for an old school solution to a new age challenge?!

Via Inhabitat