(don&#8217;t) Waste Water! | Water Tech to Solve the World

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More #water insights?

Connect with me on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/antoinewalter1/

🎙️ Subscribe and Listen to the Don't Waste Water Podcast HERE 🎙️

Podcast Channel: @dwwpodcast

Main Channel: @AntoineWalterDWW

Smartlink: https://smartlink.ausha.co/dont-waste-water

🙋 QUESTION: What would you like me to cover next?

⏰ TIME CODES ⏰

00:00 In This Week's Episode

01:27 Challenges and Opportunities in Water Investment

04:52 The Trillion Dollar Water Infrastructure Opportunity

05:56 Private Equity and Water Investment

07:10 The Water Investment Pyramid

09:06 Specialist Investors' Insights

10:44 The Importance of Repeat Investments

13:20 Transition Finance and Water

24:43 The Role of Impact Funds

32:13 Investment Opportunities and Challenges

35:22 Water Sector Investment Trends

38:56 The Future of Water Technology

43:18 Building a Water Investment Ecosystem

54:57 Concluding Thoughts on Water Investment

#WaterInvestment #VentureCapital #CleanTech

It goes without saying but... none of this is investment advice!

About this Podcast:

Welcome to the (don't) Waste Water podcast, the leading podcast for water industry professionals, investors, and entrepreneurs seeking deep insights into water tech innovation, investment trends, and strategic moves in the sector. Host Antoine Walter blends his technical expertise with sharp business acumen to deliver weekly episodes featuring candid conversations with C-suite executives, detailed analysis of major water industry developments, and practical insights for water tech startups and seasoned players alike.

Hosted by Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

10 Expert Answers to Your Burning PFAS Questions

22 januari 2025 | 29 min

S12E7 - How FLocean Brings Oil & Gas Tech to Subsea Desalination

15 januari 2025 | 51 min

7 Must-Know Water Tech Trends For Investors

8 januari 2025 | 24 min

5 Game-Changing Water Tech Insights of 2024 (... and 175'000 Thanks!)

25 december 2024 | 36 min

Why Most People Get Lithium's Water Impact Dead Wrong

18 december 2024 | 19 min

S12E6 - How Tomatoes Become Drinking Water (And Microsoft Wants In!)

4 december 2024 | 66 min

📌 Growing Water with Botanical Water Technologies - A Revolutionary Approach to Water Scarcity!

More #water insights? Connect with me on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/antoinewalter1/

#️⃣ All the Links Mentioned in this Video #️⃣

Botanical Water Technologies: https://www.wegrowwater.com/

Their partnership with Microsoft: https://www.wegrowwater.com/post/microsoft-growing-water-for-india

Terry Paule's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/terry-paule/

🎙️ Subscribe and Listen to the Don't Waste Water Podcast HERE 🎙️

Podcast Channel: @dwwpodcast

Main Channel: @AntoineWalter

DWW Smartlink: https://smartlink.ausha.co/dont-waste-water

👋 SOCIAL MEDIA 👋

🙋 QUESTION: What would you like me to cover next?

⏰ TIME CODES ⏰

00:00 Introduction

01:54 AI's Water Consumption

04:49 Growing Water

08:14 The Journey of Botanical Water Technologies

17:57 Building the Botanical Water Exchange

21:26 The Role of Blockchain in Water Management

37:37 Defining Water Impact Standards

39:13 Implementing Water ATMs in Nagpur

43:13 Future of Water Technology

46:07 Commercialization and Scaling Up

51:16 Fundraising and Investment Strategies

01:01:29 Rapid Fire Questions

#WaterInnovation #WaterTech #SustainableWater

📝 IN THIS WEEK'S EPISODE

🌱 The groundbreaking technology behind extracting drinking water from fruits and vegetables, and how it's revolutionizing water access

💧 How Botanical Water Technologies transforms industrial food processing waste into premium drinking water through their innovative Water Harvest Units

🤝 The strategic partnership with Microsoft and the game-changing project delivering 60 million liters of water to communities in Nagpur, India

🔗 The development of the Botanical Water Exchange platform powered by blockchain technology to connect water producers with communities in need

💫 The ambitious vision to scale from 14 to 200 water harvest units by 2025, bringing sustainable water solutions worldwide

About this Podcast: Welcome to the (don't) Waste Water podcast! In each episode, Antoine Walter from DWW Media shares water, wastewater & water entrepreneurship stories. This show will teach you the water industry like you've never seen it. If you're asking how the water sector will overcome the water crises ahead, this episode is for you.

Hosted by Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

S12E5 - How Capture6 Transforms Salt into a Climate Change Solution

27 november 2024 | 65 min

🌊 Direct Air Carbon Capture AND Water Production? The unlikely duo revolutionizing climate action!

More #water insights? Connect with me on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/antoinewalter1/

#️⃣ All the Links Mentioned in this Episode #️⃣

• Capture 6: https://capture6.com

• Frontier Climate: https://frontierclimate.com/

• Palmdale Water District (Project Monarch partner): https://www.palmdalewater.org/

• California Energy Commission (Grant provider): https://www.energy.ca.gov/

• Elemental Impact/Elemental Accelerator (Investor & incubator): https://elementalimpact.com/elemental-impact/

• My (quite old, sorry!) conversation with with Kim Baker from Elemental Excellerator (at the time): https://smartlink.ausha.co/dont-waste-water/s2e4-how-to-be-a-beacon-and-trigger-1-5-billion-new-funding-as-a-fearless-nonprofit

🎙️ Subscribe and Listen to the Don't Waste Water Podcast HERE 🎙️

Podcast Channel: @dwwpodcast

Main Channel: @AntoineWalterDWW

Smartlink: https://smartlink.ausha.co/dont-waste-water

👋 SOCIAL MEDIA 👋

🙋 QUESTION: What would you like me to cover next?

⏰ TIME CODES ⏰

00:00 Introduction

01:56 Elon Musk's XPRIZE and Carbon Capture

04:27 Introducing: Luke Shors

08:03 Combining Carbon Capture with Water Scarcity Solutions

17:19 Technical Aspects of Capture6's Process

23:32 Project Monarch: A Case Study

34:24 Global Projects and Future Plans

38:13 Business Model and Financing

42:20 Carbon Credits and CDR

46:16 Future Goals and Regulatory Impact

53:08 Rapid Fire Questions

#DirectAirCapture #WaterTech #CleanTech

📝 IN THIS WEEK'S EPISODE

🔬 How Capture 6 transforms salt into a revolutionary carbon capture solution while producing fresh water

🌐 The ambitious roadmap across three continents: Project Monarch (US), Project Wallaby (Australia), and Project Octopus (Korea)

💡 Why turning brine management from a cost center into a carbon removal opportunity could be key to scaling water treatment

💰 How tax credits, government support, and innovative business models are making carbon removal viable

🤝 The critical importance of finding the right project partners and investors in the challenging cleantech landscape

Hosted by Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

S12E4 - How Carbonet Built Fake Plants to Fight the New Karen

13 november 2024 | 55 min

Why Everyone's Betting BIG on Water in 2024

11 november 2024 | 13 min

How GF Redirects its Flow to Dominate Water Solutions

8 november 2024 | 38 min

Georg Fischer (or GF) just announced that it divested its Machining Solutions arm for about 650 million Swiss francs to United Grinding Group and evaluated strategic options to do the same with its Casting Solutions division. Said differently, GF fully embraced its new trajectory: becoming a Water and Flow solutions company, with, on top of this, the ambition to become the World leader at that (starting from number two).

Here's what I discussed with Mads:

Why are companies like GF pivoting entirely toward water solutions?
How does a traditional industrial company make a leap into sustainable infrastructure?
Can the water market really sustain 8% growth?
How do acquisitions fit into GF’s $5 billion revenue goal?
What makes water infrastructure a smart investment right now?
How can investing in water align with sustainable goals?
What’s the "ketchup effect" in mergers and acquisitions?

If you want to follow up with Mads, reach out to him on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/madsjoergensen/

Key Ideas

Strategic Shift in Water Sector: GF divested its machining solutions and plans to exit its casting solutions divisions to focus on water-related products. This pivot, welcomed by the market, positions GF as a pure-play water and flow solutions company in response to global water scarcity concerns, increasing the attractiveness of water infrastructure investments.
Acquisition of Uponor: GF’s recent 2.1 billion CHF acquisition of Uponor bolstered its presence in piping systems and set the foundation for a focus on water solutions. GF sees Uponor as essential to consolidating its market position and is pursuing acquisitions in similar companies to reach its revenue goal of 5 billion CHF by 2030.
Market Fragmentation and M&A Strategy: The water market's fragmentation offers GF a path to scale rapidly through strategic acquisitions of companies between $75 million to $125 million, quickly integrating them to build a resilient, scalable business. This acquisition approach aims to make GF the market leader by capitalizing on economies of scale but mostly scope.
Sustainable Investment Appeal: With investors increasingly focused on environmental impact, GF’s shift aligns with sustainability and long-term profitability. Mads Joergensen highlights how water infrastructure is crucial for economic stability and environmental health, positioning GF as a high-impact investment opportunity that appeals to both financial and environmental investors.
Global Expansion Plans: GF is aiming for geographic diversification with a balanced presence across the U.S., Europe, and Asia. This global reach, coupled with sector diversification across building, industrial, and infrastructure flow solutions, offers resilience and positions GF to capitalize on the growing global water market.
Challenges and Caution in Water Innovation: Water technology has long development cycles, sometimes taking decades to reach market maturity. GF’s approach focuses on proven technologies and scalable solutions, reducing exposure to riskier, early-stage innovations.

Hey, and for the sake of full disclosure: this is NOT a sponsored episode (at all), but GF happens to be my employer when I'm not running this podcast 🙂

Hosted by Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Water Book Club - The Dynamics of Water Innovation - Paul O'Callaghan (Review & Critique)

6 november 2024 | 18 min

Water Book Club - Liquid Asset - Barton Thompson (Review, Critique & Interview)

30 oktober 2024 | 26 min

S12E3 - How GWT Saves You Millions with Carbon-Negative Wastewater Treatment

23 oktober 2024 | 58 min

Will Veolia Eat Your Lunch?

19 oktober 2024 | 10 min

WEFTEC 2024: PFAS, Tech, Series B, AI, ML... What Did You Miss?

16 oktober 2024 | 61 min

S12E2 - The US has a $2 Trillion Water Problem - Deep Brief

9 oktober 2024 | 50 min

S12E1 - Growth Story - How MembrIon Will Reach $50 Million ARR By 2030

2 oktober 2024 | 58 min

In January 2023, MembrIon raised a $12.5M Series B. Roughly two years later, they're on the verge of raising their Series C, but in between, it's been a bumpy road!

From zooming in on their target market to turning their business model around through signing their first commercial deals and re-modeling key positions in the team, there's A TON to learn from the MembrIon crew.

They've opened me the door of their offices, factory (and investor), and openly shared everything that matters, so the best I could do was to articulate their story best!

How does a Series B transform a growth stage water tech? How does a water tech company align for growth? What sacrifices do you need to make to succeed in water technology adoption? How does a Series B company grow towards its Series C? How does a VC Investor interact with its water tech portfolio? This - and much more - is in this week's story: MembrIon's Growth Story

(As always, if this is of value to you, make sure to subscribe.)

More #water insights? Connect with me on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/antoinewalter1/

#️⃣ All the Links Mentioned in this Video #️⃣

MembrIon's Website: https://membrion.com/

PureTerra Ventures' Website: https://pureterra.com/

My first interview with Greg Newbloom: https://dww.show/membrion-ceo-that-raised-22m-reveals-his-one-trick-you-must-copy-today/

Value Driven / Crisis Driven: https://dww.show/how-long-will-it-take-to-grow-the-4-stages-of-water-innovation/

🎙️ PODCAST 🎙️

Smartlink: https://smartlink.ausha.co/dont-waste-water

🙋 QUESTION: What would you like me to cover next?

⏰ TIME CODES ⏰

00:00 MembrIon's Growth Story

03:42 Embracing the Journey 1

0:49 Gathering a Crew

17:10 Product Market Fit

21:34 Market Adoption

27:24 Business Model Pivot

34:13 The First Order

40:04 Ramping Up

48:42 Series C

51:01 2030

54:40 Epilogue

#WaterTech #GrowthStage #GrowthStory

About this Podcast: Welcome to the (don't) Waste Water podcast! In each episode, Antoine Walter from DWW Media shares water, wastewater & water entrepreneurship stories. This show will teach you the water industry like you've never seen it. If you're asking how the water sector will overcome the water crises ahead, this episode is for you.

Hosted by Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

S11E20 - How Veolia’s AI Prowess is Redefining Water Technology Leadership

25 september 2024 | 59 min

How did Veolia overcome the Leader's Curse to supercharge its internal and external tools with AI and LLMs when so many sat on the edge? Let's find out!

More #water insights? Connect with me on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/antoinewalter1/

#️⃣ All the Links Mentioned in this Video #️⃣

🔗 Come say hi to Andrew on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewlcollier/

🔗 Veolia's water tech zone website: https://www.veoliawatertechnologies.com/en

🔗 Introducing Hubgrade on this microphone... 4 years ago! https://dww.show/how-to-almost-double-treatment-capacity-in-about-no-time/

🔗 Already praising Veolia's agility (with Glenn Vicevic) last year: https://dww.show/how-to-foster-innovation-and-agility-when-youre-the-worlds-largest-water-company/

🎙️ Subscribe and Listen to the Don't Waste Water Podcast HERE 🎙️

Podcast Channel: @dwwpodcast

Main Channel: @AntoineWalterDWW

Smartlink: https://smartlink.ausha.co/dont-waste-water

👋 SOCIAL MEDIA 👋

🙋 QUESTION: What would you like me to cover next?

⏰ TIME CODES ⏰

00:00 Introduction

02:26 Entropy Theory applied to Veolia

05:31 Introducing Andrew Collier

06:15 Applying LLMs to IoT Data

09:05 Veolia's Water Tech Zone and Digital Team

11:12 Hubgrade Water Footprint and Sustainability

23:21 User-Centric Software Development at Veolia

26:33 Driving User Adoption and Measuring Impact

30:48 Leveraging AI for Operational Efficiency

32:17 Fine-Tuning AI Models

34:36 The Future of Automated Plants

37:05 Training the Next Generation with AI

42:28 Generative AI and Design Optimization

46:06 Personal Reflections and Future Outlook

48:02 Rapid Fire Questions

#WaterTech #BlueTech

About this Podcast: Welcome to the (don't) Waste Water podcast! In each episode, Antoine Walter from DWW Media shares water, wastewater & water entrepreneurship stories. This show will teach you the water industry like you've never seen it. If you're asking how the water sector will overcome the water crises ahead, this episode is for you.

Hosted by Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

S11E19 - How Kando's STREAMi Simplifies Complex Water Quality Data for Executives

18 september 2024 | 50 min

S11E18 - How Kemira Defied Market Odds to Lead in Bio-Based Tech

11 september 2024 | 38 min

S11E17 - How Grundfos is Reinventing Itself as a Global Leader in Water Tech Solutions

4 september 2024 | 51 min

Ever wondered how the largest Pump Company in the World turned into a Water Tech player that will enable 300 Million People to get access to Water? Listen to this Episode!

More #water insights? Connect with me on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/antoinewalter1/

#️⃣ All the Links Mentioned in this Video #️⃣

Say hi to Laura on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laura-gallindo/

Connect with Phil: https://www.linkedin.com/in/philtomlinson/

Check Grundfos' website: https://www.grundfos.com/

Grundfos acquires Metasphere: https://www.grundfos.com/media/latest-news/grundfos-acquires-metasphere-to-pioneer-solutions-to-the-world-s

My conversation with Patrick Decker (another pump company turned water tech mogul): https://smartlink.ausha.co/dont-waste-water/s7e14-what-s-patrick-decker-s-call-to-action-let-us-solve-water

🎙️ Subscribe and Listen to the Don't Waste Water Podcast HERE 🎙️

Podcast Channel: @dwwpodcast

Main Channel: @AntoineWalterDWW

Smartlink: https://smartlink.ausha.co/dont-waste-water

👋 SOCIAL MEDIA 👋

🙋 QUESTION: What would you like me to cover next?

⏰ TIME CODES ⏰

00:00 Grundfos' Ambitious Goals for 2030

02:26 Grundfos' Transformation Journey

04:19 Grundfos' Strategic Focus and Vertical Markets

08:19 Metasphere Acquisition and Integration

14:27 Challenges in Wastewater Management

17:41 Innovative Solutions for Sewer Overflows

29:33 Building Hope: Grundfos' Vision for the Future

29:46 Key Objectives and Strategies for Water Utilities

30:24 Sustainable Aquifer Management and Innovation

31:13 Energy Transition and Decarbonization Goals

32:07 Grundfos' Commitment to Scope 1, 2, and 3 Reductions

33:17 Digital Solutions and Natural Capital

37:13 Sewer Security and Utility Partnerships

43:12 Rapid Fire Questions

#WaterTech #BlueTech

About this Podcast: Welcome to the (don't) Waste Water podcast! In each episode, Antoine Walter from DWW Media shares water, wastewater & water entrepreneurship stories. This show will teach you the water industry like you've never seen it. If you're asking how the water sector will overcome the water crises ahead, this episode is for you.

Hosted by Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

S11E16 - How SUDOC Manufactures a 100x Smaller and 1000x More Powerful Catalyst

27 augusti 2024 | 60 min

When traditional chemistry or oxidation processes fall short, SUDOC gives them a hand by putting their efficiency on steroids. Better: it applies the Cuckoo Tactic and may well outgrow its host process, something you may want to emulate! Wanna learn how? Listen to this episode!

More #water insights? Connect with me on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/antoinewalter1/

#️⃣ All the Links Mentioned in this Video #️⃣

SUDOC's website: https://www.sudoc.com/

Momentum Capital's website: https://www.momentum-capital.com/

PureTerra Ventures' website: https://pureterra.com/

Christopher Gasson's appearance on the podcast: https://dww.show/these-2-global-water-business-blocks-will-help-to-mitigate-the-3rd-one/

🎙️ Subscribe and Listen to the Don't Waste Water Podcast HERE 🎙️

Podcast Channel: @dwwpodcast

Main Channel: @AntoineWalterDWW

Smartlink: https://smartlink.ausha.co/dont-waste-water

👋 SOCIAL MEDIA 👋

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DontWasteWat...

🙋 QUESTION: What would you like me to cover next?

⏰ TIME CODES ⏰

00:00 Introduction

01:28 The Chemical Challenge: Endocrine Disruptors

03:33 Sudoc's Innovative Catalysts

04:34 Investment and Market Strategy

07:49 Sudoc's Dual Business Model

13:06 The Science Behind New TAML Catalysts

19:24 Commercial Applications and Market Adoption

25:46 Future Goals and Scaling Up

30:52 Industrial Wastewater Treatment Innovations

31:23 Addressing PFAS and Emerging Contaminants

33:38 The Broader Water Treatment Conversation

36:45 The NABC Methodology and Water Sector Challenges

38:02 Sudoc's Commercial Focus and Future Plans

39:47 The Impact of Chemicals on Human Health

44:43 Sudoc's Recent Fundraising Success

47:56 Production and Scaling Strategies

49:48 The Vision for Sudoc's Future

54:06 Personal Reflections and Company Mission

57:13 Rapid Fire Questions

#Catalyst #EndocrineDisruptors

About this Episode: Welcome to the (don't) Waste Water podcast! In each episode, Antoine Walter from DWW Media shares water, wastewater & water entrepreneurship stories. This show will teach you the water industry like you've never seen it. If you're asking how the water sector will overcome the water crises ahead, this episode is for you.

Hosted by Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

REPLAY - How Gradiant Became the First and Only Water Tech Unicorn

14 augusti 2024 | 62 min

How do you go in just a decade from an MIT lab to a billion-dollar valuation in Water Tech? Everybody thought it was impossible until... Gradiant did it! Wanna find out how and what's next? Listen to this episode!

More #water insights? Connect with me on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/antoinewalter1/

#️⃣ All the Links Mentioned in this Video #️⃣

Will Gradiant succeed with H+E where SUEZ, Stulz, and Rena failed? https://youtu.be/GMk99gRjRSc?si=zAWY2rfg3GXFSWt2E

Gradiant's website: https://www.gradiant.com/

The Global Water Awards 2024: https://globalwaterawards.com/

Prakash Govindan's LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/prakash-govindan-87168310/

The 3 VCs that made money in Water Tech (the greatest success being... Gradiant): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqLn4j3w0P0

Full blog article: https://dww.show/how-gradiant-became-the-first-and-only-water-tech-unicorn/

Prakash Govindan on My Climate Journey: https://www.mcjcollective.com/my-climate-journey-podcast/gradiant

🎙️ Subscribe and Listen to the Don't Waste Water Podcast HERE 🎙️

Podcast Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@dwwpodcast

Main Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@AntoineWalterDWW

Smartlink: https://smartlink.ausha.co/dont-waste-water

👋 SOCIAL MEDIA 👋

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/antoinewalter1/

🙋 QUESTION: What would you like me to cover next?

⏰ TIME CODES ⏰

00:00 In This Week's Episode

02:29 Will Gradiant be named Water Company of the Year?

04:20 Gradiant's "Special Sauce" by Prakash Govindan

05:46 How big is Gradiant today?

07:06 Where does Gradiant's journey start?

14:33 How did Gradiant strive where Incumbents gave up?

16:38 Why did Gradiant focus on the industrial market?

18:35 What is Turing, Gradiant's new AI spin out?

20:25 When did Gradiant start expanding its water tech portfolio?

23:02 How does Gradiant open a new region?

26:10 The secret to Gradiant's "Proprietary Deals"

30:50 How does Gradiant engineer its "unfair advantage"

31:23 Gradiant's unbelievable employee participation scheme

33:41 What's next after their record-breaking Series D?

36:53 Will Gradiant ever enter the municipal market?

38:04 Are Gradiant's founders ready to pass the baton?

39:53 Gradiant's new verticals: PFAS & DLE

42:20 Gradiant's two aces up their PFAS Removal sleeve

45:33 Gradiant's M&A tricks

48:18 Succeeding with H+E Mission Impossible?

50:07 Gradiant's plans for Europe

50:46 Gradiant's next M&A moves

51:50 What makes Gradiant the 2024 Water Company of the Year?

54:38 Rapid Fire Questions

57:53 7 Insights from the First Ever Water Tech Unicorn

#WaterTech #WaterUnicorn #WaterEntrepreneurship

About this Podcast: Welcome to the (don't) Waste Water podcast! In each episode, Antoine Walter from DWW Media shares water, wastewater & water entrepreneurship stories. This show will teach you the water industry like you've never seen it. If you're asking how the water sector will overcome the water crises ahead, this video is for you.

Hosted by Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

S11E15 - How VAPAR’s AI Makes Underground Pipe Inspections Seamless

7 augusti 2024 | 59 min

Manual pipe inspections are labor-intensive and prone to human error, but VAPAR automates this process using AI, making it more efficient and cost-effective. By providing detailed and objective data on pipe conditions, VAPAR helps utilities manage and invest in their infrastructure proactively., Wanna learn more? Watch this video!

More #water insights? Connect with me on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/antoinewalter1/

#️⃣ All the Links Mentioned in this Video #️⃣

VAPAR's website: https://www.vapar.co/

Peter Thiel's Zero to One: https://morfene.com/021.pdf

Everyone Hates Marketers on Jobs to be Done: https://podcast.everyonehatesmarketers.com/episodes/best-of-how-to-use-jobs-to-be-done-to-read-your-customers-minds/transcript

David Lloyd Owen's appearance: https://smartlink.ausha.co/dont-waste-water/s3e13-3-paths-to-reach-sdg-6-by-2050-all-our-hopes-are-on-3

🎙️ Subscribe and Listen to the Don't Waste Water Podcast HERE 🎙️

Podcast Channel: @dwwpodcast

Main Channel: @AntoineWalterDWW

Smartlink: https://smartlink.ausha.co/dont-waste-water

👋 SOCIAL MEDIA 👋

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DontWasteWat...

🙋 QUESTION: What would you like me to cover next?

⏰ TIME CODES ⏰

00:00 Introduction

03:01 AI in Sewer Inspection: Enhancing Human Decision-Making

03:23 Amanda and Michele's Journey to Founding VAPAR

06:01 Challenges and Benefits of AI in Sewer Management

11:57 Early Success and Customer Stories

25:39 Case Study: Northumbrian Water

29:14 Human Intervention in AI Processes

30:39 Cost and Complexity of Infrastructure Inspection

31:46 Global Water Funding and Investment Challenges

35:51 Decision Support and Business Model

41:54 Challenges and Strategies for Market Expansion

52:53 Rapid Fire Questions

#AI #WaterManagement

About this Episode: Welcome to the (don't) Waste Water podcast! In each episode, Antoine Walter from DWW Media shares water, wastewater & water entrepreneurship stories. This show will teach you the water industry like you've never seen it. If you're asking how the water sector will overcome the water crises ahead, this video is for you.

Hosted by Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

The $200M Unconventional Exit of Cambrian: Great or Bittersweet?

31 juli 2024 | 16 min

In November 2023, Cambrian announced a $200 Million Growth Equity commitment from Pennybacker. That came along a bizarre move: Pennybacker was also acquiring Cambrian (for an undisclosed amount).

So, what's to think of this? What factors led to this unconventional move? Why would I feel there's a bittersweet taste to it? What does it actually mean for other water tech companies? Why is it great news for early-stage water investors? And... who's Cambrian, if you never heard of them?

Let's explore!

More #water insights? Connect with me on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/antoinewalter1/

#️⃣ All the Links Mentioned in this Episode #️⃣

Cambrian's Website: https://www.cambrianinnovation.com/

Pennybacker Capital's Website: https://www.pennybackercap.com/

My interviews with Matthew Silver (be kind; it was a while ago, and my sound quality dramatically improved in between 😅)

Recommended next video to watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4AmlA0DbKQ

🎙️ Subscribe and Listen to the Don't Waste Water Podcast HERE 🎙️

Podcast Channel: @dwwpodcast

Main Channel: @AntoineWalter

DWW Website: https://dww.show/podcast/

🙋 QUESTION: What would you like me to cover next?

⏰ TIME CODES ⏰

00:00 Cambrian: from MIT and NASA to Impact

01:32 Cambrian: the New American Water?

06:50 What led to Cambrian's "bizarre" exit?

12:41 A Bittersweet deal?

13:31 Why is it GREAT news, still?

14:24 What does it mean for the future?

#WaterTech #WaterTechnology #WaterInvestment

About this Podcast: Welcome to the (don't) Waste Water podcast! In each episode, Antoine Walter from DWW Media shares water, wastewater & water entrepreneurship stories. This show will teach you the water industry like you've never seen it. If you're asking how the water sector will overcome the water crises ahead, this episode is for you.

👋 SOCIAL MEDIA 👋

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/antoinewalter1/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DontWasteWaterPodcast

Hosted by Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

S11E14 - This Water Tech won CES 2020: Where are they now?

24 juli 2024 | 61 min

Hydraloop stole the show despite Samsung, Sony, or Mercedes aiming at big bangs. Yet, how easy is it to create a category in the #WaterSector? More #water insights? Connect with me on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/antoinewalter1/

#️⃣ All the Links Mentioned in this Video #️⃣

🔗 Hydraloop's website: https://www.hydraloop.com/

🔗 Netflix - Brave Blue World: https://www.netflix.com/title/81326710

🔗 Sydney Water: https://www.sydneywater.com.au/

🔗 Hydraloop's concept: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X37eivmtgV0

🔗 Become Hydraloop's next Growth Hacker: https://www.hydraloop.com/post/job-opening-growth-hacker-digital-marketeer

🔗 Connect with Sabine Stuiver on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sabine-stuiver-10325319/

🎙️ Subscribe and Listen to the Don't Waste Water Podcast HERE 🎙️

Podcast Channel: @dwwpodcast

Main Channel: @AntoineWalter

DWW Smartlink: https://smartlink.ausha.co/dont-waste-water

👋 SOCIAL MEDIA 👋

🙋 QUESTION: What would you like me to cover next?

⏰ TIME CODES ⏰

00:00 Hydraloop's Rise to Fame at CES 2020

03:32 Challenges in Water Infrastructure

08:03 Introducing: Hydraloop

13:23 The Journey and Vision Behind Hydraloop

20:16 The Impact of Winning at CES 2020

32:17 Reflecting on Missed Opportunities

33:46 Building the Foundation for Growth

35:20 Scaling Up and Expanding

35:59 Strategic Partnerships and Market Penetration

37:29 Innovative Manufacturing Solutions

41:05 Marketing and Consumer Engagement

47:11 Global Market Strategy

49:13 Future Vision and Profitability

54:51 Rapid Fire Questions

#WaterRecycling #WaterScarcity

About this Episode:

Welcome to the (don't) Waste Water podcast! In each episode, Antoine Walter from DWW Media shares water, wastewater & water entrepreneurship stories. This show will teach you the water industry like you've never seen it. If you're asking how the water sector will overcome the water crises ahead, this podcast is for you.

Hosted by Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

S11E13 - The World's Best Water Entrepreneur Actually Runs a Charity

17 juli 2024 | 56 min

Gary White and his co-founder Matt Damon have enabled water access for over 66 million people! How? Let's find out.

More #water insights? Connect with me on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/antoinewalter1/

#️⃣ All the Links Mentioned in this Episode #️⃣

🔗 Water.org's website

🔗 Water Equity's website

🔗 The World Bank's "Funding a Water Secure Future"

🔗 The UN SDG 6 Data Portal

🔗 The Do's and Don'ts of Rural Water Supply

🔗 Tom Ferguson's appearance on the podcast

🎙️ Subscribe and Listen to the Don't Waste Water Podcast HERE 🎙️

Podcast Channel: @dwwpodcast

Main Channel: @AntoineWalter

DWW Smartlink: https://smartlink.ausha.co/dont-waste-water

▶️ Key Ideas

WaterCredit’s Impact: WaterCredit has provided loans totaling $5.5 billion, impacting 66 million people, with a 98% repayment rate.
Philanthropy as a Catalyst: Traditional philanthropic approaches often involve one-time spending. In contrast, Water.org creates a sustainable cycle of investment and repayment.
Challenges in Water Access: Water.org’s dual approach—bottom-up financing for immediate needs and top-down investment for infrastructure—addresses these challenges comprehensively.
Importance of Women in Water Solutions: Empowering women with access to loans for water solutions has broader social benefits, including improved health, education, and economic opportunities.
Sustainability and Climate Resilience: Water.org emphasizes the need for climate-resilient infrastructure, ensuring that water solutions are sustainable in the face of environmental changes.
Global Collaboration: Water.org collaborates with a network of 140 financial institutions worldwide, facilitating access to water solutions tailored to local needs.
Role of Governments and Institutions: While private sector innovation drives much of Water.org’s work, governments and international institutions play a critical role in scaling these solutions.
Educating Stakeholders: Public perception and education are crucial. Water.org’s success stories and data-driven approach help change narratives around water access.
Future Goals: Water.org aims to reach 100 million people with an additional $1 billion in investment capital. Their long-term vision includes comprehensive water access solutions that integrate both individual and infrastructure needs.

👋 SOCIAL MEDIA 👋

🙋 QUESTION: What would you like me to cover next?

⏰ TIME CODES ⏰

00:00 Meeting Gary White: A Water Legend

01:27 The Impact of WaterCredit

02:57 Challenges and Innovations in Water Access

04:42 Gary White's Journey and Insights

07:10 Financial Strategies for Water Access

09:01 Scaling Water Solutions Globally

11:32 Creating Sustainable Water Infrastructure

15:32 Future Goals and Challenges

18:49 Innovative Financial Models for Water Projects

29:12 Accelerating Project Development with DFIs

30:17 Challenges and Innovations in Water Equity

30:38 Market Gaps and Unique Approaches

33:30 Investor Interest and Financial Returns

35:44 Public Perception and Education

38:23 Role of Governments and International Organizations

43:56 Future of Traditional Charity in Water Projects

48:27 Confidence in Solving the Water Crisis

50:48 Rapid Fire Questions

#WaterDevelopment #SDG6

Hosted by Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

"Poor People are not a Problem, They are a Market to be Served!" - Gary White (Water.org)

17 juli 2024 | 1 min

Gary White, co-founder of Water.org, has been at the forefront of innovative solutions for water access. Alongside Matt Damon, White has provided water and sanitation to over 66 million people through the WaterCredit program. Unlike traditional charity models, WaterCredit offers loans to individuals for water and sanitation projects, which are repaid at a remarkable 98% rate. This approach not only empowers individuals but also creates a sustainable financial model by recycling philanthropic funds.

White highlights the significant role of women in this model, as 90% of the borrowers are women. These loans, averaging $377, enable access to essential water and sanitation services, improving health, education, and economic outcomes. The impact is profound: with every loan repaid, the funds can be reused to help more people, creating a multiplier effect.

One of the key challenges addressed by Water.org is the need for infrastructure in rural areas. While WaterCredit addresses immediate needs through microloans, Water Equity, another initiative by White, focuses on investing in water infrastructure projects. This dual approach ensures that both individual and community needs are met, providing a comprehensive solution to water access.

Water.org’s innovative financial models also emphasize climate resilience. Their projects incorporate environmental impact studies, ensuring that water solutions are sustainable and adaptable to climate change. This forward-thinking approach is crucial for long-term water security.

Collaboration is at the heart of Water.org’s strategy. With a network of 140 financial institutions worldwide, they tailor solutions to local needs, ensuring effectiveness and sustainability. This extensive partnership network is vital for scaling their impact and reaching more communities.

While private sector innovation drives much of Water.org’s success, White acknowledges the critical role of governments and international institutions. Collaborative efforts are necessary to bridge the financing gap and ensure universal access to safe water and sanitation. Institutions like the World Bank are increasingly recognizing the value of Water.org’s models and incorporating them into their platforms.

Public perception and education are also crucial. Changing narratives around water access from a charity issue to a viable market opportunity is essential for attracting investment and support. Water.org’s data-driven approach and success stories play a significant role in this.

Looking ahead, Water.org aims to reach 100 million people with an additional $1 billion in investment capital. Their vision includes integrating individual and infrastructure needs, ensuring comprehensive and sustainable water access solutions. By continuing to innovate and collaborate, Water.org is set to make significant strides toward global water security.

Full Episode: https://dww.show/how-adionics-took-a-bold-stand-in-the-competitive-dle-landscape/

Hosted by Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

S11E12 - How Adionics Took a Bold Stand in the Competitive DLE Landscape

10 juli 2024 | 46 min

Imagine transforming the way we extract one of the most critical elements for our green future—lithium. Adionics may be that game-changer in the Direct Lithium Extraction (DLE) market, with their solvent extraction process!

More #water insights? Connect with me on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/antoinewalter1/

#️⃣ All the Links Mentioned in this Video #️⃣

🔗 Have a look at Adionics' website https://www.adionics.com/

🔗 Come say hi to Gabriel on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/gabriel-toffani/

🔗 Check out my Lithium deep dive https://youtu.be/JeZJpBySIQo

🔗 Get a glimpse into the various DLE generations https://youtu.be/CxZk9MuWgkY

🎙️ Subscribe and Listen to the Don't Waste Water Podcast HERE 🎙️

Podcast Channel: @dwwpodcast

Main Channel: @AntoineWalter

DWW Smartlink: https://smartlink.ausha.co/dont-waste-water

👋 SOCIAL MEDIA 👋

🙋 QUESTION: What would you like me to cover next?

⏰ TIME CODES ⏰

00:00 Introduction

01:49 Gabriel's Journey from Suez to Adionics

03:23 The Promise of Adionics' Technology

09:12 Challenges and Opportunities in the Lithium Market

14:38 Adionics' Industrialization and Future Plans

22:53 Adionics' Global Reach and Partnerships

26:19 SQM's Investment and Future Plans

28:26 Expanding into Hard Rock and Battery Recycling

30:30 Geographical Focus and Market Strategy

32:46 Opening New Offices in South America

33:40 Impact of Lithium Price Fluctuations

35:37 Future of DLE Technologies

38:02 Personal Insights and Career Decisions

41:22 Rapid Fire Questions

#DirectLithiumExtraction #Lithium #DLE

About this Episode:

Welcome to the (don't) Waste Water podcast! In each episode, Antoine Walter from DWW Media shares water, wastewater & water entrepreneurship stories. This show will teach you the water industry like you've never seen it. If you're asking how the water sector will overcome the water crises ahead, this podcast is for you.

Hosted by Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

The Future of Lithium Extraction: A Deep Dive into DLE Technologies - Gabriel Toffani (Adionics)

10 juli 2024 | 3 min

Adionics, a French company specializing in advanced ionic solutions, has developed a breakthrough technology for lithium extraction known as Flionex. This solvent extraction process is distinguished by its high selectivity, extracting lithium without removing other elements such as boron, potassium, or magnesium. This results in extremely pure lithium chloride, making the process both efficient and environmentally friendly due to its low water consumption. Adionics has demonstrated the industrial readiness of their technology through successful pilot projects in the lithium triangle, particularly at high altitudes, showcasing its scalability and robustness in real-world conditions.

Originally focused on desalination, Adionics strategically pivoted to lithium extraction in 2017, anticipating the rising demand for lithium driven by the green energy sector. This shift has allowed the company to position itself as a leader in the lithium extraction market. Adionics targets brines with lithium concentrations ranging from 200 to 50,000 ppm and continually refines its process to address lower concentrations more efficiently.

The company offers two primary business models: providing technology and process support to mining companies or forming joint ventures to finance and manage lithium extraction projects. This flexibility allows Adionics to adapt to various market needs and ensure the successful implementation of their technology.

Looking ahead, Adionics plans to expand its commercial presence and invest in research to develop more efficient Flyonics molecules for different concentration ranges. They are also exploring applications in lithium battery recycling and hard rock lithium extraction, aiming to extend their innovative approach to new markets. With a strong focus on industrial readiness and environmental sustainability, Adionics is well-positioned to meet the growing global demand for lithium and contribute to the advancement of green mobility .

Key Points

Adionics specializes in advanced ionic solutions.
Flionex technology selectively extracts lithium.
High purity and low water consumption.
Industrial pilots in the lithium triangle.
Pivoted to lithium extraction in 2017.
Targeting brines with 200-50,000 ppm lithium.
Offers technology support or joint ventures.
Plans to expand commercial presence.
Investing in research for more efficient Flyonics.
Exploring lithium battery recycling applications.

Full Episode: https://dww.show/how-adionics-took-a-bold-stand-in-the-competitive-dle-landscape/

Hosted by Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

S11E11 - How Aquaporin Channels Reverse and Forward Osmosis Together for Growth

3 juli 2024 | 65 min

What's Aquaporin's Path to Profitability? Let's explore the Nobel-Prize-Rooted water tech company's path with CEO Matt Boczkowski!

More #water insights? Connect with me on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/antoinewalter1/

#️⃣ All the Links Mentioned in this Video #️⃣

Aquaporin's website: https://aquaporin.com/

Philips Water Solutions: https://www.philips.co.uk/c-e/ho/watercare.html

Gallo: https://www.gallo.com/

Singapore's PUB: https://www.pub.gov.sg/

Aquaporin's Annual Report 2023: https://s28.q4cdn.com/433354207/files/doc_financials/2023/ar/240405-Annual-Report-Presentation.pdf

Come say Hi to Matt on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matt-boczkowski-2733271/

Full Blog Entry: https://dww.show/how-aquaporin-channels-reverse-and-forward-osmosis-together-for-growth/

🎙️ Subscribe and Listen to the Don't Waste Water Podcast HERE 🎙️

Podcast Channel: @dwwpodcast

Main Channel: @AntoineWalterDWW

Smartlink: https://smartlink.ausha.co/dont-waste-water

👋 SOCIAL MEDIA 👋

🙋 QUESTION: What would you like me to cover next?

⏰ TIME CODES ⏰

00:00 Introduction

01:49 Editorial

05:03 Challenges and Opportunities in Forward Osmosis

07:32 Aquaporin's Unique Branding and Marketing Approach

10:40 Aquaporin's Journey and IPO Experience

19:27 Forward Osmosis: Challenges and Niche Applications

24:20 Aquaporin's Strategic Focus and Partnerships

35:34 PUB Collaboration and Energy Efficiency

38:09 Forward Osmosis vs. Reverse Osmosis

40:26 Product Portfolio and Strategy

46:36 Revenue Diversification and Market Strategy

49:21 Financial Challenges and Shareholder Support

53:24 Future Vision and Technological Aspirations

56:06 Space Mission and Branding

59:44 Rapid Fire Questions

#WaterTech #IPO #ForwardOsmisis

About this Episode: Welcome to the (don't) Waste Water podcast! In each episode, Antoine Walter from DWW Media shares water, wastewater & water entrepreneurship stories. This show will teach you the water industry like you've never seen it. If you're asking how the water sector will overcome the water crises ahead, this podcast is for you.

Hosted by Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

How Going IPO Boosted This Water Tech Start Up's Confidence - Matt Boczkowski (Aquaporin)

3 juli 2024 | 2 min

Aquaporin, led by CEO Matt Boczkowski, is at the forefront of integrating biotechnology with water treatment. The company's journey began with the Nobel Prize-winning research of Peter Agre on aquaporins, which inspired Aquaporin to develop membranes that mimic these natural water channels. Initially focusing on forward osmosis due to its natural alignment with aquaporin proteins, the company has since expanded into reverse osmosis to tap into established markets and ensure revenue growth.

Aquaporin's strategic shift from a primarily residential revenue base to a balanced residential and industrial mix reflects its adaptive market approach. High-profile partnerships with companies like Gallo and Philips underscore Aquaporin's innovative edge and market credibility. The collaboration with PUB in Singapore to create energy-efficient reverse osmosis membranes exemplifies the company's commitment to addressing global water challenges through cutting-edge technology.

The company's branding, inspired by the fashion industry, sets it apart in the traditionally conservative water sector. This unique approach not only enhances Aquaporin's market presence but also resonates with consumers and industrial clients alike. Despite the challenges of being a publicly listed company, including the need for financial transparency and rigorous compliance, Aquaporin leverages its public status to secure significant partnerships and investments.

Aquaporin's focus on niche applications for forward osmosis, such as wine concentration and lithium extraction, demonstrates a strategic approach to market penetration. By concentrating on specific, high-potential sectors, Aquaporin aims to create impactful solutions that can scale effectively. The company's commitment to innovation and strategic growth is evident in its diverse product portfolio and ongoing efforts to develop new applications for its technology.

Looking ahead, Aquaporin aims to achieve profitability within the next few years, balancing growth with financial sustainability. The company's vision includes expanding its technological capabilities, particularly in making its aquaporin protein structures more universally applicable across different membrane technologies. This forward-thinking approach positions Aquaporin to continue leading in the water treatment industry, driving both technological advancements and market success.

Key Points:

Aquaporin uses biomimetic technology for water purification.
Initial focus was on forward osmosis due to natural alignment with aquaporins.
Expanded into reverse osmosis to access established markets.
Revenue shift from residential to balanced residential and industrial.
High-profile partnerships with Gallo and Philips.
Collaboration with PUB for energy-efficient reverse osmosis membranes.
Branding strategy inspired by the fashion industry.
Publicly listed on NASDAQ Copenhagen.
Focus on niche applications like wine concentration and lithium extraction.
Goal to achieve profitability within the next few years.
Diverse product portfolio including residential and industrial applications.
Innovative marketing approach differentiates Aquaporin in the market.
Strategic growth through targeted niche applications.
Commitment to technological advancements in water treatment.
Vision to make aquaporin proteins universally applicable across membrane technologies.

Full Episode: https://dww.show/how-aquaporin-channels-reverse-and-forward-osmosis-together-for-growth/

Hosted by Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

S11E10 - How Ionic Solutions Trades High Pressure for High Efficiency in Desalination

26 juni 2024 | 54 min

Desalination often means high energy consumption and OPEX. Is there a way to make it more efficient and sustainable? Ionic Solutions thinks so - let's explore this intriguing water tech company.

Desalination technology can revolutionize water treatment by significantly reducing energy consumption and allowing controlled mineral content in the water. This approach is crucial for addressing water scarcity and improving sustainability in both industrial and municipal applications.

More #water insights? Connect with me on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/antoinewalter1/

#️⃣ All the Links Mentioned in this Video #️⃣

🔗 Ionic Solutions' Website

🔗 Come say Hi to Jordan on LinkedIn

🔗 Read my full blog entry here!

🎙️ Subscribe and Listen to the Don't Waste Water Podcast HERE 🎙️

Podcast Channel: @dwwpodcast

Main Channel: @AntoineWalterDWW

Smartlink: https://smartlink.ausha.co/dont-waste-water

👋 SOCIAL MEDIA 👋

🙋 QUESTION: What would you like me to cover next?

⏰ TIME CODES ⏰

00:00 Introduction

04:44 Challenges and Benefits of Ionic Solutions' Technology

10:10 Commercialization and Market Adoption

11:00 Founding Story of Ionic Solutions

14:51 Early Adopters and Market Penetration

17:08 Case Study: Utility in New York City

19:02 Overcoming Market Barriers

27:26 Innovative Water Desalination Solutions

28:23 Lithium Extraction and Brine Concentration

30:40 Global Expansion and Market Adoption

32:47 Demonstration Projects and Market Strategy

36:24 Future Vision and Company Growth

44:56 Rapid Fire Questions

#Desalination #WaterTech #IonExchange

About this Episode:

Welcome to the (don't) Waste Water podcast! In each episode, Antoine Walter from DWW Media shares water, wastewater & water entrepreneurship stories. This show will teach you the water industry like you've never seen it. If you're asking how the water sector will overcome the water crises ahead, this podcast is for you.

Hosted by Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Revolutionizing Desalination: A Game-Changing Technology - Jordan Grose (Ionic Solutions)

26 juni 2024 | 3 min

Ionic Solutions is transforming the desalination landscape with its innovative ion exchange membrane technology, which offers significant advantages over traditional reverse osmosis (RO) systems. The company's technology stands out due to its exceptionally low power consumption, with some applications achieving up to 97% less energy use compared to RO. This efficiency is particularly evident in low salinity brackish water desalination, though the technology performs well across various applications, typically saving 60-90% in energy costs.

One of the key features of Ionic Solutions' technology is its ability to control the mineral content of treated water, allowing for tailored solutions that reduce the need for post-treatment mineral addition. This flexibility is especially valuable in drinking water applications and other industrial processes where specific mineral balances are required.

The company targets both industrial and municipal sectors, offering solutions that can augment or replace existing RO systems. A notable success story includes a partnership with a utility in New York City, where Ionic Solutions' technology significantly reduced water and energy costs, contributing to the city's sustainability goals.

Strategic partnerships, such as with the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), have been crucial in validating and promoting the technology. These collaborations have helped Ionic Solutions gain credibility and demonstrate the practical benefits of their solutions.

Despite the clear advantages, market adoption remains a challenge. The water industry is heavily invested in traditional RO systems, and there is a learning curve associated with adopting new technologies. However, Ionic Solutions is addressing this through demonstration projects and participation in technical conferences to educate engineers and potential clients.

Looking ahead, the company aims to expand its technology's applications, including potential use in lithium brine concentration and consumer-level water treatment systems. To support this growth, Ionic Solutions plans to scale up manufacturing and potentially establish production centers in different regions to meet global demand.

Fundraising will be a critical component of this expansion, as the company seeks investors interested in making a significant impact on water sustainability. With a mission to increase water security and efficiency, Ionic Solutions is poised to make a substantial contribution to addressing global water challenges.

Key Points

Ionic Solutions redefines desalination as removing salt ions from any water source.
The technology achieves up to 97% less power consumption compared to traditional RO systems.
It allows for controlled mineral content in treated water.
The company targets both industrial and municipal sectors.
Successful case study: Utility in New York City saved water and energy costs.
Strategic partnership with EPRI validated the technology.
Market adoption remains a challenge due to entrenched RO systems.
Future applications include lithium brine concentration.
Plans to scale up manufacturing and establish global production centers.
Fundraising is critical for expansion and impact on water sustainability.

Full Episode: https://dww.show/how-ionic-solutions-trades-high-pressure-for-high-efficiency-in-desalination/

Hosted by Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

S11E9 - How to End Gibberish and Measure your Water Stewardship Commitments Right

19 juni 2024 | 63 min

Water Stewardship and Water Risk Mitigation will be key topics of the upcoming decade. But how can you measure your impact and performance on these if there's no scale? That's where SCS 116 enters the picture: let's explore!

More #water insights? Connect with me on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/antoinewalter1/

#️⃣ All the Links Mentioned in this Video #️⃣

SCS Global Services - https://fr.scsglobalservices.com/services/water-stewardship-and-resiliency-certification

CDP Water - https://www.cdp.net/en/water

Axiom Climate - https://www.axiomclimate.com/

Microsoft / Fido AI - https://fido.tech/news/fido-and-microsoft-collaboration-continues-expansion-to-mexico/

Global Water Intelligence / XPV - https://my.globalwaterintel-insights.com/l/2DC/watersecurityinvestment

Protect Our Winters - https://protectourwinters.org/

🎙️ Subscribe and Listen to the Don't Waste Water Podcast HERE 🎙️

Podcast Channel: @dwwpodcast

Main Channel: @AntoineWalterDWW

Smartlink: https://smartlink.ausha.co/dont-waste-water

👋 SOCIAL MEDIA 👋

🙋 QUESTION: What would you like me to cover next?

⏰ TIME CODES ⏰

00:00 Introduction

04:22 Understanding Water Stewardship and Its Importance

05:00 The Need for Water Stewardship Standards

06:48 The Role of SCS in Water Stewardship

08:29 Challenges and Opportunities in Water Stewardship

20:27 The SCS 116 Water Standard

26:45 Future of Water Stewardship and Standards

34:13 Facing Criticism

37:04 Feedback and Gaps in Standards

41:12 Global Water Index Debate

46:00 Axiom Climate Updates

49:10 Impact of Educational Initiatives

53:58 Rapid Fire Questions

#WaterStewardship #WaterImpact #WaterStandard

About this Episode:

Welcome to the (don't) Waste Water podcast! In each episode, Antoine Walter from DWW Media shares water, wastewater & water entrepreneurship stories. This show will teach you the water industry like you've never seen it. If you're asking how the water sector will overcome the water crises ahead, this podcast is for you.

Hosted by Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Revolutionizing Water Management: A New Approach to Sustainability - Lauren Enright (SCS Global Services)

19 juni 2024 | 3 min

Water stewardship is about managing water resources sustainably and equitably for all stakeholders. This involves setting standards, measuring impact, and encouraging companies to adopt best practices for water use, aiming to create a positive impact on local communities and the environment.

Water stewardship is the management of water resources in a sustainable and equitable manner, considering the needs of all stakeholders involved. Lauren Enright from SCS Global Services explains that this concept has evolved over the past decade, expanding from traditional water management to include broader social and environmental impacts. To promote effective water stewardship, standards like SCS 116 have been developed, aiming to provide a structured approach for companies to measure, report, and improve their water use practices.

The conversation highlights the importance of setting quantifiable standards for water stewardship, similar to ESG standards, to ensure that companies can objectively measure their impact and make informed decisions. The challenge lies in determining whether these standards should be voluntary or mandatory, and how they can be effectively implemented and scrutinized.

Lauren emphasizes the role of accurate reporting and measurement in water stewardship, noting that companies must integrate water biodiversity into their corporate cultures to achieve meaningful progress. The development of tools and technologies, such as those by Microsoft and Fido AI for leak detection, plays a crucial role in improving water efficiency and reducing non-revenue water losses.

The discussion also touches on the growing investment in water-related initiatives, driven by regulatory requirements and the recognition of financial opportunities. Projections suggest a significant increase in investment in water stewardship, highlighting the need for companies to adopt best practices and make tangible impacts on local communities and ecosystems.

In addition to corporate efforts, educational outreach and public engagement are essential for fostering a broader understanding of water stewardship. Initiatives like Axiom Climate aim to educate and involve the public in addressing water and climate issues, emphasizing the importance of community involvement.

Overall, the conversation underscores the importance of developing and adopting water stewardship standards, leveraging technology and reporting tools, and engaging both corporate and public sectors to achieve sustainable water management practices.

Key Points

Water stewardship involves managing water sustainably and equitably.
Standards like SCS 116 help quantify and improve water use practices.
The challenge is balancing voluntary versus mandatory standards.
Accurate reporting and measurement are crucial for progress.
Companies must integrate water biodiversity into their cultures.
Innovative technologies aid in improving water efficiency.
Investment in water stewardship is projected to increase significantly.
Effective water stewardship requires both global and local actions.
Corporate leaders like Microsoft are setting examples in water management.
Educational outreach is vital for public understanding and involvement.

Full Episode: https://dww.show/how-to-end-bullshit-and-measure-your-water-stewardship-commitments-right/

Hosted by Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

S11E8 - How 120Water Profitably Multiplied Its Customer Base by 50 in 4 Years

12 juni 2024 | 47 min

"Everyone deserves the technology that Denver Water Uses!" - Megan Glover (120Water)

12 juni 2024 | 1 min

5 Water Tech Investment Facts That Will Blow Your Mind

3 juni 2024 | 14 min

S11E7 - How Salinity Solutions Squeezes More Water out of Any Stream for Half the Energy

29 maj 2024 | 48 min

"This is Reverse Osmosis - Just Better!" - Tim Naughton (Salinity Solutions)

29 maj 2024 | 1 min

Salinity Solutions: An innovative water technology company specializing in batch reverse osmosis. The company focuses on improving the efficiency of conventional reverse osmosis systems, achieving higher water recovery rates while reducing energy consumption and chemical usage. Their technology is particularly applicable in industries facing water scarcity and pollution issues, such as mining, zero liquid discharge (ZLD), and vertical farming.

Reverse osmosis (RO) is a widely used technology for water treatment, but it has significant drawbacks, including high energy consumption and waste production. Salinity Solutions, led by Tim Naughton, has developed a batch reverse osmosis process that addresses these issues by improving efficiency, reducing waste, and lowering chemical use. This innovative approach offers a more sustainable solution for water treatment needs.

Unique Insights:

Batch Process Innovation: Unlike traditional RO, batch reverse osmosis operates in a non-steady state with varying pressures, making it more efficient and easier to manage waste.
Market Adaptation: The primary challenge for batch RO is market adoption due to its process innovation rather than new technology. However, it offers significant improvements, making it a viable solution for many applications.
Humanitarian Roots: The technology was initially developed for humanitarian aid, utilizing solar energy for remote communities, and has evolved into a commercially viable solution addressing various industrial needs.

Key Ideas:

Reverse Osmosis Drawbacks: Traditional RO systems are energy-intensive, produce a lot of waste, and use significant amounts of chemicals, which limits their efficiency and sustainability.
Batch Reverse Osmosis: Salinity Solutions’ innovation involves a batch process that significantly improves efficiency, achieving up to 98% water recovery with half the energy consumption and reduced chemical usage.
Market Penetration Challenges: Although batch RO is not a new technology but a process innovation, its market adoption is hindered by the need for industries to adjust to its non-equilibrium operation.
Initial Development and Funding: The technology's development began as a volunteer project, leading to a government-funded program that helped commercialize the technology through substantial grants and investments.
Crowdfunding Success: Salinity Solutions successfully raised funds through Crowdcube, attracting over 2,000 shareholders and significantly exceeding their initial funding goals.
Strategic Partnerships: The company has formed key partnerships, including a joint venture in India for ZLD applications and collaborations with large companies like Suez, enhancing their market presence and credibility.
Technology Applications: The batch RO system is versatile, with applications ranging from lithium extraction in mining to phosphate removal in wastewater treatment and water reuse in agriculture.
Future Outlook: Salinity Solutions aims to become a leading technology in the desalination sector, with ambitions to use their technology for humanitarian aid projects, particularly in remote and water-stressed regions.

Counter-Intuitive Facts:

Efficiency Paradox: Achieving 98% water recovery in batch RO is not just 3% better than 95%, but twice as efficient in terms of outcomes.
Market Adoption: Despite being a superior process, batch RO faces market adoption challenges because it’s a process innovation, not a new technology.
Humanitarian Origin: The commercial technology originated from a humanitarian project aimed at providing solar-powered water solutions for remote communities.

Full Episode: https://dww.show/how-oxyle-destroys-pfas-with-the-energy-youd-actually-waste/

Hosted by Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

More Water With Less Energy: the RO Batch Miracle?

27 maj 2024 | 15 min

The Economic Fiasco Behind the Global Water Crisis (It's Worse than you Think)

22 maj 2024 | 10 min

7 Insights from Fajer Mushtaq (Oxyle) in under 7 Minutes!

17 maj 2024 | 7 min

S11E6 - How Oxyle Destroys PFAS with the Energy You'd Actually Waste

15 maj 2024 | 83 min

"Where are the European PFAS Treatment Companies?!" - Fajer Mushtaq (Oxyle)

15 maj 2024 | 1 min

Oxyle is a company intensely focused on the treatment and monitoring of micropollutants, specifically PFAS. Over the last two and a half years, they have honed their technology to address the increasing market need for effective PFAS removal solutions. Oxyle’s approach leverages existing water treatment technologies but with a sharpened focus on PFAS, positioning themselves as a benchmark in the industry.

In this full podcast episode, Antoine Walter discusses with Fajer Mushtaq from Oxyle about the company's strategic refocus on PFAS pollutants. Over recent years, Oxyle has tailored its technology to specifically tackle the complexities of PFAS treatment, driven by market needs and the volume of customer inquiries. This adaptation has not altered their core technology but has sharpened its application, making Oxyle a leader in this niche market. The discussion delves into the technical aspects of their treatment processes, emphasizing the use of mechanical energy to enhance chemical reactions efficiently. Additionally, Fajer highlights the company's commitment to meeting rising regulatory standards while ensuring their treatments remain cost-effective and scalable, a significant concern for many of their clients. Oxyle's approach not only addresses environmental concerns but also aligns with the economic realities of the industries they serve, positioning them as a pivotal player in the water treatment industry.

Unique Insights:

Oxyle has recognized the shift in market demands towards PFAS treatment, adapting their technology to meet these new challenges without fundamental changes to their system.
The company emphasizes the importance of not just meeting regulatory standards but ensuring the treatment process is cost-effective and scalable, which has become a significant concern for their clients.
They highlight an innovative use of mechanical energy sources in their treatment processes, enhancing the efficiency of their catalytic reactions.

Key Ideas:

PFAS Focus: Oxyle has shifted its focus to PFAS due to high demand and regulatory pressure, aiming to establish industry benchmarks in this area.
Technology Adaptation: Their technology uses mechanical energy from water flow, making it energy-efficient and effective at breaking down pollutants.
Market Response: The shift was a direct response to customer needs, with Oxyle prioritizing PFAS treatment due to the volume of inquiries related to these compounds.
Regulatory Compliance and Cost: Oxyle balances compliance with regulatory standards with the economic concerns of their clients, ensuring their solutions are accessible.

Counter-Intuitive Facts:

Use of Mechanical Energy: Oxyle uses the mechanical energy from water flow as a primary energy source for their catalytic process, which is a novel approach in the treatment of PFAS.
Regulatory Ahead of Technology: While regulations are becoming stricter, Oxyle’s technology was already designed to meet future standards, which is uncommon as many companies often scramble to meet new regulations.
Cost-Effectiveness Over Direct Profit: Oxyle’s business model focuses on long-term cost-effectiveness and scalability rather than immediate profit margins from their hardware, choosing to earn through operational excellence and service.

Full Episode: https://dww.show/how-oxyle-destroys-pfas-with-the-energy-youd-actually-waste/

Hosted by Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

7 Insights from Peter Christou (Swirltex) in under 7 Minutes!

10 maj 2024 | 7 min

S11E5 - How Swirltex Nearly Crushed Its Founder Before Taking Off

8 maj 2024 | 49 min

"Oil and Gas is like Dating a Manic Depressive!" - Peter Christou (Swirltex)

8 maj 2024 | 1 min

Swirltex, the company represented by Peter Christou, develops unique membrane technologies that optimize filtration processes. The company distinguishes itself by manipulating the buoyancy of liquids to enhance filtration efficiency, which is particularly effective in industries where traditional membranes fail. This technology not only reduces energy consumption by up to 70% but also improves flux rates, offering a sustainable solution particularly useful in sectors like oil and gas, mining, and municipal water treatment.

In the podcast, Peter Christou elaborates on Swirltex's innovative approach to membrane technology, which is designed to improve filtration efficiency by manipulating the buoyancy of liquids and integrating air flow. This method reduces the energy consumption of membrane systems by up to 70% and enhances flux rates, making it a game-changer in industries where conventional membranes fail, such as oil and gas and mining. The discussion also touches on the broader implications of this technology for environmental sustainability and how it can reshape industry standards for water treatment and reuse.

Unique Insights:

Swirltex's approach to increasing filtration efficiency by manipulating liquid buoyancy and using air flows represents a significant innovation in membrane technology.
The company's focus on industrial applications where conventional membranes are less effective showcases a strategic move to tap unexplored markets.
Their technology not only addresses the efficiency but also significantly cuts down on energy use, marking a step forward in eco-friendly industrial processes.

Key Ideas:

Innovative Membrane Use: Swirltex's technology uses a combination of air and water flow to prevent fouling and improve the efficiency of membrane filtration.
Energy Efficiency: The technology significantly reduces the energy required for operating membranes, which is crucial for sustainability in resource-intensive industries.
Market Adaptation: Swirltex has successfully adapted its technology for challenging applications like oil and grease-heavy industries, where traditional membranes struggle.
Environmental Impact: By improving the efficiency and reducing the energy consumption of membrane systems, Swirltex contributes to environmental sustainability.
Cultural and Operational Shift: The technology developed by Swirltex necessitates a shift in how industries think about and implement filtration systems, moving towards more sustainable and efficient practices.

Counter-Intuitive Facts:

Energy Reduction in Filtration: Swirltex's technology uses air to manipulate buoyancy, which counter-intuitively reduces energy consumption by 70% compared to traditional methods .
Application in Difficult Industries: Unlike typical membrane applications, Swirltex successfully operates in sectors with high fouling risks like oil and grease industries, traditionally challenging for membrane tech .
Adaptability to Market Needs: Swirltex's strategic focus on non-traditional markets for membranes allows it to tap into new areas, proving that membranes can be highly effective outside conventional settings like municipal water treatment .

Full Episode: https://dww.show/how-swirltex-nearly-crushed-its-founder-before-taking-off/

Hosted by Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Reinhard Hübner can't promise he won't buy more than 4 Water Companies in 2024!

6 maj 2024 | 16 min

Reinhard Hübner (CEO of SKion Water) was my guest on the first episode of the Season 5 of the podcast, a bit more than 2 years ago.

To this date, it's still one of the most successful episodes of all time (check it out here: https://dww.show/the-7-secrets-of-the-water-company-of-the-year-you-shall-absolutely-steal/)

Since then, SKion has led... 13 M&A moves! So, since that first appearance on the podcast, every time I meet Reinhard or his Managing Director, Dirk Brusis, I make it a rule to always question them about their next M&A.

This time, it was on record during the recent Global Water Summit (https://www.watermeetsmoney.com/), and I thought you might want to hear about it, as it's a packed 15-minute conversation, with lots (like... LOTS!) of insights inside.

About SKion Water:

SKion Water is an influential player in both the municipal and industrial water treatment sectors across Europe and North America. The company is pioneering the construction of wastewater recycling plants and deploying advanced technologies for groundwater infiltration of river water. With a budgeted turnover of 1.4 billion for the current year, SKion Water is also involved in global markets, emphasizing sustainability and technical innovation to ensure water security amidst climate change.

Episode Summary:

In this discussion, Reinhard Hübner of SKion Water outlines the company's strategic responses to the challenges posed by climate change on water resources. He discusses the construction of advanced wastewater recycling plants in Germany, a pioneering effort reflecting a shift from traditional practices due to increasing water scarcity influenced by climate change. Hübner emphasizes the necessity of integrating municipal and industrial water management solutions, highlighting projects in both Europe and North America. The conversation also touches on the company’s growth and innovation strategies, noting a slowdown in acquisitions but continued investment in essential technologies and market expansions. Regulatory challenges like the new PFAS guidelines are addressed with proactive technological solutions, showcasing SKion Water's commitment to sustainable and compliant operations. Throughout the interview, the importance of decentralized operations and the integration of new technologies for efficient water management are discussed as critical elements of SKion Water's approach to addressing the global water crisis.

Key Ideas

Climate Change and Water Security: Climate change is creating severe impacts on water availability, affecting both natural ecosystems and human needs. SKion Water is working on solutions like the reuse of municipal wastewater to combat these challenges.
Municipal Wastewater Reuse in Germany: The company is constructing Germany’s first municipal wastewater reuse plant, which reflects a significant shift in traditional water management practices in the country.
Innovation and Growth: Despite a recent slowdown in acquisitions, SKion Water continues to expand strategically, integrating new technologies and markets into its portfolio.
Regulatory Challenges and Solutions: Facing new environmental regulations, SKion Water is investing in technologies such as those for on-site PFAS destruction, highlighting the company’s proactive approach to compliance and sustainability.
Cultural and Operational Adaptations: The company’s adaptation to various global markets showcases its flexible approach to business, emphasizing understanding and integration before expansion.

Stay tuned for more: I recorded 8 pieces at the Summit, so I won't put you ALL in this feed like this one, but I'll share you the key insights in the coming weeks!

Hosted by Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

"We have no Exit Strategy: this needs to Work!" - Reinhard Hübner (SKion Water)

6 maj 2024 | 1 min

7 Insights from Johnny Pujol (SimpleLab) in under 7 Minutes!

26 april 2024 | 7 min

S11E4 - How SimpleLab Turned an Arsenic Removal Failure into a Lab Logistics Success

24 april 2024 | 60 min

What once was a struggling Arsenic Removal company pivoted to a soaring Lab Logistics powerhouse, just about to expand from its US base to Europe! All on the back of... one simple advice you can apply today. Shall we explore this further? (of course, yes!)

More #water insights?

Connect with me on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/antoinewalter1/

#️⃣ All the Links Mentioned in this Video #️⃣

🔗 SimpleLab's Website: https://gosimplelab.com/

🔗 TapScore's Website https://mytapscore.com/

🔗 Come say Hi to Johnny on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnnypujol/

🔗 My conversation with one of Johnny's Investor, John Robinson: https://dww.show/how-to-mitigate-4-shades-of-water-risk-through-impact-investing/

🔗 The Rethinking Water Conference in New York (and my coverage of the Water Crisis in America): https://dww.show/water-crisis-in-america/

🔗 My conversation with Megan Glover from 120Water: https://dww.show/whats-hidden-in-your-tap-water-dont-worry-your-utility-doesnt-really-know-better/

🎙️ Subscribe and Listen to the Don't Waste Water Podcast HERE 🎙️

Podcast Channel: https://youtube.com/@dwwpodcast

Main Channel: https://youtube.com/@AntoineWalterDWW

Smartlink: https://smartlink.ausha.co/dont-waste-water

👋 SOCIAL MEDIA 👋

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/antoinewalter1/

🙋 QUESTION: What would you like me to cover next?

⏰ TIME CODES ⏰

00:00 In This Week's Episode

01:19 How to Test your Water

03:57 Who was first, SimpleLab or TapScore?

08:32 SimpleLab's Elevator Pitch

10:39 Pivoting from Arsenic Removal to Lab Logistics

15:24 Who gave SimpleLab a Winning Hint?

16:30 SimpleLab's ugly 2017 & 2018

18:14 What was SimpleLab's first product?

20:01 What did it change to Venture into B2B?

23:13 What is SimpleLab disrupting and how?

24:43 How much do Labs "love" SimpleLab?

26:29 SimpleLab's Business Model

28:07 SimpleLab vs 120Water

29:50 Who's competition to SimpleLab?

32:13 What's TapScore's Bestseller?

34:00 How should a Water Quality Test result look like?

36:49 Will TapScore roll out in Europe?

38:32 What's next for SimpleLab?

40:20 Could SimpleLab sell your Data?

44:02 What is SimpleLab's exit route?

46:15 Rapid Fire Questions

52:56 7 Insights from SimpleLab's CEO & Co-Founder

59:04 Conclusion

#WaterTest #LabTest #SimpleLab #WaterTech

About this Episode: Welcome to the (don't) Waste Water podcast! In each episode, Antoine Walter from DWW Media shares water, wastewater & water entrepreneurship stories. This show will teach you the water industry like you've never seen it. If you're asking how the water sector will overcome the water crises ahead, this podcast is for you.

Hosted by Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

"How is Anyone making a Business doing this?! This is going to take forever!" - Johnny Pujol (SimpleLab)

24 april 2024 | 1 min

Johnny Pujol's company, SimpleLab started with a focus on arsenic removal technology but pivoted to consumer-focused water quality testing. Their approach utilizes direct-to-consumer engagement, providing testing kits through their platform, mytapscore.com, which allows customers to understand what's in their drinking water. This model turned out to be commercially successful and scalable compared to the original technology-focused venture.Innovations in water technology can drive faster economic growth than traditional industrial investments.

The central theme of the conversation is about pivoting a business model from developing arsenic removal technology to providing direct consumer water testing services. This shift occurred when the founders realized that direct engagement with customers about water quality issues through testing was more scalable and sustainable as a business model than their initial focus.

Unique Insights:

The company capitalized on the specific needs for community engagement and education about water quality, which were not adequately addressed by existing solutions.
They utilized direct consumer feedback to pivot their business towards a more sustainable model focused on water testing rather than just technology deployment.
The realization that transparency and direct consumer interaction could be a profitable business model in the water quality industry.

Key Ideas:

Business Pivot: The initial business model focused on a technology for arsenic removal, which was pivoted to consumer water testing due to scalability challenges and market needs.
Consumer Engagement: The new business model thrives on high engagement levels with consumers, providing them with detailed information about their water quality, which has shown high demand and customer satisfaction.
Market Expansion: The company is exploring further expansion into B2B sectors and international markets, adapting their successful consumer model to new demographics and regulatory environments.

Quotes:

"We were going to these towns in central Valley, and the best part about it is that when we tell them what's in their drinking water, everyone is listening."
"You've made a company; you've filed the paperwork; you have some money in the bank. You've learned a lot."
"It's like, suddenly the quiet classroom has come alive."
"You should just sell water tests."
"And then it just started working right? Like the magical thing happened."

Counter-Intuitive Facts:

Direct Consumer Testing as a Business Model: Initially, the concept of selling water tests directly to consumers was not seen as a viable business model, but it proved to be highly successful due to unmet market needs.
Pivoting from Technology to Service: Pivoting from a complex arsenic removal technology to a simpler consumer service was counterintuitive but resulted in better scalability and market penetration.
Community Engagement Over Pure Technology: Focusing on community engagement and education about water quality rather than just the technological solution to contamination proved more effective in building a sustainable business.

Full Episode: https://dww.show/how-simplelab-turned-an-arsenic-removal-failure-into-a-lab-logistics-success/

Hosted by Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

7 Insights from Craig Beckman (Aqua Membranes) in under 7 Minutes!

12 april 2024 | 6 min

S11E3 - How Aqua Membranes Prints Three Dimensional Benefits for Mesh Addicts

10 april 2024 | 72 min

Do you want more Flux, better energy efficiency, or lower maintenance from your Reverse Osmosis membrane? Here's where to start!

More #water insights? Connect with me on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/antoinewalter1/

#️⃣ All the Links Mentioned in this Video #️⃣

Aqua Membranes' YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@AquaMembranes

Aqua Membranes' website: https://aquamembranes.com/

Craig's email: [email protected]

My "Ultimate" membrane guide: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUpiL_x7680

John Robinson discusses Impact Investing: https://dww.show/how-to-mitigate-4-shades-of-water-risk-through-impact-investing/

Chris Wyres presents Evove: https://dww.show/how-to-eradicate-dead-zones-cut-energy-needs-by-80-and-double-lithium-selectivity/

The Leading WaterTech Accelerator, Imagine H2O: https://dww.show/how-to-build-the-world-leading-water-innovation-accelerator-imagine-h2o/

Tom Ferguson's take on Venture Capital in #WaterTech https://dww.show/the-secret-formula-for-profit-in-water-tech-venture-capital/

Zwitterions as a new material for Membranes? https://dww.show/zwitterions-super-powers-could-solve-wastewater-membranes-number-one-problem/

🎙️ Subscribe and Listen to the Don't Waste Water Podcast HERE 🎙️

Podcast Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@dwwpodcast

Main Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@AntoineWalterDWW

Smartlink: https://smartlink.ausha.co/dont-waste-water

👋 SOCIAL MEDIA 👋

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/antoinewalter1/

🙋 QUESTION: What would you like me to cover next?

⏰ TIME CODES ⏰

00:00 In This Week's Episode

01:20 Why Membrane Companies attracted $300 Million of Growth Capital

04:40 What is a Membrane Spacer?

06:37 What's wrong with Membrane Spacers?

08:01 Why do Membrane Majors skip the Spacers?

10:47 Does the PERFECT Membrane Spacer exist?

13:06 How far can you customize a Membrane Spacer?

14:49 How did Craig Beckman join Aqua Membranes?

18:09 Aqua Membranes' first product (and what they learned from it)

20:46 Did Failure nudge them to Give Up?

22:00 Aqua Membranes' product compatibility

23:53 Spacer, 3D-Printing or Membrane Company?

25:15 How to fit within the Membrane Vertical

29:09 How to guarantee performances as a Start-Up

33:03 Establishing Go-To Market Routes

34:59 How to License your Technology

35:57 Ramping up production capacity

36:38 Raising Money

39:25 Working with majors (Pentair & Kurita)

42:17 The pitfalls of branding as a Start-Up

45:09 The perks of start-up accelerators (Imagine H2O, BREW)

48:02 Speeding up market adoption as a Water Tech

54:13 Path to Impact (and Exit)

55:51 Building a Membrane Giant

57:46 Rapid Fire Questions

01:05:10 7 Insights to Take Home

01:10:35 Conclusion

#WaterEntrepreneurs #Membranes

About this Episode: Welcome to the (don't) Waste Water podcast! In each episode, Antoine Walter from DWW Media shares water, wastewater & water entrepreneurship stories. This show will teach you the water industry like you've never seen it. If you're asking how the water sector will overcome the water crises ahead, this video is for you.

Hosted by Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

"Toray, Dupont, LG Chem... they've tried for many years! We did it." - Craig Beckman (Aqua Membranes)

10 april 2024 | 1 min

AquaMembranes is a company that develops novel water treatment technologies, specifically focusing on enhancing the efficiency of reverse osmosis (RO) membranes. Their technology is designed to use less energy and improve the lifespan of membranes, thereby providing both environmental and economic benefits to communities and industries in need.

The podcast features a deep dive into how water technology, particularly the innovations by AquaMembranes, plays a pivotal role in both safeguarding environmental sustainability and bolstering economic performance. Craig Beckman discusses the company’s approach to improving reverse osmosis membranes which significantly reduces energy consumption and extends membrane life—key factors in reducing operational costs and enhancing water availability. The conversation also covers the broader economic impacts of water management, investment trends in green technologies, and the challenges in scaling and adopting new technologies. Insights into the dynamics between financial goals and sustainability objectives offer a nuanced view of the water tech industry’s future.

I hope this teaser makes you crave for more!

If you dive into this week's full release of the podcast, you'll learn how:

🚀 AquaMembranes' technology uniquely prints spacers directly onto membranes, increasing efficiency and decreasing energy use.

📈 The discussion touches on the broader implications of water management on global economies, hinting at water's role as a more critical economic driver than oil.

💪 Insights into the challenges and opportunities in scaling water tech innovations, particularly through partnerships and investment in sustainability-focused ventures.

We also address and discuss:

Water as an Economic Enabler: Water management not only supports sustainability goals but also boosts economic activity by enabling more efficient industrial and municipal water use.
Innovative Water Technologies: AquaMembranes’ approach to improving RO membrane systems can dramatically reduce energy requirements and operational costs.
Investment and Market Adoption: There's a significant discussion about the need for more robust investment in water technologies and the market challenges related to adopting new systems.
Sustainability and Business Growth: The intersection of sustainability goals with business operations is a recurring theme, emphasizing that environmental strategies can also drive business success.

Some quotes:

"Water enables economies more than oil does." - Craig Beckman
"Risk is worth it, fortune favors the brave." - Craig Beckman
"Our sole thesis is greenhouse gas reduction." - Investor comment on shifting focus to water technologies
"We're doubling down on existing markets." - Craig Beckman
"You have to start somewhere." - Craig Beckman on business strategy

Some more facts we discuss:

Despite its critical importance, water is often undervalued economically compared to other resources like oil.
Water management technology can lead to significant reductions in energy usage, contrary to the assumption that environmental sustainability always comes at a higher cost.
Innovations in water technology can drive faster economic growth than traditional industrial investments.

Full Episode: https://dww.show/how-aqua-membranes-prints-three-dimensional-benefits-for-mesh-addicts/

Hosted by Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

7 Insights from Julie Bliss Mullen (Aclarity) in under 7 Minutes!

5 april 2024 | 7 min

S11E2 - How Aclarity Bootstrapped its Journey from B2C to PFAS Destruction

3 april 2024 | 72 min

"Is there something like this out there? This is Amazing!" - Julie Bliss Mullen (Aclarity)

3 april 2024 | 1 min

Aclarity is pioneering in the field of PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) destruction, developing proprietary systems - aka cool water tech - that not only treat but also destroy PFAS in liquid waste. The technology presents a significant advancement over traditional treatment methods, offering an economical and efficient solution to a pressing environmental issue.

I hope this teaser makes you crave for more!

If you dive into this week's full release of the podcast, you'll learn how:

🚀 Aclarity’s technology signifies a radical departure from conventional PFAS treatment methods, focusing on destruction rather than containment, which could set new industry standards.

📈 The market for PFAS management is dynamic, with significant growth potential, indicating room for multiple successful technologies and companies.

💪 Aclarity's journey underscores the importance of agility and focus in developing and deploying breakthrough environmental technologies, especially in fields dominated by larger, less nimble entities.

We also address and discuss:

PFAS Challenge: PFAS compounds, due to their widespread use and persistence, pose a significant environmental and health risk, necessitating advanced solutions for their management and eradication.
Technological Innovation: Aclarity's electrochemical technology represents a novel approach to PFAS destruction, with the potential to transform the industry's approach to dealing with these contaminants.
Market Dynamics: The PFAS management market is evolving rapidly, driven by regulatory changes and increasing awareness of the dangers posed by these substances. Eclarity's success could help catalyze broader market growth and innovation.
Strategic Partnerships: Collaborations with larger entities like Xylem or De Nora and participation in accelerator programs have helped Aclarity gain credibility, refine its technology, and access essential resources for growth.

Some quotes:

"PFAS destruction is hard... but we figured it out." - Julie Bliss Mullen
"There's a place for all of us in the PFAS management market." - Julie Bliss Mullen
"Every time we've leveled up... it's because of a fundraiser or... enjoying the team." - Julie Bliss Mullen
"Full-scale economic PFAS destruction is here. Give us a chance." - Julie Bliss Mullen
"If any of us are super successful, we're all gonna be super successful." - Julie Bliss Mullen

Some more facts we discuss:

Despite the strength of the carbon-fluorine bond in PFAS, making it seemingly indestructible, Aclarity's technology is capable of breaking it down efficiently.
Even as a startup, Aclarity can compete with and potentially surpass larger companies in the PFAS management sector due to its specialized focus and innovative approach.
The PFAS problem is often considered too massive and costly to tackle effectively, yet Aclarity's solution offers an economical and scalable approach to not just manage but destroy these contaminants.

Full Episode: https://dww.show/how-aclarity-bootstrapped-its-journey-from-b2c-to-pfas-destruction/

Hosted by Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

S11E1 - How Gradiant Became the First and Only Water Tech Unicorn

25 mars 2024 | 62 min

How do you go in just a decade from an MIT lab to a billion-dollar valuation in Water Tech? Everybody thought it was impossible until... Gradiant did it! Wanna find out how and what's next? Listen to this episode!

More #water insights? Connect with me on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/antoinewalter1/

#️⃣ All the Links Mentioned in this Video #️⃣

Will Gradiant succeed with H+E where SUEZ, Stulz, and Rena failed? https://youtu.be/GMk99gRjRSc?si=zAWY2rfg3GXFSWt2E

Gradiant's website: https://www.gradiant.com/

The Global Water Awards 2024: https://globalwaterawards.com/

Prakash Govindan's LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/prakash-govindan-87168310/

The 3 VCs that made money in Water Tech (the greatest success being... Gradiant): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqLn4j3w0P0

Full blog article: https://dww.show/how-gradiant-became-the-first-and-only-water-tech-unicorn/

Prakash Govindan on My Climate Journey: https://www.mcjcollective.com/my-climate-journey-podcast/gradiant

🎙️ Subscribe and Listen to the Don't Waste Water Podcast HERE 🎙️

Podcast Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@dwwpodcast

Main Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@AntoineWalterDWW

Smartlink: https://smartlink.ausha.co/dont-waste-water

👋 SOCIAL MEDIA 👋

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/antoinewalter1/

Brian Iversen on the DWW Podcast

🙋 QUESTION: What would you like me to cover next?

⏰ TIME CODES ⏰

00:00 In This Week's Episode

02:29 Will Gradiant be named Water Company of the Year?

04:20 Gradiant's "Special Sauce" by Prakash Govindan

05:46 How big is Gradiant today?

07:06 Where does Gradiant's journey start?

14:33 How did Gradiant strive where Incumbents gave up?

16:38 Why did Gradiant focus on the industrial market?

18:35 What is Turing, Gradiant's new AI spin out?

20:25 When did Gradiant start expanding its water tech portfolio?

23:02 How does Gradiant open a new region?

26:10 The secret to Gradiant's "Proprietary Deals"

30:50 How does Gradiant engineer its "unfair advantage"

31:23 Gradiant's unbelievable employee participation scheme

33:41 What's next after their record-breaking Series D?

36:53 Will Gradiant ever enter the municipal market?

38:04 Are Gradiant's founders ready to pass the baton?

39:53 Gradiant's new verticals: PFAS & DLE

42:20 Gradiant's two aces up their PFAS Removal sleeve

45:33 Gradiant's M&A tricks

48:18 Succeeding with H+E Mission Impossible?

50:07 Gradiant's plans for Europe

50:46 Gradiant's next M&A moves

51:50 What makes Gradiant the 2024 Water Company of the Year?

54:38 Rapid Fire Questions

57:53 7 Insights from the First Ever Water Tech Unicorn

#WaterTech #WaterUnicorn #WaterEntrepreneurship

About this Podcast: Welcome to the (don't) Waste Water podcast! In each episode, Antoine Walter from DWW Media shares water, wastewater & water entrepreneurship stories. This show will teach you the water industry like you've never seen it. If you're asking how the water sector will overcome the water crises ahead, this video is for you.

Hosted by Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

"Gradiant is the Google of the Water Industry" - Prakash Govindan (Gradiant)

25 mars 2024 | 1 min

What will you learn about Gradiant, the first-ever Water Tech Unicorn, if you listen to this week's release of the Podcast? Well, I have seven insights for you, starting with number one:

Innovative Business Model and Focus on Proprietary Solutions: A significant portion of Gradiant's projects (60%) are sole-sourced, meaning they face no competition for these projects because they develop the solution from scratch for their client. This approach underscores the importance of offering bespoke, innovative solutions to clients' unique problems, a strategy that can be crucial for startups, sure, but also for anyone aiming to differentiate themselves in the competitive and sometimes commoditized water market!
Emphasis Rapid Technology Development: Gradiant's success is partly attributed to their philosophy of pushing technology to market quickly, embracing the concept of Minimum Viable Product (MVP). They focus on developing technologies that are good enough to solve the problem at hand and getting them into the field for testing, rather than waiting for a perfect solution. This approach accelerates adoption and allows for real-world feedback to refine that said technology.
Attracting and Retaining Talent through Generous Incentives: If Prakash is so certain that Gradiant's special sauce lies in its people, it's no wonder that Gradiant has set a high industry standard by allocating 7% of the company for employee participation, excluding the founders. This generous approach to employee equity is indicative of the value they place on their team's contribution to the company's success and can serve as a model for how startups might consider structuring their own incentive programs.
Building a Strong Company Culture and Team: I just touched on how Gradiant attributes a large part of their success to the quality of their team and the company culture they have cultivated. Well, this emphasis on assembling a talented and culturally cohesive team highlights the importance of not just technical skills, but also the alignment of values and vision within the company.
Leveraging Acquisitions for Strategic Growth: Gradiant's strategic acquisitions, particularly in markets where organic growth would be too slow or challenging, demonstrate the value of targeted M&A activities to rapidly expand capabilities and market presence. There's again a talent aspect to this, as their approach to keeping and incentivizing the talent within acquired companies further emphasizes the importance of people in Gradiant's growth strategy.
Adapting Business Models to Market Needs: Gradiant's ability to adapt their business model, such as the Build-Own-Operate (BOO) approach that got them started in Oil & Gas and still gets applied today on certain projects, showcases their flexibility in meeting client needs and market demands. This adaptability is a critical strategy for navigating the complex and varied global water market. Note as well that they don't claim they've been super clever in using this approach; they actually "stole" it from their customers! Listen and adapt; there's win-win potential in that.
Emphasis on R&D and Innovation Centers: The establishment of innovation centers in strategic locations underscores Gradiant's commitment to continuous innovation and development of bespoke solutions. This approach not only fuels their pipeline of proprietary technologies but also positions them as a globally local leader in water tech and in the water industry.

I could have taken more, but I think seven is a good chunk to go out and apply, so here you have it. If you think I've missed one that's even more important than those seven, come tell me on LinkedIn or by mail (my mail is in the description).

Full Episode: https://dww.show/how-gradiant-became-the-first-and-only-water-tech-unicorn/

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Did Any VC Investor Ever Make Money in Water Tech?

22 mars 2024 | 15 min

Video Version: https://youtu.be/8hjsmIyC9gg

Did $330 Million Go To Waste in 2023 in Water Tech? 72 Venture Capital deals were closed last year (out of 106 deals overall), which, according to later-stage investors like Brian Iversen, is, at best, a gamble. So is it? Let's find out!

More #water insights? Connect with me on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/antoinewalter1/

#️⃣ All the Links Mentioned in this Video #️⃣

Brian Iversen's article - Why Venture Capital is Failing in Water

Tom Ferguson on the DWW Podcast

🎙️ Subscribe and Listen to the Don't Waste Water Podcast HERE 🎙️

Podcast Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@dwwpodcast

Main Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@AntoineWalterDWW

Smartlink: https://smartlink.ausha.co/dont-waste-water

👋 SOCIAL MEDIA 👋

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/antoinewalter1/

🙋 QUESTION: What would you like me to cover next?

⏰ TIME CODES ⏰

00:00 Growth Capital investment in Water Tech in 2023

01:04 The investor that didn't believe in VC for Water Tech

02:56 The Rules

03:23 VC 1 that may have earned money in Water Tech

04:25 How much?

06:53 VC 2 that made a big buck in Water Tech

08:28 How much?

10:19 VC 3 who won a jackpot in Water Tech

12:08 How much?

13:47 VC 3 reacts (unexpectedly!)

14:20 Summary & Next Steps

🎵 MUSIC 🎵

Don't Start Now (Instrumental) by Dua Lipa, https://t.lickd.co/enLNMWkMoB2 License ID: 28j6xQa8yA9

Rise (Instrumental) by Jonas Blue, https://t.lickd.co/7bPkg1VX2Py License ID: DlJlvwog6OY

Sorry (Instrumental) by Justin Bieber, https://t.lickd.co/eg8RdoR5vOP License ID: qbMDEn2dvy0

Viva La Vida (Instrumental) by Coldplay, https://t.lickd.co/RlK5P5A4nW8 License ID: eJmJAw6RLWo

#WaterInvestment #WaterTech #WaterFinance

About this Channel: Welcome to the (don't) Waste Water channel! In each episode, Antoine Walter from DWW Media shares water, water tech, water finance & water entrepreneurship stories. This show will teach you the water industry like you've never seen it. If you're asking how the water sector will overcome the water crises ahead, this video is for you.

Hosted by Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

S10E20 - An Unpopular & Challenging (yet True?) Take on Venture Capital in Water

20 mars 2024 | 51 min

S10E19 - How to Improve Water Resilience with Israel's National Water Company

13 mars 2024 | 41 min

Water resilience, especially in the face of climate change, demands innovative and strategic solutions. Mekorot, Israel's national water company, exemplifies this by advancing water management and infrastructure to ensure sustainable water supply amidst growing challenges.

More #water insights? Connect with me on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/antoinewalter1/

#️⃣ All the Links Mentioned in this Video #️⃣

Yossi Yaacoby's Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yossi-yaacoby-9b05bb34/

Global Water Summit (including the Water Resilience workshop): https://www.watermeetsmoney.com/

Mekorot's Website: https://www.mekorot.co.il/

OECD's report on Climate Resilient Infrastructure: https://www.oecd.org/environment/cc/policy-perspectives-climate-resilient-infrastructure.pdf

What does resilience mean for urban water services: https://www.jstor.org/stable/26270048

Global Water Resilience Analysis of Water Distribution Systems: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0043135416307473

🎙️ Subscribe and Listen to the Don't Waste Water Podcast HERE 🎙️

Podcast Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@dwwpodcast

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Smartlink: https://smartlink.ausha.co/dont-waste-water

👋 SOCIAL MEDIA 👋

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/antoinewa...

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🙋 QUESTION: What would you like me to cover next?

⏰ TIME CODES ⏰

00:00 In This Week's Episode

02:50 Introducing Water Resilience

04:40 Work with me!

05:14 Introducing Yossi Yaacoby

07:04 Mekorot's Elevator Pitch

09:05 Mekorot's Role in the Water Start-Up Nation

10:40 Water Resilience as a key Pillar of Mekorot's approach

13:57 Climate Change's influence on Infrastructure Planning

16:41 Concrete Examples of Climate Adaptation by Mekorot

21:41 Mekorot's role in the World's Water Resilience

24:01 Mekorot's International Activities

26:19 Nature Based Solutions by Mekorot

28:29 Who will emulate Israel's National Water Law?

30:48 Mekorot's Water Resilience Workshop at the Global Water Summit 2024

32:55 A water resilience workshop: for whom?

34:42 Mekorot's role in the 10 Years to come

36:21 Rapid Fire Questions

#WaterResilience #Mekorot #GWS24

About this Podcast: Welcome to the (don't) Waste Water podcast! In each episode, Antoine Walter from DWW Media shares water, wastewater & water entrepreneurship stories. This show will teach you the water industry like you've never seen it. If you're asking how the water sector will overcome the water crises ahead, this video is for you.

Hosted by Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

S10E18 - How to Overcome the 6 Water Crises Ahead. The Rise of Small Scale Solutions?

6 mars 2024 | 60 min

S10E17 - The Do’s and Don’ts of Rural Water Supply (100 Days after MrBeast's Big Splash)

28 februari 2024 | 63 min

WTF is Happening with Water Stocks?

21 februari 2024 | 15 min

Video Version: https://youtu.be/8hjsmIyC9gg

Diving into the world of water stocks is like riding a roller coaster that's mostly going down. Imagine putting your hard-earned money into companies that promise to clean water or make our water use smarter, only to find out later that your investment has shrunk big time!

And the other way round: imagine you've worked decades to build a water company, and you're turning it public, and its valuation is only going down, and down, and even more down...

I looked into 50-ish listed water tech companies to get to the bottom of what's happening with water stocks. It's not about pointing out any bad apples; it's about understanding a trend where even the companies that were supposed to be the next big thing in water tech are struggling to keep their stock prices from dropping.

Why is this happening? It's not because these companies aren't trying to do great things for our planet. They are!

But turning groundbreaking water technology into a successful business is a long and bumpy road. Plus, many investors jump in excited by the big promises but bail out when they realize it's not a quick win. This leaves these pioneering water tech companies in a tough spot. They need money to grow and make their technologies work on a big scale, but if their stock prices fall, getting that money becomes really hard.

So, what can they, you, we do? We need to get smarter about investing in water tech. We need to understand that backing these companies is not just for a quick profit but for helping them build something that matters - which in turn, don't worry, will turn in money.

#WaterStocks #WaterInvestment #WaterTech

🎙️ PODCAST 🎙️

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S10E16 - The Secret Formula for Profit in Water Tech Ventures (Tom Ferguson's Unfair Advantage)

14 februari 2024 | 69 min

with 🎙️ Tom Ferguson - Founder and Managing Partner @ Burnt Island Ventures

H2Oracle: h2oracle.dww.show

Let's speak: [email protected]

Main Idea: Venture capital plays a crucial role in supporting water entrepreneurs and fostering innovation in the water sector, emphasizing the need for strategic investment and entrepreneurial agility to address the pressing challenges and opportunities within the industry.

Burnt Island Ventures: Burnt Island Ventures is a specialist early-stage fund for the water sector that finds, funds, and supports the best founders in water. Under Tom Ferguson's lead, BIV ignited a "water fire" from its first $30 million fund that closed in early 2022, and now holds stakes in 16 companies (such as ZwitterCo, Aclarity, Ziptility or Daupler)

Key Ideas:

Venture Capital in the Water Sector: Burnt Island Ventures applies venture capital principles to the water industry, aiming to identify and support startups that can significantly impact water sustainability and management.
Entrepreneurial Approach to Water Challenges: Tom Ferguson's journey from the Carbon Disclosure Project to Burnt Island Ventures illustrates the entrepreneurial mindset needed to tackle water-related challenges innovatively.
Tom's unfair advantage: Having intensively worked with water entrepreneurs at Imagine H2O, before and beyond, BIV's Managing Partner knows what to look for in a successful water entrepreneur and hence can improve repeatability in company performances
Investment Philosophy and Strategy: Burnt Island Ventures' strategy focuses on identifying startups with the potential for significant impact, emphasizing the importance of entrepreneurial market fit and the ability to navigate the unique challenges of the water industry.
Future of Water Entrepreneurship: The discussion suggests a growing interest and opportunity in water-related ventures driven by increasing challenges in water management and sustainability efforts.

Summary: Tom Ferguson's discussion provides an in-depth look at how venture capital can catalyze innovation in the water sector. Starting with his background in sustainability and the Carbon Disclosure Project, Ferguson outlines his journey to founding Burnt Island Ventures, motivated by the potential to make a significant impact on water management through strategic investments. The firm's distributed team structure and focus on digital workflows reflect modern business practices, allowing for flexibility and a global perspective on water challenges. Ferguson emphasizes the importance of entrepreneurial market fit and the unique approach Burnt Island Ventures takes in selecting startups for investment, including the critical role of understanding the water sector's complexities and potential for innovation. The conversation also highlights the growing trend of water entrepreneurship, driven by the urgent need for sustainable water solutions and the opportunities for venture capital to support transformative technologies and business models in this space.

Links:

🔗 Have a look at Burnt Island Ventures' website

🔗 Read the BIV Blog

🔗 Listen to the Fundamental Molecule

🔗 Read Brian Iversen's article I refer to in the introduction

🔗 Come say hi to Tom on LinkedIn

🎙️ PODCAST 🎙️

Website: https://dww.show/podcast/

Smartlink: https://smartlink.ausha.co/dont-waste-water

Full Article: https://dww.show/big-data-deeper-insights-crafting-smarter-water-strategies/

👋 SOCIAL MEDIA 👋

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S10E15 - Micro-Dosed Lithium: Tap Water's Health Hack?

7 februari 2024 | 20 min

with 🎙️ Sudhir Gadh - CEO & Founder @ Third Element Water

H2Oracle: h2oracle.dww.show

Let's speak: [email protected]

Micro-dosed Lithium is a surprisingly under-researched field of water science, yet it seems to present a wealth of advantages (as I discovered in this deep dive that kind of fell on me!)

Adding a micro-dose of lithium to tap water could offer numerous health benefits, including improved heart function, bone formation, obesity and diabetes management, reduced risks of Alzheimer's, and more, due to its anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties.

Unique Insights

Lithium, at micro-doses, is linked to a wide array of health benefits, including lower rates of suicide, homicide, and various chronic diseases, without significant reported adverse effects.
Despite the potential health benefits of micro-dosed lithium, there is a notable lack of regulation and research into its use in drinking water, highlighting a gap in public health policies.
The historical stigma associated with lithium, primarily due to its use in treating severe mental disorders, may contribute to the current lack of traction for micro-dosed lithium as a health supplement.

Key Ideas

Health Benefits of Lithium: Studies suggest that micro-doses of lithium in drinking water can lead to lower rates of suicide, homicide, and Alzheimer's disease. It has also been linked to greater overall wellness, enhanced cognitive abilities, and a potential slowing down of aging processes.
Lithium's Regulatory Void: Despite its potential benefits, there are no specific regulations regarding the presence of lithium in drinking water, leading to a lack of awareness and control over its consumption.
Historical Context: The use of lithium in beverages and medical treatments in the past led to both therapeutic benefits and health controversies, influencing current perceptions and regulations of its use.
Current Research and Evidence: Recent studies continue to support the health benefits of lithium, yet there remains a significant gap in research, especially regarding its low-dose effects and potential adverse outcomes.
The Role of Bottled Mineral Water: Some bottled waters naturally contain lithium in micro-doses, yet there is no obligation to label or promote this fact, leaving consumers unaware of their intake.

General Summary

This podcast episode delves into the surprising health benefits of adding a micro-dose of lithium to tap water, ranging from enhanced cardiac function and bone formation to reduced risks of various diseases. The conversation between the host and Sudhir Gadh, a psychiatrist and representative of Third Element Water, explores the scientific studies supporting these claims and the history of lithium's use and perception in society. Despite the evidence, there's a notable lack of regulation and research on lithium's low-dose use in drinking water, raising questions about public health policies. The episode also touches on the historical stigma around lithium, its depiction in popular culture, and the current opportunities and challenges in promoting its health benefits more widely.

Links:

🔗 Have a look at Third Element Water's Website: https://thirdelementwater.com/

🔗 Come say hi to Sudhir Gadh on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sudhir-gadh-844a5419/

🎙️ PODCAST 🎙️

Website: https://dww.show/podcast/

Smartlink: https://smartlink.ausha.co/dont-waste-water

Full Article: https://dww.show/micro-dosed-lithium-tap-waters-health-hack/

👋 SOCIAL MEDIA 👋

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➡️ Useful Links:

Sciens Water: https://www.scienswater.com

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Full Interview - Sudhir Gadh - Micro-Dosed Lithium - Third Element Water

7 februari 2024 | 11 min

The detailed deep dive into micro-dosed lithium with context and research is in this week's main episode, so here's a bonus with my full interview with Sudhir Gadh, the CEO & Founder of Third Element Water.

Main Idea

Adding micro-dosed lithium to drinking water can significantly enhance health, from improving mental well-being and brain health to reducing the risk of chronic diseases, offering a simple yet profound way to boost public health through water mineralization.

Participants

Antoine Walter: Host.
Sudhir Gadh: CEO & Founder @ Third Element Water.

Third Element Water

Third Element Water is a company that specializes in bottling lithiated water found in West Texas. Their mission extends beyond selling water; they aim to raise awareness about the importance of mineral content in water, specifically highlighting lithium for its numerous health benefits.

Unique Insights

Micro-dosed lithium in drinking water has been linked to a range of health benefits, including improved mental health and reduced chronic disease risk, without the high costs or side effects associated with pharmaceutical interventions.
The presence of lithium in water sources worldwide suggests a natural basis for its health benefits, underscoring the potential for widespread, low-cost public health improvements.
The initiative challenges current norms and regulations surrounding drinking water, proposing a shift towards mineral-enhanced water for broader health benefits.

Key Ideas

Health Benefits of Lithium: Lithium, even in micro-doses, can improve electrical balance in the body, potentially offering benefits for conditions like COVID-19 and post-COVID syndrome, enhancing brain health, and promoting overall wellness.
Enhancing Water with Minerals: Sudhir Gadh discusses the concept of not just cleaning water but enhancing it with minerals like lithium, akin to practices with fluoride and chloride, to address deficiencies and improve public health.
Regulatory and Perception Challenges: The initiative faces challenges related to public perception and regulatory norms, as well as the need for education and awareness to overcome skepticism and embrace the health benefits of mineral-enhanced water.
Business and Deployment Strategy: Third Element Water aims to operate both B2C and B2B, selling their lithium-enhancement product directly to consumers and working with municipalities to improve public water supplies.

Key Points

Sudhir Gadh introduces Third Element Water and its focus on lithiated water.
Discussion on the broad health benefits of micro-dosed lithium in water.
Lithium's role alongside other minerals in enhancing water quality.
Challenges in changing public perception and regulatory standards for drinking water.
Strategy for deploying lithium-enhanced water solutions to the public and municipalities.

Quotes

"We are electrical beings, and so small amounts actually improve electrical balance immunologically."
"The latest research...is that there's less not just suicide, homicide, crime, Alzheimer's, psychosis, but there is greater wellness."
"We enhanced salt...we enhanced toothpaste and water now with fluoride. We're just moving to what's sensible."

Counter-Intuitive Facts

Lithium as a Health Enhancer: Commonly associated with treating bipolar disorder at high doses, lithium in micro-doses can significantly improve public health with minimal risk.
Enhancing Water to Improve Health: Unlike the conventional focus on removing contaminants, adding lithium and other minerals to water can address nutrient deficiencies and enhance health.
Accessible and Affordable Health Solution: Contrary to expectations, enhancing water with lithium is a low-cost strategy that could deliver significant health benefits without the need for expensive medical interventions.

Full Article: https://dww.show/micro-dosed-lithium-tap-waters-health-hack/

Hosted by Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

How to Make You Drink Human Waste (w. Better Arguments)

5 februari 2024 | 18 min

Video Version: https://youtu.be/8hjsmIyC9gg

Water reuse is crucial for addressing water scarcity and has many environmental, agricultural, and economic benefits. Yet, despite technological advancements and proven safety, public acceptance remains a challenge due to misconceptions and the importance of communication strategies.

What we'll discuss today:

🥹 The success of water reuse projects is significantly influenced by public perception and media coverage, with emotional appeals often outweighing rational arguments.

💪 Best practices for gaining public acceptance of water reuse include careful framing of the discussion, gradual implementation, and focusing on the treatment process rather than the water's source.

🈷️ The terminology used to describe reused water can greatly affect public acceptance, with terms emphasizing purity and quality being more favorable.

But also:

Technology and Safety of Water Reuse: Advances in water treatment technologies allow for the production of water that exceeds drinking standards, demonstrating that water reuse is a viable solution to water scarcity.
Public Perception and Media Influence: The case of Toowoomba illustrates how public opposition and negative media coverage can derail water reuse projects, emphasizing the need for effective communication and engagement strategies.
Economic and Environmental Benefits: Beyond addressing water scarcity, water reuse offers numerous benefits, including reduced pollution, enhanced agricultural productivity, and groundwater recharge.
Strategies for Public Acceptance: Drawing from cases like Singapore, strategies such as educating the media, using positive terminology, and showcasing successful examples are critical for overcoming resistance.
Importance of Gradual Implementation: Introducing reused water incrementally, starting with non-potable applications or industrial use, can help build public trust and acceptance over time.

#WaterReuse #WastewaterReuse #NEWater #ReclaimedWater #Reuse

🎙️ PODCAST 🎙️

Smartlink: https://smartlink.ausha.co/dont-waste-water

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S10E14 - Big Data, Deeper Insights: Crafting Smarter Water Strategies

1 februari 2024 | 47 min

with 🎙️ Kimberly Nelson - COO @ True Elements

H2Oracle: h2oracle.dww.show

Let's speak: [email protected]

Main Idea: In a rapidly evolving world, integrating and understanding complex environmental data is crucial for effective decision-making. Leveraging state-of-the-art technology and comprehensive data analysis is key to preserving our natural resources, especially water.

True Elements: True Elements is a pioneering water intelligence company. They specialize in aggregating diverse data sets and applying advanced technologies like AI and machine learning to provide comprehensive insights into water quality and related environmental issues. Their unique approach consolidates and normalizes data from various sources, making it visually accessible and actionable for decision-makers in business, government, and non-profits. True Elements' mission is to equip stakeholders with the necessary tools to make informed decisions for water resource management and environmental resiliency.

Unique Insights:

The concept of "Water Intelligence" is emerging as a vital tool in environmental protection, combining advanced technologies with diverse data for better decision-making.
True Elements' approach to environmental data aggregation and analysis represents a significant leap in how we manage and understand water resources.
The partnership between True Elements and Waterkeeper Alliance showcases a model for strategic collaborations in environmental resiliency.

Key Ideas:

Water Intelligence: True Elements introduces "Water Intelligence," a concept combining technology, scientific analysis, and data aggregation to improve water resource management.
Data Aggregation: The company focuses on collecting and normalizing data from numerous sources, offering a comprehensive picture of water resources.
Environmental Impact: True Elements' work highlights the critical need for better data management and analysis to understand and mitigate environmental impacts effectively.
Strategic Partnerships: The collaboration with Waterkeeper Alliance demonstrates a strategic approach to leveraging localized knowledge and data for global environmental protection.
Technology in Environmental Resiliency: The use of AI and machine learning in environmental protection marks a significant advancement in the field.

Summary: In this conversation with Kimberly Nelson, COO of True Elements, we explore the crucial role of technology in environmental protection. True Elements exemplifies innovation in the environmental sector by introducing "Water Intelligence," a concept that blends state-of-the-art technology, scientific analysis, and comprehensive data aggregation. This approach provides decision-makers with actionable insights, significantly improving water resource management. The company's strategic partnership with Waterkeeper Alliance highlights the power of combining local volunteer efforts with advanced data analysis for global environmental impact. Nelson's journey, from her early days in government to her role at Microsoft, and now at True Elements, underscores the growing importance of technology in environmental resiliency. This evolution in data management and analysis, as discussed in the podcast, is critical for understanding and mitigating environmental impacts in an increasingly complex world..

Links:

🔗 Have a look at True Element's website

🔗 Get to understand the Water Intelligence concept

🔗 Start you water stewardship journey with this interactive tool

🔗 Come say hi to Kimberly on Linkedin

🎙️ PODCAST 🎙️

Website: https://dww.show/podcast/

Smartlink: https://smartlink.ausha.co/dont-waste-water

Full Article: https://dww.show/big-data-deeper-insights-crafting-smarter-water-strategies/

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➡️ Useful Links:

Sciens Water: https://www.scienswater.com

"For those people who say, we don't need new innovation, I say, then get out of the way!" - Kimberly Nelson - True Elements

1 februari 2024 | 2 min

S10E13 - The Economic Incentives of the Water Reuse Revolution

26 januari 2024 | 19 min

with 🎙️ Aaron Tartakovsky - CEO & Co-Founder @ Epic Cleantec

H2Oracle: h2oracle.dww.show

Let's speak: [email protected]

Main Idea: Change in water reuse practices is essential due to growing water scarcity and infrastructure challenges. Overcoming public perception and outdated regulations is key to adopting more sustainable water management systems.

Epic Cleantec: Epic CleanTech, co-founded by Aaron Tartakovsky, is a pioneering firm in the water reuse sector. The company specializes in transforming wastewater into reusable water, primarily for urban environments. By utilizing innovative technologies like membrane bioreactors, Epic CleanTech helps buildings and communities reduce their water footprint. Their approach includes decentralized water treatment solutions, promoting sustainability and efficiency in water use.

Unique Insights:

Inertia in Water Management: The podcast highlights the inertia in changing water management practices, rooted in centuries-old centralized systems, which poses a significant challenge to adopting water reuse.
Economic Impacts Drive Change: The realization that water scarcity directly impacts economic activities, like construction and agriculture, is accelerating the adoption of water reuse practices.
Policy as an Enabler and Barrier: Policy plays a dual role - both as a barrier and an enabler in the adoption of water reuse technologies. Proactive policy changes are essential for wider adoption.

Key Ideas:

Centuries-Old Water Systems: Modern water systems are still based on ancient principles, making the shift to water reuse challenging.
Necessity Driving Innovation: Water scarcity is pushing cities and companies to adopt water reuse out of necessity.
Economic Incentives: Financial implications are a significant factor driving the adoption of water reuse systems.
Policy's Role: Existing policies often hinder water reuse; changing them is crucial for progress.
Decentralized vs. Centralized Systems: The coexistence and collaboration of decentralized and centralized water systems are essential for future resilience.
Public Perception: Overcoming public misconceptions about recycled water is crucial for acceptance.
Technological Innovation in Water Reuse: Advancements in technologies like membrane bioreactors and digital solutions are key to efficient water reuse.
Global Interest in Water Reuse Models: There's growing global interest in Epic CleanTech's model, indicating a shift in water reuse perspectives.

Summary: Aaron Tartakovsky, co-founder and CEO of Epic CleanTech, discusses the urgent need for change in water management practices due to the growing global water crisis and outdated infrastructure. He explains that the major obstacle to water reuse is overcoming centuries-old centralized water systems and public perception of wastewater. Tartakovsky emphasizes that necessity, driven by water scarcity impacting economic activities, is pushing cities and companies towards water reuse. He highlights the role of policy in both hindering and enabling water reuse adoption. The conversation delves into the importance of both decentralized and centralized systems working together for resilience, the need to address public misconceptions about recycled water, and the significance of technological innovation in making water reuse more efficient and relevant in various industries. Tartakovsky's insights reveal a growing global interest in water reuse models, indicating a shift in perspectives towards sustainable water management.

Links:

Epic Cleantec's Website

🎙️ PODCAST 🎙️

Website: https://dww.show/podcast/

Smartlink: https://smartlink.ausha.co/dont-waste-water

Full Article: https://dww.show/the-economic-incentives-of-the-water-reuse-revolution/

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➡️ Useful Links:

Sciens Water: https://www.scienswater.com

"The momentum is building: we're seeing a water reuse revolution bubbling up!" - Aaron Tartakovsky - Epic Cleantec

26 januari 2024 | 2 min

S10E12 - The Social Dynamics of Water Reuse

24 januari 2024 | 17 min

with 🎙️ Austin Alexander - VP Sustainability and Social Impact @ Xylem

H2Oracle: h2oracle.dww.show

Let's speak: [email protected]

Main Idea: In a world where technology often outpaces implementation, the real challenge in water reuse lies not in developing new technologies, but in fostering the political will and public acceptance necessary for its widespread adoption. This issue is crucial for addressing the growing global water crisis..

Xylem: Xylem is committed to developing innovative and smart technology solutions to tackle the world's water challenges. The company's focus extends across a comprehensive range of water-related sectors, including treatment, testing, and transportation. With a strong emphasis on sustainability and social impact, Xylem aims to create efficient water management solutions that benefit communities and industries worldwide.

Unique Insights:

Circular Economy and Water Reuse: The podcast highlights a novel approach of framing water reuse within the context of circular economy, emphasizing the sustainable and efficient use of resources.
Public Perception and Policy Change: A key insight is the evolving public perception of water reuse, moving beyond the 'toilet to tap' stigma, and its influence on policy and implementation.
Corporate Responsibility and Sustainability: There is an emerging trend of corporate investment in water sustainability, driven by the realization of water being a critical element for business survival.

Key Ideas:

Water Reuse Technology: The technology for water reuse is largely available and improving, but the challenge lies in implementation, influenced by factors like financing and political will.
Public Perception: Changing public perception towards water reuse, including overcoming misconceptions, is crucial for its broader adoption.
Role of Circular Economy: Incorporating water reuse in the circular economy narrative can be a powerful tool to promote sustainability and efficient resource use.
Corporate Sustainability Initiatives: Major corporations are increasingly investing in water sustainability, recognizing its importance for long-term business viability.
Cost-Effectiveness of Water Reuse: Water reuse is often more affordable than alternatives like desalination, but public awareness of this fact is low.
Role of Digital and Other Technologies: Digital technology plays a significant role in enhancing the efficiency and reducing the cost of water reuse solutions.

Summary: In a detailed conversation with Antoine Walter, Austin Alexander discusses the various aspects of water reuse. He begins by stating that the technology for water reuse is not the major hurdle; rather, it's the implementation, which is hampered by financial constraints and lack of political will. Alexander highlights the shift in public perception towards water reuse, overcoming the 'toilet to tap' stigma, and the importance of educating the public about its benefits. He discusses the role of circular economy principles in redefining water reuse and emphasizes the increasing corporate investment in water sustainability, driven by the realization of its necessity for business survival. Alexander also points out the affordability of water reuse compared to other methods like desalination. He concludes by emphasizing the need for greater public engagement and corporate responsibility in promoting water reuse.

Links:

Xylem's website

🎙️ PODCAST 🎙️

Website: https://dww.show/podcast/

Smartlink: https://smartlink.ausha.co/dont-waste-water

Full Article: https://dww.show/beyond-technology-the-social-dynamics-of-water-reuse/

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➡️ Useful Links:

Sciens Water: https://www.scienswater.com

"Your Duty as a Water Professional is to educate someone who doesn't understand Water Reuse!" - Austin Alexander - Xylem

24 januari 2024 | 2 min

If you're a regular listener of this podcast, I hope I don't need to convince you about the perks of water reuse: it's a widely untapped water resource in an era of growing water scarcity, it's the cheapest of all the unconventional water sources, notably much cheaper than seawater desalination, and it comes with a wealth of welcome side-effects, ranging from much better environmental impact and removal of trace compounds and endocrine disruptors, all the way through resource recovery and circular economy.

Great, that's a very rational story, yet we humans are no rational beings despite what we believe. We're emotional, and the emotions associated with water reuse are, let's face it, tainted. As a result, despite all the good reasons to adopt it, the recent growth we've seen in water reuse's contribution to our water mix might be an optical illusion. It's growing, yes, but a bit like a dragster to which you would have attached a parachute after having placed an elephant in the passenger seat.

So the question becomes: how do we remove that elephant and that parachute? How do we speed up the much-needed adoption of water reuse? And what prevents the elephant from disembarking the car?

To answer these, we'll delve with Austin today into the challenge of fostering the political will and public acceptance necessary for reuse's widespread adoption. We'll follow up on Friday with another brilliant return guest, Aaron Tartakovsky from Epic Cleantec, to look into infrastructure challenges, outdated regulations, and, again, overcoming public perception. And I'll close that tryptic with my own synthesis, leveraging some of my former guest's wisdom - notably David Lloyd Owen and Paul Gagliardo - but also Austin, Aaron, and Henry Charrabé, which you've not heard on that microphone yet, that should be out next Monday and available on my main YouTube channel as well.

Full Episode: https://dww.show/beyond-technology-the-social-dynamics-of-water-reuse/

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Melbourne's $20 Billion Unused Desalination Plant

22 januari 2024 | 12 min

Video Version: https://youtu.be/08GBv_Jd3ck

Melbourne's history is deeply intertwined with its water management. Starting as a small village on the Yarra River's banks, it rapidly grew during the Victorian gold rush, leading to increased water demand. To address this, the city built the world's largest artificial reservoir in 1857, signifying its commitment to resolving water issues.

However, the Millennium Drought in the early 21st century was a stark reminder of Melbourne's water vulnerability. This led to the Victorian Desalination Plant project by AquaSure, comprising Thiess, Macquarie Capital, and Suez Environnement. Despite its ambitious goals, the plant faced construction delays and financial setbacks, and remained largely unused post-completion due to sufficient rainfall.

Melbourne's water strategy is unique, with annual assessments to determine the need for desalinated water and a focus on water reuse and sustainability. Although the plant has been underutilized, it's an essential part of the city's long-term water security plan, as climate change continues to pose challenges. T

he city's proactive and adaptive approach serves as a model for urban water management. Despite being built to address water scarcity, the Victorian Desalination Plant didn't produce water for several years due to adequate rainfall. This shows how weather can dramatically change the need for certain infrastructure. Melbourne orders desalinated water annually, based on forecasts rather than immediate need.

This approach differs from the typical on-demand operation of desalination plants worldwide. Paying for the desalination plant's standby costs, even when not in use, highlights a long-term commitment to water security, emphasizing preparation over immediate utility.

#Desalination #Melbourne #WaterScarcity

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Better understanding Methane emissions

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A Flow of Opportunities: The Unseen Potential in Water Careers

19 januari 2024 | 14 min

with 🎙️ Kendra Morris - President Northeast Region at Veolia North America

H2Oracle: h2oracle.dww.show

Main Idea: Kendra Morris (Veolia) serves as a key supporter and advocate for water professionals, ensuring they understand their critical role in public health and the economy through reliable water and wastewater services.

About Veolia: Veolia is a multinational company with a focus on providing integrated solutions across water management, waste management, and energy services. Operating globally, Veolia is dedicated to sustainable development and innovation in environmental services. They work with communities and industries to manage, optimize and sustainably use resources. Veolia's initiatives include improving access to water, recycling waste to create new materials, and contributing to the circular economy.

Unique Insights:

The concept of a "silver tsunami" where imminent retirements could lead to a significant loss of institutional knowledge within the water industry.
Veolia's approach to community integration by employing residents and thus building trust and enhancing the value of their work locally.
The discrepancy between the financial attractiveness of the water sector jobs and the lack of awareness or interest in these roles.

Key Ideas:

Role of a Champion: Kendra Morris describes her role as empowering Veolia's Northeast region employees to see the broader impact of their daily tasks on public health and local economies. She emphasizes the importance of morale and purpose in their roles.
Workforce Development: Veolia is tackling the 'silver tsunami' of retiring workers by creating internship programs with technical high schools to cultivate a new generation of water professionals.
Industry Awareness: Despite offering higher-than-average wages, the water sector struggles with awareness. Veolia, in particular, faces the challenge of making its brand and the opportunities within the water sector more known.
Veolia Academy: Veolia's commitment to education is reflected in the Veolia Academy, which offers free online courses to anyone interested in water and wastewater professions, aiming to address the educational needs of the future workforce.
Diversity and Inclusion: Kendra Morris outlines Veolia's efforts to promote diversity in the water workforce, including gender diversity and cultural inclusion, which are key to bringing different perspectives and strengthening the sector.

Summary: Kendra Morris explains her role at Veolia as a motivator for water professionals, helping them see the importance of their work in public health and economic development. She discusses the 'silver tsunami'—the mass retirement of skilled workers—and Veolia's response through educational programs like internships for high school seniors. Despite higher wages in the water sector, there's a lack of awareness about career opportunities, something Veolia aims to change through initiatives like Veolia Academy. She emphasizes the need for greater diversity in the workforce to improve performance and representation. The future success in the water industry, according to Morris, hinges on standardized data to inform operational decisions.

Links:

🎙️ PODCAST 🎙️

Website: https://dww.show/podcast/

Smartlink: https://smartlink.ausha.co/dont-waste-water

Full Article: dww.show/new-year-new-you-new-water-job/

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Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dwwpodcast/

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➡️ Useful Links:

Sciens Water: https://www.scienswater.com

Hosted by Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

"If you're certified, you can get a license, and if you get a license, then you're set for your life!" - Kendra Morris - Veolia

19 januari 2024 | 2 min

S10E11 - New Year, New You, New Water Job?

17 januari 2024 | 67 min

with 🎙️ Lyle King - Owner & Director at Influx Search

H2Oracle: h2oracle.dww.show

Main Idea: The water industry faces a significant challenge in attracting and retaining talent, particularly due to a looming generational turnover and the evolving skill sets required in the era of digitization and automation. This challenge calls for a strategic approach in recruitment, focusing on not just acquiring new talent but also on retaining and developing existing employees.

Influx Search: Influx Search is a global recruitment consultancy and headhunting organization specializing in the water industry. They work with a wide range of businesses involved in various water applications, not limited to municipal uses but including industrial water and wastewater, as well as commercial and residential applications. Their focus is not just on recruiting new talent but also on helping businesses retain their existing employees, recognizing the value and cost-effectiveness of employee retention.

Unique Insights:

The water industry faces a 'silver tsunami' with a significant portion of its workforce approaching retirement, creating a knowledge gap.
The future of the water sector includes a shift towards data, digital technologies, and automation, requiring new skill sets.
The concept of employer branding is critical in attracting talent, as many companies struggle to communicate their culture and values effectively.

Key Ideas:

Generational Turnover: The water industry is older by an average of five years compared to other sectors, with about 50% of the UK's water engineering force expected to retire in the next two decades. This creates a large knowledge gap and a need for strategic succession planning.
Skills Shift Towards Technology: There is a growing need for skills in digital technologies and data management in the water sector. Roles related to software engineering and customer success management are becoming more critical.
Challenges in Attractivity: The water sector struggles with attracting diverse and young talent due to image and branding issues. There's a need for more efforts in showcasing the sector's impact and opportunities.
Retention and Recruitment Strategy: Influx Search emphasizes the importance of not just recruiting talent but also retaining them. It's cheaper for organizations to keep their staff happy and engaged than to constantly hire new people.
Employer Branding: Companies need to effectively communicate their culture, values, and benefits to attract the right talent. This includes creating a strong online presence and employer brand.

Summary: We discuss the challenges facing the water industry, particularly in talent management. The sector is experiencing a generational turnover, with a significant portion of the workforce nearing retirement, creating a substantial knowledge gap. The industry also faces challenges in attracting young and diverse talent, partly due to a lack of effective employer branding. The future of the water sector is leaning towards automation and digital technologies, necessitating a shift in required skill sets. Influx Search’s approach to recruitment emphasizes not just hiring new talent but also retaining and developing existing employees, recognizing the cost-effectiveness and value of employee retention.

Links:

Influx Search Website

🎙️ PODCAST 🎙️

Website: https://dww.show/podcast/

Smartlink: https://smartlink.ausha.co/dont-waste-water

Full Article: dww.show/new-year-new-you-new-water-job/

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LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/antoinewalter1/

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➡️ Useful Links:

Sciens Water: https://www.scienswater.com

Teaser - Lyle King - Influx Search

17 januari 2024 | 3 min

Happy New Year! With a new year comes statistically, for one-third of us, the urge to make good resolutions. If you're under 30, it's even more than half the people who make these good resolutions. In maybe or maybe not related news, 50% of people contemplate changing their careers, and two-fifths of them even contemplate so very openly.

What does that mean. Well, if you're in a super sexy working field, that's great news: more people will want to join you. But the other side of that same coin is that if you're on the maybe less sexy end of the market, you better be prepared to struggle.

Where's the water sector on that scale? Well, despite its promising landscape for job seekers, its competitive wages, especially on the lower end of the qualification ladder, its lower educational barriers to entry, and its tremendous opportunities in a variety of roles that are critical to the infrastructure and environmental sustainability, hence I'd say, despite its high purpose, unfortunately, you guessed it right, we the water professionals are not that sexy.

But once we've said that, what do we do about it? Well, this week, I'm releasing two twin episodes. The one you're currently listening to, with Lyle King, and another one you'll find in your hopefully favorite feed, with Kendra Morris. While the latter deals with training more people to water jobs, the former you're again currently listening to, so this one looks in depth at a few key aspects of the job market and its best practices.

If you belong to the people actively or passively looking for new endeavors, you'll learn what skills are the most in-demand right now, what techniques yield the best mid and long-term results in interview processes, and what water field is the hottest.

If you're looking to recruit the best water professionals out there, you'll learn how and where to find the right fits, how Lyle and his peers might be able to help you out, and what to absolutely avoid if you don't want to experience crazy churn rates amongst your candidates.

But what if you're neither recruiting nor seeking to recruit, shall you skip this episode? Of course I'm biased, but in my humble opinion, you really shouldn't. Because as Lyle will explain, the most efficient use of your HR resources is to ensure you retain and optimize your talents. Which involves employer branding, and efficiently articulating company culture and values.

That's a packed schedule, so let's cut to the chase and without further due, let me open the mic' to Lyle King. Remember, if you like this episode, share it with a friend, a colleague your boss or your team, that's the only way I can spread the message and I'll see you on the other side!

Full Episode: https://dww.show/new-year-new-you-new-water-job/

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I Accidentally Found the #1 thing Elon Musk is Missing in my Garden

20 december 2023 | 61 min

Bundling Success: The New Era of Water Service Solutions (w. Alex Buehler)

13 december 2023 | 19 min

with 🎙️ Alex Buehler – President & CEO at Integrated Water Services

💧 Integrated Water Services is a leading US design-build provider of water and wastewater solutions.

▶️ This episode is a Bonus to my deep dive on M&A in the #waterindustry check it out on my YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/W6BmMc6D4Qk?si=xGwH0iEettOcSb_B

▶️ Or read the full blog entry on How to buy a Water Company

🎙️ PODCAST 🎙️

Website: https://dww.show/podcast/

Smartlink: https://smartlink.ausha.co/dont-waste...

👋 SOCIAL MEDIA 👋

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/antoinewa...

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dwwpodcast/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/AntoineWalter7

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DontWasteWat...

🌊 What we covered:

🌐 How the middle market in the water industry represents a significant step above the niche that Central State Water Resources (CSWR) serves, focusing on suburban and ex-urban communities.

🛠️ What the three divisions of the company cover: product solutions, technical and digital services, and field services, providing a comprehensive approach to water treatment.

📦 Why the Blue Box represents a breakthrough in water treatment, offering a modular, scalable, and easy-to-deploy solution.

🔄 How horizontal and vertical integration strategies are key to expanding the company's product line and services.

🔍 What the criteria are for selecting M&A targets, including market size, growth potential, competitive landscape, and unique intellectual property or barriers to entry.

🤝 How the M&A pipeline is aggressively filled with potential acquisitions through both organic engagement and strategic searching using tools like IQ and pitch books.

💼 Why engaging with entrepreneurs and sole proprietors requires a nuanced approach due to their businesses often not being prepped for sale.

📈 What a scorecard system looks like for evaluating acquisition opportunities, ranking them based on strategic fit and financial metrics.

🎯 How growth ambitions are fueled by a mix of organic growth and strategic acquisitions, aiming for a 10x increase within a four-year period.

🔍 What the company's core strategic imperatives and enablers are, driving towards financial objectives like revenue, EBITDA, and return on invested capital.

📢 How the current pace of 4-6 acquisitions per year aligns with the company's operational capabilities and growth targets.

🚀 Why the end goal is to build a water/wastewater treatment and water reuse platform with national coverage, focusing on the middle market that is often overlooked.

🔔 Subscribe and Stay Informed:

Don't miss out on our deep dives into water industry trends, strategies, and technologies. Subscribe to "Don't Waste Water" for more content that quenches your thirst for knowledge!

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The Big Shift: How Consolidation is Reshaping Water Services (w. Tom Rooney)

6 december 2023 | 25 min

with 🎙️ Tom Rooney – Chairman at Sciens Water

💧 Sciens is a research-driven investment fund that identifies uncovered, under-researched, or misunderstood water sector opportunities that are undercapitalized.

▶️ This episode is a Bonus to my deep dive on M&A in the #waterindustry check it out on my YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/W6BmMc6D4Qk?si=xGwH0iEettOcSb_B

▶️ Or read the full blog entry on How to buy a Water Company

🎙️ PODCAST 🎙️

Website: https://dww.show/podcast/

Smartlink: https://smartlink.ausha.co/dont-waste...

👋 SOCIAL MEDIA 👋

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/antoinewa...

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dwwpodcast/

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In this eye-opening episode of "Don't Waste Water," we delve into the dynamic world of water services, examining the significant shift brought about by the consolidation of the industry. Join us as we explore the intricate dance of mergers and acquisitions reshaping the landscape of water utilities.

🌊 Key Insights:

Unraveling the Consolidation Trend: We dissect why major players like Veolia and Xylem are acquiring companies like Suez and Vauquois, and what this means for the future of water services.

Fragmentation vs. Integration: Discover how the U.S. water infrastructure's profound fragmentation contrasts starkly with the emerging trend of consolidation. What are the implications for small and large utilities alike?

Technology Roll-Down: Learn about innovative approaches like the 'Blue Box' technology, transforming the accessibility of advanced water treatment for smaller utilities.

Regulatory Perspectives: We delve into the role of regulators in this consolidation trend, balancing the scales between progress and fair competition.

🔍 In-Depth Analysis:

Guest Insights: Hear from industry experts who provide their unique perspectives on how these changes are influencing the water sector's strategic, operational, and technological directions.

Impact on Communities: Understand how these shifts impact local communities, from the quality of water services to environmental sustainability.

🌐 Global Context:

We broaden the scope to understand how these trends in the U.S. align with global movements in the water sector.

🌟 For Whom?

Whether you're a C-suite executive, investor, water entrepreneur, or simply a water-conscious citizen, this episode offers valuable insights into the changing tides of water services.

📈 The Big Picture:

By the end of this episode, you'll have a comprehensive understanding of the current state and potential future of the water industry amidst this 'Big Shift.'

🔔 Subscribe and Stay Informed:

Don't miss out on our deep dives into water industry trends, strategies, and technologies. Subscribe to "Don't Waste Water" for more content that quenches your thirst for knowledge!

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These 5 Water Technologies Mitigate CO2 Emissions 5000x Better than Trees

29 november 2023 | 20 min

We think aout carbon emissions when we fly, not when we flush! Let me coin that phrase, which opens up my reflection this week on a water professional's carbon impact and the ways to mitigate it through deploying water technologies.

Let's dive into the heart of the water sector's role in CO2 emissions and explore innovative technologies that could drastically reduce our carbon footprint.

I share my personal journey of grappling with the guilt of my carbon emissions and how it led me to discover solutions far more effective than planting trees.

First, let's summarize Xylem, Cambi and Global Water Intelligence's findings on the Water Sector's Carbon Footprint. It surprisingly compares almost one to one in CO2 equivalent emissions with the aviation industry.

Then, let's explore 5 Carbon Mitigation Strategies in the Water Sector:

1️⃣ Leak Reduction - Discussing the impact of 126 billion cubic meters of lost drinking water annually and how pressure management can significantly reduce this loss and the associated carbon impact.

2️⃣ Smart Pumps: How optimizing pumps with AI and machine learning can slash energy use and CO2 emissions.

3️⃣ Biogas Enhancement: The potential of anaerobic digestion and thermal hydrolysis processes in wastewater treatment plants to produce biogas, replacing fossil fuels. (And what I used to do kind of wrong in that field)

4️⃣ Aeration Optimization: The role of AI in optimizing the activated sludge process, reducing energy consumption, and mitigating nitrous oxide emissions.

5️⃣ Advocacy and Policy Influence: The importance of regulations and incentives in driving sustainable practices in the water sector.

I'm closing on a personal touch, reflecting on the impact of the Water circus on the road twice a week all year long. It's great if the water sector compensates its emissions, but what if it didn't create them in the first place? Let's set ourselves on the path to 2050!

Bottom line; think critically about your own carbon footprint and the broader implications of everyone's daily water use. Let's all challenge conventional ideas and present an opportunity for water professionals and enthusiasts to contribute to a more sustainable future.

Additional Resources

The power of MABR

Fighting Nitrous Oxide emissions in Wastewater Treatment

Cutting the Water Sector's carbon emissions in half (at no cost)

The potential of the Thermal Hydrolysis Process

Following my tracks on the IOT Use Case Podcast (together with Aerzen)

The full blog article on this week's episode covering the Water Sector's Carbon Impact

⬇️ In this Episode ⬇️

00:00 My 12-Ton CO2 Problem

00:50 The Superpower of Water Pros

01:40 Where do the Water Sector's CO2 emissions come from?

02:51 Water Technology n°1

06:26 Water Technology n°2

09:33 Water Technology n°3

12:43 Water Technology n°4

16:11 Water Technology n°5

19:15 Conclusion

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S10E10 - How to Buy a Water Company (and Turn in a Profit)

22 november 2023 | 23 min

with 🎙️ Tom Rooney - Chairman at Sciens Water

with 🎙️ Alex Buehler - CEO at Integrated Water Services

with 🎙️ Damian Georgino - Partner at Womble Bond Dickinson

***

🌊 Dive into the riveting world of water company acquisitions in this episode of "Don't Waste Water," where we unravel the strategies behind turning water utilities into profitable ventures.

🚰 Featuring insights from industry giants like American Water, Essential Utilities, and Central States Water Resources (CSWR), we explore their aggressive M&A tactics. American Water's staggering 245 acquisitions since 2000 and CSWR's recent 83 deals in a single year are just the tip of the iceberg.

🔍 Uncover the surprising reason behind the U.S.'s fragmented water utility sector. With over 50,000 water systems and 35,000 wastewater systems, many small-scale utilities are failing to meet health standards. This episode sheds light on the urgent need for consolidation and improvement.

💡 Learn from Tom Rooney, Alex Buehler, and Damian Georgino about the transformative power of scale in improving water utility operations. Discover how larger entities can implement advanced technologies to enhance service quality and ensure safer water for all.

🧐 Examine the potential risk of monopolization in the water industry. We debunk myths and provide a reality check on the pace of consolidation in the U.S. compared to other countries like the UK.

🎙️ Special guests Alex Loucopoulos and Tom Rooney from Sciens Water share their expertise in creating efficient water utility ecosystems. Delve into their innovative approach of "rolling up" service providers and "rolling down" technologies to bridge the gap in the water sector.

🔄 Explore the concept of "tech aggregation" in the water industry. Companies like Integrated Water Services are leading the charge in bundling and scaling up solutions to serve the middle market effectively.

🌐 Go beyond the surface with discussions on the strategies of other leading companies in the sector, including Evoqua, Nijhuis Saur Industries, and SKion Water.

🚀 Wrap up with a forward-looking perspective from Tom Rooney, predicting more consolidation in the water industry and its surrounding ecosystem.

🎙️ PODCAST 🎙️

Website: https://dww.show/podcast/

Smartlink: https://smartlink.ausha.co/dont-waste-water

Full Article:

👋 SOCIAL MEDIA 👋

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/antoinewalter1/

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Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DontWasteWaterPodcast

➡️ Useful Links:

Sciens Water: https://www.scienswater.com

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My 5 Killer Water Technology Breakthroughs from Aquatech Amsterdam 2023

15 november 2023 | 24 min

Fresh from the bustling halls of Aquatech Amsterdam 2023, the water sector's epicenter for cutting-edge insights, here's my personal selection of the water technologies you need to hear about. There's a bit of disruption, a bit of translation, a tad of sturdiness, and a good piece of grit, entrepreneurship, and innovation. Shall we look into it?

This recap from Aquatech Amsterdam 2023 covers the most exciting water technologies on display at the event. In the video, I go through my top five picks, discussing innovative technologies such as the smart removal of cellulose from wastewater by Purgatoria, Zwitterco's brand new reverse osmosis membrane technology, or BluElephant's take at the good old MBR.

The episode also highlights emerging trends in the industry and includes interesting discussions with representatives from various companies, making it essential viewing for professionals in the water sector.

Check out my full article on Aquatech Amsterdam 2023

🎙️What I covered 🎙️

🌊 How Aquatech Amsterdam became the nexus for groundbreaking water technologies in 2023.

🚀 Why the "Cool Kids" of water tech, like Aquacycl and Membrion, are rapidly expanding and innovating.

🌐 What ZwitterCo's revolutionary RO membrane means for the future of water treatment.

🤖 How ZwitterCo is transforming water desalination with their cutting-edge technology.

💡 Why BluElephant's autonomous, off-grid MBR is a game-changer in wastewater treatment.

🌿 What makes BluElephant's MBR unique: combining simplicity, autonomy, and affordability.

🎯 How serendipitous encounters at Aquatech led to unexpected and valuable insights.

🌱 Why green lime innovation could significantly impact carbon emissions in the water sector.

🧠 How Aquatech's unique environment fosters specific and highly relevant conversations.

🔄 What the innovative technology from Purgatoria reveals about recycling toilet paper.

💪 How Purgatoria's technology can boost the efficiency of wastewater treatment plants.

🌍 Why Purgatoria's approach to cellulose recovery could be a major step towards environmental sustainability.

📈 How Aquatech Amsterdam exemplifies the evolution of water marketing and industry trends.

⬇️ In this Episode ⬇️

00:00 A Warm Welcome from Aquatech Amsterdam 2023

0040 5 - the Cool Kids are growing!

02:16 4 - A Technological leap from ZwitterCo?

07:16 3 - The Ideal Decentralized MBR?

12:15 2 - The Best Water Tradeshow?

16:50 1 - The OTHER treasure in your toilets

22:32 Conclusion

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S10E9 - Coding the Future: Ginkgo Bioworks' Synthesis of Biology and Technology

8 november 2023 | 35 min

with 🎙️ Kimberly Kupiecki - Senior Director at Gingko Bioworks

💧 Ginkgo Bioworks is the software company for biology, coding DNA to create custom cells that solve real-world problems.

What we covered:

🔬 Why Ginkgo Bioworks is like programming life itself - Kimberly Kupiecki unveils the art of coding cells, not just computers.

💧 How the water sector intersects with synthetic biology - Ginkgo Bioworks eyes growth in the biosensor space.

🏭 What's beyond water - Kupiecki's role spans from industrial applications to dabbling in pharmaceuticals.

🧪 How Ginkgo's foundry's 'secret sauce' lies in high-throughput screening, turning outliers into discoveries.

🌱 Why the synthesis of nature and science at Ginkgo could revolutionize materials, starting with the very building blocks.

🚀 How agility in assimilating feedback and implementing rapid changes marks the cultural shift from DuPont to a scale-up.

🌱 What aggressive 2025 goals balance the scale-up's growth with the necessity of becoming earnings positive.

💡 Why building intellectual property (IP) adds layers of downstream value without expanding physical footprints.

🎢 How embracing risk leads to personal expansion, a sentiment echoed in Kimberly Kupiecki's mentoring approach.

🌟 Why "The Beautiful Mess" captures the essence of juggling motherhood and a career in male-dominated industries.

🌱 What innovative approaches to carbon reduction excite industry leaders? Kimberly Kupiecki reveals a game-changing negative carbon mechanism.

🤝 How stakeholder insight forms the backbone of success; Kimberly Kupiecki emphasizes learning from stakeholder dynamics.

📘 Why endorsements and marketing strategies are crucial for launching your book; Kimberly Kupiecki shares her pre-launch jitters.

🔥 ... and of course, we concluded with the 𝙧𝙖𝙥𝙞𝙙 𝙛𝙞𝙧𝙚 𝙦𝙪𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨 🔥

🔗 Have a look at Gingko Biowork's website

🔗 Come say hi to Kimberly on Linkedin

➡️ Check out the entire article on Gingko Bioworks

➡️ Reach out to me: [email protected]

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What is the Price of a Human Life? Study reveals.

1 november 2023 | 18 min

Will Gradiant Succeed with H+E where SUEZ, Stulz, and RENA failed?

25 oktober 2023 | 13 min

Ever seen a family drama as intense as 'Game of Thrones'? Well, Hager und Elsässer (H+E) has had its share of suitors and heartbreaks, and it's about to get more dramatic.

🤯 Get ready for an M&A rollercoaster that'll leave you hanging on to your seat. Ever wondered why H+E, a company that's been around since 1932, has changed hands like a hot potato? This video deep-dives into the tumultuous journey of H+E—its rise, fall, and limbo.

🇫🇷🇩🇪 From French conglomerates like SUEZ to German family businesses, H+E's narrative is rich in culture clashes and financial woes. Yet, something remains intriguingly 'odd' about the company.

👀 Gradiant has just walked into the arena with a fresh MIT vibe. Will they be the ones to finally sweep H+E off its feet, or are we setting the stage for another M&A tragedy? 🤔

🔑 What's Inside:

A tearjerker of an adoption story that starts with Stulz-Planaqua and Hager und Elsässer.

M&A Blunders & Culture Clashes: SUEZ, Degrémont, RENA - the list is long!

The billion-dollar question: Is H+E's technology misunderstood or just too ahead of its time?

Why Gradiant’s latest move to acquire 51% of H+E is the plot twist we've been waiting for.

💥 Don't miss out on this water-sector saga that could teach HBO a thing or two about plot twists! 🛎 Subscribe now and hit that bell!

👉 Here are the podcast episodes mentioned in today's video:

SKion Water / Reinhard Hübner: https://dww.show/the-7-secrets-of-the-water-company-of-the-year-you-shall-absolutely-steal/

Aquarion / Karl Michael Millauer: https://dww.show/the-fascinating-story-of-the-man-who-has-35-water-companies-to-sell/

Supercritical Water Oxidation / Kobe Nagar: https://dww.show/is-supercritical-water-oxidation-a-solution-for-pfas-energy-more/

⬇️ In this Episode ⬇️

00:00 When Hager und Elsässer was up for Adoption

01:22 Hager und Elsässer's Story

03:04 Cultural Clashes between France and Germany

03:57 H+E's story (continued)

04:21 Cash Troubles and Insolvency

05:54 Aquarion: a New Hope for Hager und Elsässer?

07:29 H+E and Stulz-Planaqua followed different paths

09:29 Gradiant: the Last Hope for Hager und Elsässer?

12:04 A great M&A case study!

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S10E8 - Is Big Media Failing Us, or Are We Failing the Water Folks?

18 oktober 2023 | 22 min

with 🎙️ J. Carl Ganter - Managing Director at Circle of Blue

💧 Circle of Blue is an award-winning team of leading journalists, scientists, data experts, communications designers, and facilitators that reports challenges and solutions to global resource issues with emphasis on the fierce and growing competition between Water, food, and energy in a changing climate.

***

We're diving deep into a topic that's been swept under the rug for far too long: the media's coverage of water issues—or lack thereof. Are journalists dropping the ball, or is the water sector failing to make its case?

📌 WHAT YOU'LL LEARN:

✅ Why mainstream media often overlook critical water issues.

✅ How the water sector struggles with its own narrative.

✅ The role of specialized press bodies like Circle of Blue.

✅ Actionable steps YOU can take to make a difference!

✅ The 6-Step Framework to make journalists and Politicians Craving for the developments of your Water Story

🎙️ PODCAST 🎙️

Website: https://dww.show/podcast/

Smartlink: https://smartlink.ausha.co/dont-waste-water

Full Article: https://dww.show/is-big-media-failing-us-or-are-we-failing-the-water-folks/

👋 SOCIAL MEDIA 👋

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/antoinewalter1/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dwwpodcast/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/AntoineWalter7

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DontWasteWaterPodcast

➡️ Useful Links:

Sciens Water: https://www.scienswater.com

Circle of Blue: https://www.circleofblue.org/

⬇️ In Today's Episode:

00:00 We Have a Water Problem

01:10 Big Media and Water Pros: Total Strangers?

02:06 Introducing: J. Carl Ganter (Circle of Blue)

04:52 How to better cover the Story of our Lifetime?

07:07 How to Personalize the Water Narrative?

08:21 The Heartbreaking Story of Pesticides in Nebraska

10:22 How to impress a Congressman on a Plane?

12:55 How to get water into local news?

14:39 What to learn from Matt Damon: The Movie Trailer Magic

15:56 The 6-Step Framework to Make your Story Stick

17:58 Sponsor: Sciens Water

19:13 What is Circle of Blue?

21:21 Conclusion

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The 6-Step Framework to Make your Water Story Haunting

18 oktober 2023 | 2 min

In a world saturated with content, what makes a good movie trailer stand out? The answer lies in a potent blend of psychology, novelty, and familiarity. Trailers like Steven Spielberg's "Jaws" and George Lucas's "Star Wars" have set the gold standard, employing a mix of well-known tropes and groundbreaking elements to captivate audiences.

Marvel Studios has taken this to the next level, mastering the "novel yet familiar" approach and leveraging psychological principles like the Zeigarnik effect to leave audiences wanting more.

And if trailers and teasers have proven to be a game-changer for dozens and dozens of movies, beyond the silver screen, the principles that make them compelling can be applied to our everyday storytelling, whether it's a business presentation, a social media post, or a pitch to a local journalist to "news hack" a Global Trend.

By understanding the psychology and strategies behind successful movie trailers, we can craft narratives that not only capture attention but also sustain it, making our stories as unforgettable as the films they promote.

And coincidence or not, if you've ever followed my advice and read the Worth of Water book by Gary White and Matt Damon - who should know one thing or two about movie trailers - the opening chapter exactly follows the 6-step framework that Phill Agnew lays out.

Step 1 - Identify the Core Message

That's the narrative we discussed with Carl minutes ago; in the example of the Water.org founders' book, that's the win-win-win perspective of achieving Water for all.

Step 2 - Blend Novelty and Familiarity

In theory, that's Star Wars combining the Hero's Journey with Space Opera. In the case of our book, that's a water charity, but combined with a bank and Nobel-prize-winning microcredit strategy.

Step 3 - Cast for Impact

Matt Damon, do I need to add anything here? Well actually yes, because it's not just the impact of a big name; it's also a blend of novelty and familiarity, as just explained. The well-known Matt Damon, but not cast as Jason Bourne but as an NGO founder with a high drive for impact.

Step 4 - Craft the Narrative Arc

Remember how Carl explained minutes ago how two pictures ended the Vietnam War? Or the heartbreaking story of the parents of the deceased football player in Nebraska? In Water.org's book, it's Matt Damon getting to know Wema along her long road to collect Water for her family.

Step 5 - Zeigarnik Effect

Don't close the action; let things open. That happens several times in Matt Damon and Gary White's story. But we had an even greater example with Carl's congressman story: when he says "I work in water security. And I leave it at that." the congressman can't resist the urge to get to know what happens next.

Step 6 - Choose the Release Timing Wisely

For the "Worth of Water" book, that was right in time to get people buzzing about it before the UN Water Conference, and guess who then got to feature in the opening segment of that Conference - probably also the only one worth watching? Along the same lines, that's word for word Carl's advice of picking the right story at the right time and constantly being on the lookout for planets aligning with that regard.

So here you go, a bullet-proofed 6-step framework to get your local news reporter intrigued or to shed new light on your water innovation's impact.

➡️ Check out the entire article on how to finally build the Water Narrative

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S10E7 - The REAL Ocean Killer (Microplastics) is in your Closet!

11 oktober 2023 | 27 min

👀 Think plastic straws are the ocean's worst enemy? Think again! The real culprit is hiding in plain sight—in your closet! In this eye-opening episode, we sit down with Adam Root, the CEO and founder of Matter, a game-changing company tackling microplastics at the source - i.e., the washing machine. Plus, we're diving deep into the facts, figures, and future solutions that could save our oceans. 🌊

🎙️ Featuring:

Adam Root, CEO & Founder of Matter

Hosted by Antoine Walter, your go-to water industry expert

📚 Topics Covered:

1️⃣ The Invisible Threat: What are Microplastics?

2️⃣ The Source: Your Washing Machine's Dirty Secret

3️⃣ Matter's Innovative Solutions: From Laundry to Legislation

4️⃣ The Global Impact: Legislation, R&D, and Education

5️⃣ Your Role: Simple Steps to Make a Difference

🔗 Links & Resources:

Check out Matter's hardware filter, Gulp: https://gulp.online

A big thank you to this episode's sponsor, Sciens Water: https://www.scienswater.com

👇 Why You Can't Miss This Episode:

📈 Investment Insights: Learn why tackling microplastics is not just an environmental need but a business opportunity.

🌍 Global Perspective: Understand the scale of microplastics pollution and what's being done globally.

🛠️ Tech Talk: Get the inside scoop on Matter's groundbreaking technology.

🎧 Also Available as a Podcast:

Find this episode on your favorite podcast platform, including Apple Podcasts and Spotify

👉 Subscribe & Ring the Bell 🛎️:

Don't miss out on our latest episodes, investment tips, and water industry deep dives. Subscribe and hit the notification bell now!

👇 Join the Conversation 👇

What are your thoughts on microplastics? Have you made any changes to reduce your microplastic footprint? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

🎙️ PODCAST 🎙️

Website: https://dww.show/podcast/

Smartlink: https://smartlink.ausha.co/dont-waste-water

👋 SOCIAL MEDIA 👋

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/antoinewalter1/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dwwpodcast/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/AntoineWalter7

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DontWasteWaterPodcast

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S10E6 - The $500 Million Bio-based Bet: Kemira's Growth Accelerator Unveiled

4 oktober 2023 | 43 min

with 🎙️ Tuija Pohjolainen-Hiltunen - President Industry and Water Segment at Kemira

💧 Kemira markets safe and sustainable chemistries that are part of a good life, ensuring hygiene, safe water, food safety, and more.

What we covered:

🌍 How Kemira is revolutionizing water treatment with a purpose-driven approach to chemistry.

🤝 Why the power of partnerships is non-negotiable for Kemira's success.

💡 What sets Kemira apart: a relentless focus on innovation to solve real-world challenges.

♻️ Why Kemira is a game-changer in the circular economy, turning waste into valuable resources.

🔗 How Kemira's multi-faceted solutions go beyond just chemistry, incorporating digital tools and AI for optimization.

🎯 What makes Kemira a leader in customer-centric approaches, tackling new challenges as regulations evolve.

📈 How Kemira Beat the Odds: Navigating through COVID-19 and volatile markets to achieve impressive growth.

🌍 Why Global Reach Matters: Dominating Europe and North America while eyeing expansion in China.

🔬 What's ViviMag: Introducing new applications like phosphorus recovery and PFAS treatment.

🌿 How to Go Green: Transitioning from 60% virgin materials to bio-based alternatives.

🤖 Why ChemConnect is a Game-Changer: Leveraging predictive analytics and AI for smarter water treatment.

🚀 How Reliability Fuels Growth: Winning customer trust through consistent delivery, even in crises.

🎯 How Customer Needs Drive Innovation: Kemira's quest to replace fossil-based materials without compromising performance.

🤝 Why Partnerships Matter: Leveraging collaborations and a $500M growth accelerator to fuel bio-based product revenue by 2030.

🌿 What "Walking the Talk" Means: Moving beyond buzzwords to make concrete steps in sustainability and decarbonization.

📊 How Metrics Define Success: Aligning personal KPIs with business targets for a win-win outcome.

🌊 Why Water is the New Cool: Observing a surge in industry excitement and collaboration, especially in digital solutions.

🔥 ... and of course, we concluded with the 𝙧𝙖𝙥𝙞𝙙 𝙛𝙞𝙧𝙚 𝙦𝙪𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨 🔥

🔗 Have a look at Kemira's website

🔗 Come say hi to Tuija on Linkedin

➡️ Check out the entire article on how Kemira makes a $500 Million biobased bet

➡️ Reach out to me: [email protected]

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Sipping the Champagne of Drinking Water with THE Water Sommelier: Milin Patel

23 september 2023 | 25 min

S10E5 - How Open Innovation Fueled Evoqua's Resurrection

14 september 2023 | 55 min

with 🎙️ Ann Perreault - Vice President for Strategic Marketing & Growth at Evoqua Water Technologies

with 🎙️ Joshua Griffis - Director of Technology & Innovation at Evoqua Water Technologies

💧 Evoqua is a global leader in helping municipalities and industrial customers protect and improve the world's most fundamental natural resource: water

What we covered:

💧 How net water positivity is the new gold standard, making a splash beyond just offsetting usage to actively generating more water.

🤝 Why strategic IP development safeguards the partnerships Evoqua is building in the industry, making it more than just a game of patents.

📈 What the real playbook behind Evoqua's acquisitions reveals: it's not just R&D expenditure but a broader, synergistic growth strategy.

🤝 How synergy supercharges tech: Joshua and Ann discuss that when two technologies collide, they often create something greater than their individual parts.

🎯 What every water business needs to grasp: Customer needs are like shifting sands, and understanding emerging trends and problems is key to hitting the target, says Ann.

📈 Why mergers and acquisitions aren't just Wall Street buzzwords: M&A is woven into Evoqua's strategy as a critical channel for forging significant partnerships, according to both interviewees.

🌍 How Evoqua's footprint is more global than you think: Contrary to popular belief, Ann implies Evoqua's global presence is often underestimated.

🔍 Why profitability is not an end but a means for Evoqua, enabling them to engage in ambitious, industry-shaping initiatives.

💡 How innovation is the new black: Ann emphasizes that sustainability isn't a sideshow; it's the main act, embedded at the core of impactful innovations.

🎯 Why "de-risking" is your new buzzword: Both speakers agree that helping companies "de-risk" by doing the heavy lifting on feasibility and validation can fast-track adoption.

🤔 What failing fast really means at Evoqua: If you're not failing, you're not learning—this mantra isn't just for startups; it's infiltrating the big players too.

📊 How the Product Vitality Index is your new KPI: Forget conventional metrics; Ann suggests that measuring where your revenue comes from in terms of innovation investment is where the future lies.

🎯 How customer insights aren't a one-and-done deal: Diving deep to truly understand customer problems can reveal the nuanced layers beneath.

🌍 Why location flexibility enriches talent pools: restricting staff to physical locations is yesterday's news, says Perreault, when a world of talent is just a Zoom call away.

📈 What scaling your operation really takes: The journey of scaling a function often throws more curveballs than you initially thought.

🌿 Why sustainability is more than a buzzword: it's about achieving homeostasis with your environment for the long haul, not just slapping a green label on things.

🔥 ... and of course, we concluded with the 𝙧𝙖𝙥𝙞𝙙 𝙛𝙞𝙧𝙚 𝙦𝙪𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨 🔥

🔗 Have a look at Evoqua's website

🔗 Come say hi to Ann on Linkedin

🔗 Then make sure to also connect with Joshua on Linkedin

➡️ Check out the entire article on how Evoqua applies Open Innovation

➡️ Reach out to me: [email protected]

Hosted by Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

[Extract] "Ask Twice. And then, ask again! " - Ann Perreault - Joshua Griffis - Evoqua Water Technologies

14 september 2023 | 2 min

Open Innovation is not the only link between last week's conversation with Max Storto from the Xylem Innovation Labs, and this week's deep dive with Ann and Joshua. Indeed, in just a minute, we'll delve into a paradigm-shifting model we touched on last week: Open Innovation.

To ensure we have a common understanding of the term, Open Innovation fundamentally alters how companies think about their innovation process. If you remember my conversation with Glenn Vicevic from Veolia, he defined Open Innovation as Innovation that's not closed. We had a good laugh, still, it's true: the Idea is to break open the former R&D silos, to enter the age of porous boundaries and shading frontiers, where external ideas and technologies flow into the organization, and internal ideas flow out into the broader ecosystem.

Long before this got to be a thing in the Water Sector, we've seen companies like Procter & Gamble, flipping their R&D approach to connect with external innovators. They sourced ideas from around the globe, leading to breakthroughs like the Swiffer.

To take a more techie reference, consider how Apple's App Store empowers an army of developers to build upon iOS, creating value for both Apple and the broader user community. It's a win-win scenario, optimizing resources, and accelerating market-ready solutions.

But why is this a pivotal discussion for the water sector? Open Innovation could be the key to unlocking new technologies, sustainable practices, and financial models that address pressing water issues - you know, the ones that just got evaluated as a multi-trillion dollars business opportunity by CDP - if you missed that one, go check my YouTube channel for more.

But for you listening to this, why does all of that matter: well, companies that successfully adopt Open Innovation practices could leapfrog in growth and impact. They could be faster to ride trend waves, have a more efficient use of their capital, put technology adoption on steroids, and if you're a regular of this podcast, you know how that's the game changer.

Hence if, for sure, everything can't be painted in pink, and silver bullets still don't exist, getting a glimpse of the way Evoqua leveraged open innovation strategies to inspire your own innovation approaches is quite a generous gift from Ann and Joshua, which really didn't hold back when it comes to sharing.

You'll leave this episode understanding the vital metrics and benchmarks to assess Open Innovation opportunities, as well as actionable tips for investors, in-house strategists, and entrepreneurs keen to leverage this model before it becomes an industry norm.

Remember, if you appreciate the value shared today and for free, you can help me out tremendously by sharing this episode with a friend, a colleague, your boss, or your team, if you're new here make sure to subscribe, I insist, it's entirely free, and it helps me to keep getting incredible guests on that microphone. Last word before we take off, if you're in New York on the 19th of September and you like free sharing of incredible water value, you may want to join the Rethinking Water Conference at the Forum at Columbia University, the link is in the description, and I'll be there the entire day to record some more interviews. Come share a recycled wastewater beer with me in the evening, and I'll meet you on the other side!

➡️ Check out the entire article on how Evoqua deployed Open Innovation to turn the tides!

Hosted by Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

S10E4 - Why would Xylem grow 10 Wonder Kids from 5 to 50 Clients?

6 september 2023 | 64 min

with 🎙️ xStorto - Lead Innovation Analyst at Xylem Innovation Labs

💧 Xylem is one of the largest water and wastewater technology companies globally and follows the simple motto: "Let's solve water"

What we covered:

🤝 How the Xylem Innovation Labs explore partnerships with early-stage technology providers to enhance offerings and improve portfolio stacks

🚀 What the main tracks within Xylem Innovation Lab entail, from the commercial accelerator focusing on client growth to the early-stage incubation program and open innovation ecosystem targeting specific water-related issues.

⚽ How Max likens his role in scouting potential technology providers to a talent scout in sports, seeking the most promising innovations that align with Xylem's capabilities and customer challenges.

🌍 What main challenges Xylem's customers face, such as decarbonizing the water sector, industrial treatment solutions, decentralized treatment, and addressing contaminants of emerging concern like PFAS and microplastics.

🌊 Why Xylem is looking into areas like digital workforce solutions and flooding issues, aiming to find innovative ways to address these significant concerns in the water management industry.

🎙️ How Max Storto's dynamic and multifaceted role at Xylem brings both planned goals and unexpected chaos into his daily life.

🗳️ Why political work with the Iowa Democratic Party led Max to engage in grassroots conversations, touching on critical water issues in both local and federal contexts.

🚰 How the state of water networks in the U.S., including boiling water notices, reflects challenges in infrastructure investment, public awareness, and income inequality.

📊 How Xylem Innovation Labs aggregates customer-facing team information, interprets data, and involves business units to prioritize decisions, fostering a united approach.

🚀 What makes Xylem's accelerator program unique: sourcing from grants, accelerators, internal recommendations, VCs, and conferences and inviting companies to apply, ensuring a focused approach to innovation.

🤝 Why Xylem's relationship-building with startups is key: no equity taken, a mutual NDA, building trust, and aiming for long-term commercial agreements to foster a truly collaborative partnership.

🚀 What distinguishes Xylem's process of carefully select from 3 to 400 invitations, leading to 40-50 applications for a handpicked 10-count accelerator cohort, ensuring alignment with innovation priorities.

🧠 How Max's role as a market analyst at Xylem intertwines with engineering teams, aiding in financial analysis and business case development for revenue projections.

🌍 What the Xylem Innovation Labs' role in global R&D is, including their part of the R&D package, and how they complement the company's existing product development efforts.

🌱 How innovation with impact at Xylem is characterized by a focus on sustainability metrics and diversity and their efforts in alleviating water challenges and reducing carbon footprints.

👔 Oxford Collar, Decentralized Work Environment, fostering long-term growth, mutual trust and partnership, commercialization over investment, selling solutions vs taking equity... and much more!

🔥 ... and of course, we concluded with the 𝙧𝙖𝙥𝙞𝙙 𝙛𝙞𝙧𝙚 𝙦𝙪𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨 🔥

🔗 Come say hi to Max on LinkedIn

🔗 Check Xylem Innovation Website's website

➡️ Check out the entire article on Xylem's weirdest move

➡️ Reach out to me: [email protected]

Suggested episodes:

🚀 My interview with Sivan Zamir

🔋 My conversation with Austin Alexander

👔 My short catch up with Patrick Decker

[Extract] "I was very nervous but... they can all just be water nerds together!" - Max Storto - Xylem Innovation Labs

6 september 2023 | 2 min

Max Storto is Lead Innovation Analyst at the Xylem Innovation Labs. Xylem is one of the largest water and wastewater technology company globally and follows the simple motto: "Let's solve water"

A bit more than one year ago, I invited Sivan Zamir on this microphone to discuss the Xylem Innovation Labs, Xylem's shiny, fascinating, and intriguing move into the start-up accelerator world. That has been a well-received episode but also one that sparked quite a lot of conversations.

You know, Xylem is a listed behemoth; everybody is well aware that they have to make money! So when they mention that they will help water industry companies to 10x their customer base, that they will fund pilots with the Trial Reservoir and fund other water accelerators with, for instance, Imagine H2O, it not only raises an eyebrow but also generates a ton of questions. And usually a very logical deduction: of course, they will have a great positive impact on these companies' path, but they will also reward themselves by taking stakes and equity in these companies, hence turning a pretty straightforward positive return on investment.

Now that's where it gets even more intriguing, because, in my process of getting a better understanding of the mechanics of the Xylem Innovation Labs with its scout, Max, I actually uncovered something we had not discussed at all with Sivan last year: Xylem doesn't take any equity in its incubated partners. Zero.

And it doesn't stop there: they don't even expect these companies to be exclusive or tied to Xylem in anything beyond a simple NDA - which is merely more there to protect the start-ups than the water giant.

So, for a layman like me, it's hard to get the strategic sense of that move. Until you shift your internal software and realize that what Xylem is pursuing with its Innovation Labs is not investment, it's R&D. And a bit like in a Google versus Apple approach you would see in tech, their bet here is that adopting an open innovation strategy, is actually the most impactful and the best use of their money for the water ecosystem, yes, because I believe Patrick Decker when he tells me he wants his company to have a positive impact, but also the best path to growth for Xylem itself!

And a bit like the App or Play Stores have been great growth factors for Apple and Google, Xylem's future partnerships with the companies it strategically groomed may be significant commercial assets in a world of water challenges that are not getting easier or simpler.

You'll see that this is just one of the many gems we uncovered while opening the hood and exploring the Xylem Innovation Labs engine with Max, Max who, by the way, has been an incredible sparring partner able to cope with great openness with my sometimes annoying wittiness, I had great fun to record this one, so I'll stop ranting and let you have great fun listening to it.

➡️ Check out the entire article on how to grow 10 wonder kids from 5 to 50 customers

Hosted by Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

S10E3 - Will AI Prompt Us To Build A Sustainable Future?

30 augusti 2023 | 73 min

with 🎙️ Alice Schmidt, MBA lecturer, Adviser to the European Commission, and non-profit organizations like Extinction Rebellion, Protect our Winters, and Chair of the Board of Endeva e.V.

with 🎙️ Claudia Winkler, CEO, and co-founder of Goood Mobile, Europe's first B-Corp Certified telecom provider, and a Founding Partner of Adjacent Possible Network.

💧 Alice and Claudia had been with us for their first book "the Sustainability Puzzle," and are back for an in-depth exploration of the AI world and its potential impact on Societal Progress and a Sustainable Future. This is the topic of their second book: Fast Forward, written with Florian Schütz and Jeroen Dobbelaere.

What we covered:

📚 How Alice and Claudia's "Sustainability Puzzle" hit the zeitgeist by guiding both sustainability newbies and experts through the multifaceted realm of eco-responsibility.

🔬 Why their new book, "Fast Forward," hones in on technology, one of the six puzzle pieces from their first book, to spotlight its transformative potential for sustainability.

🤖 What Claudia sees as the agnostic nature of technology and why Alice casts a skeptical eye on the good intentions behind big tech,

🎯 How both authors urge active participation in shaping AI's direction, suggesting that collective input could steer technology towards a more equitable and sustainable future.

🤖 How Alice and Claudia disagree on the role of tools like ChatGPT, revealing a tension between AI as a utilitarian augmenter versus a potential risk to trust.

🌐 Why both emphasize AI literacy, advocating for the masses to engage with tools like ChatGPT in order to make well-informed decisions.

🚀 Why ChatGPT's viral success is likened to the smartphone revolution, ushering in mass-market adoption of AI technologies and sparking important societal debates.

🎓 How Schools Aren't Necessarily the AI Saviors and What Lifelong Learning Means in the AI Age

🚨 How AI Could Be Its Own Worst Enemy and Why Big Tech Needs a Leash:

🤖 How AI's Multifaceted Analysis Outsmarts Human Limitations

💼 Why Regulations Don't Suffocate Innovation, They Guide It.

🤑 How Money Talks, Even for AI

🌱 Optimism in the AI-Ecology Nexus

🤖 How AI is personalizing Claudia's life and revolutionizing smart cities, making them more livable and sustainable.

🌊 What Tuvalu's digital twin reveals: a poignant, almost meta response to climate-induced existential threats that also sheds light on the term "ecological racism."

🎯 Why stepping into the AI world varies by individual: It's all about awareness, understanding the bigger picture, and leveraging a human-centered approach for universal benefit.

🗳️ How the democratization of AI and active participation in decision-making could be a marker for Alice Schmidt's vision of positive societal impact.

🤖 Why Technology is Finally Joining the Sustainability Conversation: Claudia is optimistic about the growing convergence between sustainability and technology agendas, indicating a maturing landscape.

📖 Claudia's 14-year-old son's ChatGPT book, Parents being the Unsung Heroes in AI Education, Neom as a double-sided sword, Betting big on Circularity, Playing the Long Game with Conferences... and much more!

🔥 ... and of course, we concluded with the 𝙧𝙖𝙥𝙞𝙙 𝙛𝙞𝙧𝙚 𝙦𝙪𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨 🔥

➡️ Send your warm regards to Alice on LinkedIn

➡️ Then do the same with Claudia on LinkedIn as well

➡️ Get to know the two new brains that worked on "Fast Forward:" Jeroen and Florian

➡️ Check out the entire article on AI prompting a Sustainable Future

➡️ Reach out to me: [email protected]

[Extract] The 21 AI Tools I use to Produce this Podcast!

30 augusti 2023 | 4 min

Here's the secret: I'm not a one-man band. Yes, I lied all that time. Did you really believe I could push a podcast interview out every week for 163 weeks in a row, all by myself? Of course not. The Don't Waste Water Corporation is a hefty team of 22. But here's the catch: I'm the only human. Let me introduce you to my crew.

First, there's my editing manager, a robot called Descript. In his AI team, we've got the Scribe, which turns all my recordings into text. Pretty standard so far, but it becomes swiftly cooler with the Grammar Maniac. If I record this: "So, what's the uh, name of your book?" The Maniac identifies the filler words and gets them out of the way.

In that same team, the Chopper chops out every word, and so if I were to say something as stupid as: Colmar is not the nicest place on earth, I just have to select the wrong word as you'd do in your text editor, and delete it. Job done!

The work is then handed over to the Audio Engineer. Because sometimes a guest or me, may record on a poor microphone or noisy environment. And you certainly don't want to hear what a poor microphone or noisy environment sounds like. In more difficult cases I escalate it to Adobe Enhance Beta. And in last resort to iZotope's Neutron or Ozone Smart Assistants.

Back to Descript: the Audio Engineer has a quite dangerous colleague I very seldom use, but if needs be, I can emulate any voices and have them say whatever I want. For instance, here are two sentences from Alice. Can you find out which one really belongs to today's interview?

Now, this is for sure an audio podcast, but also a YouTube video. And would you like to watch me speaking if I avoided any eye contact with you? Well, if that was ever to happen, I'd be just one click away from having the rectifier bring back my eyes where they should be. Yes, that one is a bit scary.

What if I lean back a bit too much in my chair and go out of focus? Topaz AI brings me back to sharpness.

And what if I stumble? No wait. And what if I stumble? Not the right dynamic. And what if I stumble? Gling automatically picks my best take!

Then, if I want to lure you into listening to a great interview, I can say it. But if I say it with subtitles, statistics say you're more likely to follow my advice. That's Captionator's job.

And while I record horizontally, getting the word out is more efficient in Vertical mode - but nothing to worry Final Cut's AI always prompts my best profile. And if I don't have time to edit the best quotes myself, OpusClip does it for me!

A cool episode needs a cool title: My ideas are not always top-notch thankfully, Coschedule loves to rate them and propose improvements. While YouTube requires me to provide at least a decent thumbnail to distribute my content, I often have a hard time finding a relevant picture or illustration to promote a water or lithium topic. In these cases, I ask MidJourney for a solid basis and Photoshop Beta for added context.

Finally, while TrueSync, ColorLab AI, Insta 360 Studio, Leia Pix AI, and many I'm probably forgetting here have been sporadic members of the team but didn't stick in the long run, I've recently hired ChatGPT to compile the key episode highlights you'll find in the show notes and on the Don't Waste Water website.

Last but not least, all my English copy is written in Grammarly, which detects that "English" should take a capital letter. Yes, I know, you don't hear my grammar mistakes, so why bother? Well, my prospective guests have to read my emails first, and you only have one chance to make a good first impression.

Why do I tell you all of that? First don't worry, if you were to use any of these tools, I wouldn't get a cent. This wasn't an ad with extra steps. No, I'm telling you that to highlight one of the ideas Claudia and Alice develop in their new book: AI may be neither a threat nor a waste, but used right, a way to enhance humans.

[Replay] Is Hydrogen more of a Water Sector Miracle or a World's Decarbonization Problem?

23 augusti 2023 | 78 min

with 🎙️ Paul Martin, Chemical process development expert & founder of Spitfire Research.

💧 Spitfire research is a Process development consulting company for a decarbonized future, where Paul acts as an antidote to marketing hopium and a tireless advocate for a fossil-fuel-free future.

This episode is a section of my Hydrogen Deep Dive

What we covered:

🧪 How the thermodynamics and fundamental properties of the Hydrogen molecule turn it into a false hope of decarbonization strategies

🌡️ How given the way it's produced, hydrogen actually is a decarbonization problem

🪶 How Goethe is right: hope's preferable to despair unless hope needs the laws of physics to stop applying

⚡ How the biggest problem with green hydrogen production is not its water impact but its energy consumption

🏭 How hydrogen barely moves today, and what that reveals about the difficulty of using it as a transportation fuel

😒 How producing small amounts of hydrogen from wastewater treatment plants is fully doable, yet barely desirable

🦘 How optimizing the production of green hydrogen requires very specific geographic properties, and where that applies

🌬️ How the World barely features half the renewable production capacity needed if we wanted to just switch from gray to green hydrogen

👃 How the Hydrogen economy may well be the false nose of Fossil Fuel Companies to keep striving in a decarbonized world

📈 How Turquoise hydrogen production makes a lot of sense, already today, but has a limited market potential for its byproducts.

🧑‍🔬 How turning Biogas into Hydrogen sounds like a very weird thing to do.

🔬 How electrolysis processes don't really allow to valorize the oxygen byproduct today, and why.

🚚 How Hydrogen is an amazing good and tool, just not to be wasted as a fuel

🌍 How the European Union and the UK daydream about Hydrogen, and how it may be a last resort solution for Japan and South Korea

🔋 How batteries are not perfect but have a clear path to scale

🏚️ How to be serious and earnest about decarbonization, states shall start with relevant policies

🍏 How we shall start with the low hanging fruit when putting hydrogen and decarbonization in the same equation

🦌 Canada tackling carbon taxes, CO2 prices as business enablers, Hydrogen promoters being useful idiots, Hydrogen as a sunk cost fallacy, Hopium... and more!

🔥 ... and of course, we concluded with the 𝙧𝙖𝙥𝙞𝙙 𝙛𝙞𝙧𝙚 𝙦𝙪𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨 🔥

➡️ Get the Full Story (including an infographic and full transcript)

➡️ Read Paul's best hydrogen articles

➡️ Contact BlueTech Research: [email protected]

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S10E2 - The Bill Gates Jewel that Pivoted from Water to Chemical Free Lithium Refining

16 augusti 2023 | 45 min

with 🎙️ Saad Dara - CEO and Founder of Mangrove Lithium

💧 Mangrove Lithium produces battery-grade lithium hydroxide or carbonate from a wide array of raw sources

What we covered:

🔄 How Mangrove Lithium, initially focusing on water treatment and desalination, found the ideal product-market fit within the lithium industry.

♻️ How the circularity of chemicals, environmental benefits, and potential for zero-emission processes play a crucial role in Mangrove's approach to lithium conversion.

🌀 How Saad Dara spun the company out in 2017, completing his PhD in 2020, and is on the path to commercialization, aiming to co-locate and operate systems with lithium production companies.

🚀 How the simplicity and flexibility of their operations sets them apart, with the ability to change feedstock and product quickly, offering more choices in a volatile lithium market.

🛠️ How their secret sauce lies not in membranes but in the cathode, providing unique value in energy consumption and purity, a major differentiator in the industry.

🔄 Why their approach appeals to both small and large producers, offering a standardized, modular system that fits various scales, potentially serving as a cooperative refining platform.

🌏 What makes them stand out in the global market is the possibility of bringing lithium refining to regions like North America and Europe, potentially altering the current China-dominated landscape.

🔋 How their technology could redefine the lithium market by being a perfect fit for cooperative refining, an innovative model that could support smaller players as they grow.

📐 How modularity in plant design allows flexibility, optimizing both CAPEX and OPEX, from 3000 to 15,000 tons per year, and the thoughtful combination of modules based on needs.

🤝 Why taking a holistic and consultative approach to the supply chain, working side by side with partners, leads to a more successful and optimized process.

🌋 What differentiates the company's electrochemical approach from other market players like Vulcan, and why their system is simpler and safer to operate.

📈 How focusing on demonstrating a 3000 tons per year system can remove market skepticism, and why operating at a commercially relevant scale and time period is crucial.

💡 Why strong backing by BMW iVentures and Breakthrough Energy Ventures highlights confidence and credibility in the company's innovative approach - and how Bill Gates is cool (ok, I'm the one adding this)

🤖 What makes Mangrove’s “boxes” unique and how they are working to prove their efficiency and effectiveness in real-world applications.

🎤 How the conversation unveils the company's vision, backing, synergies, and future plans, providing a multi-dimensional insight into the world of lithium processing and innovation.

🏢 How Lithium Valley emerged I coin a term for Vancouver's status as the lithium company capital, with a mystery Saad chalks up to community development.

🤝 What makes competitors collaborators: Saad discusses the complementary fit between Saltworks and Mangrove Lithium, shedding a competitive light on the cooperative spirit of the industry.

📈 How to get started with Mangrove Lithium

🎤 What makes the flexible model appealing: Saad explains Mangrove's customizable models for providing technology or production services, reflecting the company's adaptability in the growing lithium industry.

♻️ Why all lithium sources are vital

🔥 ... and of course, we concluded with the 𝙧𝙖𝙥𝙞𝙙 𝙛𝙞𝙧𝙚 𝙦𝙪𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨 🔥

🔗 Come say hi to Saad on LinkedIn

🔗 Check Mangrove Lithium's website

➡️ Check out the entire article on how Mangrove Lithium is a Jewel in Bill Gates' crown

➡️ Reach out to me: [email protected]

[Extract] Trust the Protons to leave chemical impurities out of your Battery-Grade Lithium! - Saad Dara - Mangrove Lithiu

16 augusti 2023 | 1 min

Saad Dara is the CEO and Founder of Mangrove Lithium. Mangrove Lithium develops an innovative approach to Lithium Refining which is using electrochemical processes to reach battery grade from diverse raw sources.

The decarbonization of our World oftentimes resembles a set of Russian Dolls. First, we needed electric cars, so the manufacturers started shifting their internal combustion lines to EV ones. Then, batteries were on the critical path, so the World frantically built Gigafactories. As a result, Lithium became the bottleneck, and over the next decade, we'll try to catch up. But in doing so, we may well bump into the next problem: missing chemicals.

Don't roll your eyes too fast: I do know that Soda Ash, for instance, is pretty commonplace and shouldn't be an issue. Except if you are in the middle of the high Andes, and especially on the Argentinan side, where dozens of junior lithium companies are currently cutting their teeth.

If you don't have enough Soda Ash, you can't refine your Lithium Chloride to Carbonate, and why is that a problem, well, that means you have to truck large volumes of concentrated brines away, and reach a place where chemicals are available. Not a big deal? Well, except if you compound in the absence of paved roads around most of the Salars that will enter into production in the next years, or simply the fact that bringing a truck up to an altitude of over 4'000 meters is not that easy.

While I was up in Olaroz, Cachi, and Jama, I crossed two different trucks in two different places that had rolled over onto the side of the road. So again, I'd say, not a piece of cake.

But if evaporation ponds are so efficient in the high Andes, it's, of course, thanks to widely available solar energy. Something energy companies start to leverage by installing solar farms.

So what if it were possible to use that electrical energy right where it's produced, to refine the concentrated brines that evaporation ponds output into battery-grade carbonate or hydroxide?

Well, some companies have started to explore that electrochemical road, and you would have guessed, that's where Mangrove Lithium is focusing.

Their technology was born as a water treatment and desalination play, yet the ideal product-market fit seems to rather be in the lithium industry - once again, a proof of the high porosity between those two worlds.

Let me avoid spoiling you all of my conversation with Saad Dara, but what I can already tell you is that we had good fun recording, I hope you'll enjoy it as well, if you do, please remember to take that episode and share it with a friend, a colleague, your boss or your team, wherever you're listening or watching that, make sure to like and subscribe, and I'll meet you on the other side!

➡️ Check out the entire article on how Mangrove Lithium is the Jewel in Bill Gates' crown on the (don't) Waste Water website!

Hosted by Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

S10E1 - How to Foster Innovation and Agility when you're the World's Largest Water Company

9 augusti 2023 | 42 min

with 🎙️ Glenn Vicevic - CTO at Veolia Water Technologies & Solutions

💧 Veolia WTS provides Industry-leading water technology and process expertise to solve the toughest water, wastewater, and process challenges

What we covered:

💦 Why the Membrane Filtration Sector is a Thrilling Space and What's to learn from its evolution across the past three decades

🏭 What it Takes to Drive Innovation in the Water Industry and what we can learn from A Peek Inside Veolia's R&D

💼 How Building a Career in Water Treatment Can Lead to Impactful Work, and what we learn from Glenn Vicevic's Journey from Zenon to Veolia through GE Water and SUEZ, all without switching company

🌍 Why The World Should be Paying More Attention to the Role of Water in Climate Change (and How)

🧑‍🔬 How Researchers are still Pushing the Boundaries in Membrane Science - and how the next big thing seems to revolve around MABRs

🚰 What Veolia's Smart Water System Teaches Us About the Future of Water Management

📈 Why Veolia's ‘Digital Twin’ Could Be a Game Changer for the Water Sector - and to which extent

💼 How Veolia's Organizational Structure is Setting It Up for Future Success - in the packed context of a long M&A history, especially on the once Zenon part of the business

🏞️ Why Zenon's Water Treatment Project in Indigenous Communities is an Unforgettable Experience

🚀 Glenn's special trick to Leap Out of His Comfort Zone to Drive Innovation at Veolia (and how you can apply this to your team TODAY)

📊 Why Traditional Wastewater Indicators May Not Be Enough in the Modern Age

🤝 How Collaboration and Communication are Vital for Success in the Water Sector: Lessons from Glenn Vicevic

👨‍💻 Remote Work, using your own medicine, micropollutants, micro-electronics, What Halloween and Water Treatment Have in Common, Stage and Gates, the high cost of failure as a Water Giant... and much more!

🔥 ... and of course, we concluded with the 𝙧𝙖𝙥𝙞𝙙 𝙛𝙞𝙧𝙚 𝙦𝙪𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨 🔥

🔗 Come say hi to Glenn on LinkedIn

🔗 Check Veolia Water Technologies & Solutions' website

➡️ Check out the entire article on how the World's Largest Water Company fosters innovation

➡️ Reach out to me: [email protected]

Suggested episodes:

🚀 My interview with Glenn's first boss and founder of Zenon: Andrew Benedek

🔋 Glenn's colleague and Lithium Refining guru: Jim Rieke

Hosted by Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

[Extract] "Failing can quite expensive when you're the World's Largest Water Company!" - Glenn Vicevic - Veolia

9 augusti 2023 | 1 min

Glenn Vicevic s the CTO of Veolia Water Technologies and Solutions. Veolia WTS provides Industry-leading water technology and process expertise to solve the toughest water, wastewater, and process challenges.

Innovation as a water start-up is an uphill battle. If you've ever listened to this podcast, we've covered that topic through many examples: you'll have to commit for years to decades to push your technology through, and it will require a lot of grit, persistence, confidence, and much more.

To describe that Sisyphus-worthy path, we've often taken a few examples on that microphone that illustrate well this entrepreneurship journey, and arguably the n°1 example is Zenon's story.

I guess we don't have to dive into the details here, because we did that extensively with the legendary Andrew Benedek, the founder of Zenon, when he was my guest about 15 months ago.

But Andrew's trajectory is just one of the possible outcomes. Grow your company until it's almost too big to stand alone, exit, and use your well-earned money to start again and strive to save the World.

Yet, when Zenon merged with GE Water, and Andrew Benedek went on to acquire Anaergia, Zenon's Technical Director stayed with the company, and kept growing with it, as it went on to merge with Suez and last but not least, Veolia.

You would have guessed it, this former technical director is Glenn Vicevic, my guest today, and Veolia WTS's chief technical officer.

And what's fascinating about today's conversation is that it gets us to understand the next part of a technological company's path. What do you have to do to stay on top of the game? How do innovation and R&D tick at a different pace and follow different rules once you're a water tech giant, compared to your early steps as an agile Start-Up. What's cooler than exploring the innovation engine of the World's largest water tech company? Let's find out, trust me, you'll get to love Glenn's openness and eagerness to share several nuggets.

➡️ Check out the entire article on how the World's Largest Water Company, Veolia, fosters innovation

Hosted by Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

S9E11 - This Start-Up has been around for 222 Years and is Still Going Strong

2 augusti 2023 | 44 min

with 🎙️ Andreas Müller - CEO at GF

💧 GF is a sustainability and innovation leader aiming to provide superior customer value across three Divisions enabling the safe transport of liquids and gases, lightweight casting components, and high-precision manufacturing technologies.

What we covered:

🔍 How a 222-Year-Old Company Innovates the secrets of GF and its three divisions

🚗 Why Lithium Production Needs a Leap Frog, How GF is Helping and which solution comes with the best odds

🌎 What Sustainability Means for Lithium Production and EVs, and GF's perspective to that challenge

💡 How Old Unicorns Interact with Cool Kids: GF's Approach to Startup Collaboration, and what it Takes to Lead a two-century old corporation

🤝 Why the Future of Lithium Production Hinges on Symbiotic Relationships between the various actors in the value chain

🌟 How GF's Strategy Aims to Balance Profitability and Environmental Impact and Why People are at the Heart of GF's Success

💼 Why a 'Startup Spirit' is Crucial in Large Corporations and what lessons from GF you can apply in your own business

🎯 What the Key Success Factors in Direct Lithium Extraction Projects are and how one can influence those

💥 How you can Tackle the Challenge of 'Cultural Clash' with Startups by copying some of GF's tactics

🎢 Why 'Stopping' can be as Important as 'Starting' in a Business Journey - and how that's maybe the best business advice you will ever get

🌳 How we need to reinvent Sustainability in the industrial sector and how GF and others are leading the pack and showing the way

🔬 Why Ultra-Precision is the New Gold Standard in e-Mobility

🔄 How GF is Closing the Loop: From Water Reclamation to Non-Revenue Water

🚀 Why GF Believes Profitability and Sustainability are Two Sides of the Same Coin and how that translate in very concrete terms

🌍 Why Going Global is Essential in Today's Business Environment to have a substantial impact and how GF's experience and support can be game changers

📊 Why GF is Targeting Non-Revenue Water: A Look at the Future of Water Management and how GF's Clean Water Foundation is Changing Lives Across the Globe

🚀 The EV Revolution from a GF Piping Systems, Casting Solutions & Machining Solutions perspective, the Water Sector trends GF is watching out for, building a cool place to work, water scarcity as a powerful shaping for the Water Sector, what GF does to solve the pressing need for clean water in remote areas... and more!

🔥 ... and of course, we concluded with the 𝙧𝙖𝙥𝙞𝙙 𝙛𝙞𝙧𝙚 𝙦𝙪𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨 🔥

🔗 Come say hi to Andreas on LinkedIn

🔗 Check GF's website

➡️ Check out the entire article on GF, the 222 Year Old Start Up on the Don't Waste Water Website

➡️ Reach out to me: [email protected]

More episodes in this Series:

1 - Why Water Technologies Matter in Lithium Mining (And Why You Should Buy Now!)

2 - The Shocking Requirements of Spodumene Processing (and other Lithium 101 stories)

3 - Standard Lithium's 10 Simple Secrets to DLE Success (and how that rolls out in El Dorado)

4 - How 'Reverse ZLD' made the World's Largest Water Company a Lithium Refinery Expert

5 - The Game-Changing Company with 60 Patents That's Disrupting the Battery Industry

6 - Vulcan's Clever Strategy to take off its Zero Carbon Lithium: Sell it Years Ahead!

7 - How to Eradicate Dead Zones, Cut Energy Needs by 80% and Double Lithium Selectivity

8 - How Lithium Refining & Water as a Service spark Growth for a Family Business

9 - Sustainable Lithium Production Has an Overlooked 3rd Component

10 - The 5 Rules to a Successful Direct Lithium Extraction

[Extract] "If New Opportunities don't turn into Success: Stop it!" - Andreas Müller - GF

2 augusti 2023 | 1 min

Andreas Müller is the CEO of GF. GF is a sustainability and innovation leader aiming to provide superior customer value across three Divisions enabling the safe transport of liquids and gases, lightweight casting components, and high-precision manufacturing technologies.

If you've listened to this Season 9 of the podcast, you've noticed how we covered the lithium and water nexus topic from a wide variety of angles. We've had the helicopter view with Tony Strobbe, the project developers' inputs with Robert Mintak, Christopher Brown, Cris Moreno, and Andy Robinson, and the technology stories with Teague Egan, Devesh Sharma, Ben Sparrow, Chris Wyres, and Jim Rieke.

Spoiler alert, given the success of this season and the topics we covered, we will continue the exploration as one of the topics of the next ones, so stay tuned; I'm currently interviewing more fascinating companies, and as I'm recording this, I'm about to take off to Argentina partially for that.

Still, there's one aspect we had not covered so far, despite regular hints across all the episodes. Direct Lithium Extraction is a high-flow high-stakes application. Evaporation Ponds involve a lot of water as well, and when it comes to lithium refining, be it from hard rock or evaporation ponds, you've got a sizeable bunch of waterish processes, which require to convey fluids, water, and chemicals.

As a process person, that's the boring part. I know it; I'm a process person. Because what can a piping system do, right? Work smoothly, and then it gets zero praise; it just exists, and nobody cares. Or not work, being blocked, leaking, becoming a hazard, and a net loss, and then everybody's aware, and everybody is pissed.

So I thought it might be worth looking into a piping system company's view on that lithium green field. To discuss how they're in to help, how, at what stage, and what they have to propose. Of course, I'm a little bit biased in that story, as I am working for a piping system company.

But there's more than just pipes, fittings, valves, sensors, engineering, prefabrication and process automation in today's episode, as I reached out to the CEO of GF to come discuss all of that on my microphone, which means not only GF Piping Systems, but also Casting Solutions and Machining Solutions, which offers an interesting glimpse into the new Electric Vehicle vertical.

➡️ Check out the entire article on GF, the 222 Year Old Start Up on the Don't Waste Water Website

Hosted by Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

S9E10 - The 5 Rules To a Successful Direct Lithium Extraction Adventure

27 juli 2023 | 57 min

with 🎙️ Andy Robinson - President and COO of Standard Lithium

💧 Standard Lithium coins itself America's 21st century Lithium Company. They're expected to become the first lithium developer in the World to produce direct-extracted lithium at a commercial scale in El Dorado

What we covered:

🌊 How a bromine plant in Arkansas is being converted into a lithium extraction mine to create a revolution in lithium production

🔋 Why lithium plays an integral role in clean energy initiatives, powering everything from electric cars to grid storage

💡 What challenges are faced when extracting lithium from natural brine, and how innovative companies are overcoming them

🌍 How Standard Lithium is integrating sustainability into its lithium extraction process to make it more environmentally friendly

⚙️ Why Direct Lithium Extraction (DLE) may become the preferred method in the lithium industry, potentially shaping the future of the sector

🚘 What role lithium plays in the electric vehicle revolution, and why is it indispensable for battery production

💰 How we can exploit the significant financial potential of lithium production, as hinted at by industry leaders like Elon Musk (which I may still have outsmarted)

🔄 Why a full disclosure of the entire flow sheet, from resource to end-product, is essential for building investor confidence in lithium extraction

📈 What the future of lithium demand looks like, and how production companies are preparing for a potential structural deficit of lithium chemicals

🌱 How the incorporation of carbon capture technology into lithium extraction processes reduces the environmental footprint and promotes a more sustainable industry

🧪 How continuous chemical processing redefines lithium extraction methods and raises industry standards

💼 What the key factors considered by Standard Lithium are when identifying potential lithium extraction sites

👥 Why stakeholder approval and local government permitting is crucial for the success of lithium extraction projects

🏭 How the use of existing infrastructure in Arkansas simplifies the permitting requirements for new lithium extraction plants

🛰️ What a day in the life of a lithium extraction plant looks like, and what's the path of lithium from entry to final product

🔥 ... and of course, we concluded with the 𝙧𝙖𝙥𝙞𝙙 𝙛𝙞𝙧𝙚 𝙦𝙪𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨 🔥

🔗 Come say hi to Andy on Linkedin

🔗 Check Standard Lithium's website

➡️ Check out the entire article on the 5 rules to a successful direct lithium extraction adventure on the Don't Waste Water Website

➡️ Reach out to me: [email protected]

More episodes in this Series:

1 - Why Water Technologies Matter in Lithium Mining (And Why You Should Buy Now!)

2 - The Shocking Requirements of Spodumene Processing (and other Lithium 101 stories)

3 - Standard Lithium's 10 Simple Secrets to DLE Success (and how that rolls out in El Dorado)

4 - How 'Reverse ZLD' made the World's Largest Water Company a Lithium Refinery Expert

5 - The Game-Changing Company with 60 Patents That's Disrupting the Battery Industry

6 - Vulcan's Clever Strategy to take off its Zero Carbon Lithium: Sell it Years Ahead!

7 - How to Eradicate Dead Zones, Cut Energy Needs by 80% and Double Lithium Selectivity

8 - How Lithium Refining & Water as a Service spark Growth for a Family Business

9 - Sustainable Lithium Production Has an Overlooked 3rd Component

[Extract] "You can't have a team of 200 scientists constantly tweaking the process to make it work!" - Andy Robinson - Standard Lithi

27 juli 2023 | 1 min

Andy Robinson is the President and COO of Standard Lithium. Standard Lithium coins itself America's 21st century Lithium Company, and indeed, they shall become the first lithium developer in the World to produce direct-extracted lithium at a commercial scale in El Dorado.

It's now several weeks that we're exploring together the depth of the lithium World, and we've heard quite a lot of things about Direct Lithium Extraction, or DLE. For instance, we've heard from Cris Moreno, the very recently-appointed CEO of Vulcan Energy Resources how: DLE is already commercial and accounts for 10% of the World's Lithium.

And yet, you've heard many of my other guests on that microphone discuss with me how DLE is not yet commercial, and might be the next big thing, assuming it gets to that commercial scale. So where's the truth?

Well, everybody's right here. What Cris Moreno refers to is that in Argentina and China, companies have been using DLE as one step of the lithium extraction process while still leveraging evaporation ponds as a sequel step.

What's still not reached yet, though, is a company or process that would be leveraging DLE and getting rid of evaporation ponds. And that is the game-changer that would unlock many more geographies and resources across the World, hence the legit excitement around it.

Now, excitement often comes as well with wide-ranging creativity, and right now, the DLE scene is blessed with blossoming companies trying out a wide range of technologies, let's face it, it's also because of that, that the lithium field is so thrilling for a water nerd like me.

But before further exploring these technical takes, I thought it would be worth following Ben Sparrow and Robert Mintak's advice and getting Andy Robinson on the microphone. Why so? Well, because if Standard Lithium is set to be the first company in the World to bring DLE to the commercial scale, without any evaporation ponds, it's probably because of him.

As you'll hear in a minute, he won't admit it, and he'll refer to luck, as Robert Mintak did before him. But still, from picking the right place to go all-in on DLE, to testing out a bunch of processes from lab to demo-scale continuously over the past three years, to the next steps on the horizon from lithium carbonate to hydroxide conversion and to carbon capture, it takes a sound methodology, and a cool head approach, which can probably inspire many in that field.

So without further due, let me leave the floor to Andy, to explore his 5-step rule for a good lithium project and learn from his learnings in El Dorado.

➡️ Check out the entire article on the 5 rules to a successful direct lithium extraction adventure on the Don't Waste Water Website

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Urine for a Surprise! Is Toilet Waste the Future of Farming?

21 juli 2023 | 7 min

🥗 Welcome to my garden, a lush green oasis thriving on an unexpected secret - human urine! In this video, I reveal my secret weapon for growing the greenest of gardens - Aurin, a fertilizer commercialized by VUNA, an Eawag start-up and derived from human urine.

♻️ Let's delve into why this natural nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium source is perfect for all gardeners.

(🚽 ...and let's explore the link between our toilets and our gardens and how redesigning one can revolutionize the other.)

Does the nutrient cycle in your garden mean that soil becomes poorer over time?

That's our lucky day: our body evacuates essential nutrients through pee and poo, let's recycle them back into our gardens!

We'll swiftly look at the fascinating history of human waste as fertilizer, its benefits, and its drawbacks. And, of course, learn about Aurin, a safe and efficient fertilizer produced by Vuna, an EAWAG spin-off.

🚾 I'll explain how urine-based fertilizers are an excellent example of a circular economy done right, making you an environmental superhero while feeding your strawberries.

We'll also discuss feces management and how it differs from urine treatment. Finally, we'll look at how clever toilet design can separate urine from feces, enabling us to start our liquid fertilizer production journey.

Join me in this exploration of sustainable gardening. Let's feed our gardens, not just our bodies, and turn our waste into wealth.

(this is not a sponsored video by any means, but hey, Vuna, if you want to sponsor me in the future... 😉)

#Aurin #SustainableGardening #CircularEconomy #greenrevolution

00:00 The Secret of my Garden

00:13 An urine-based fertilizer

00:32 The rich content of human urine

01:29 Pay your Groceries with Urine!

01:50 Fertilizers feed the World

02:19 This is actually nothing new

02:55 Is it dangerous?

03:19 How is it made?

03:36 Archaic or Forward-Looking?

04:10 And what about the feces?

04:56 Shall we redesign our toilets?

05:42 Where to start your Circular Economy Journey?

06:15 And what about the energy trapped in Wastewater?

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How to Solve the Water Crisis in America?

19 juli 2023 | 65 min

S9E9 - Sustainable Lithium Production Has an Overlooked 3rd Component: Here's How to Unlock It!

12 juli 2023 | 58 min

with 🎙️ Christopher Brown - CEO at Helios Corporation

💧 Helios acknowledges that the World's current trajectory is unsustainable and focuses its expertise in Energy, Power, Biomass, Capital Markets, and the latest environmental technology to achieve more, using less.

What we covered:

💡 How geothermal energy can revolutionize lithium extraction and how it may actually do it

⚡️ Why the future of lithium production is tied to reducing carbon intensity and the secrets behind low-carbon lithium extraction

🌎 What the key to sustainable lithium mining is and how HeliosX is bridging the gap with eco-friendly practices

📈 How to invest wisely in the thriving critical minerals industry while still not being investment advice (hey, this is a podcast!)

🧪 How DLE technologies are reshaping the lithium extraction landscape and how groundbreaking lab experiments can give us a glimpse of the future

🚀 How long it takes from lab to commercial production, and the timeline to make lithium extraction profitable

🔋 How lithium extraction can and shall be both profitable and environmentally friendly

🌱 Green goals vs. economic reality: the real cost of an accelerated EV program and its challenges for the electrical grid.

🔄 Scaling up lithium extraction: How can companies transition from lab success to field operations? Let's break down the logical steps

🤝 Collaboration in the critical minerals industry: the ideal partners for driving positive change and their shared philosophies.

🌍 Impact metrics that matter: how to contribute to economic development and low carbon intensity while integrating the human dimension

💰 Investing in critical minerals and the associated risk, the winning formula to sustainable mining, how revolutionizing battery production is a race, the next big thing, first nations, zooming out before we zoom in… and much more!

🔥 ... and of course, we concluded with the 𝙧𝙖𝙥𝙞𝙙 𝙛𝙞𝙧𝙚 𝙦𝙪𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨 🔥

🔗 Come say hi to Christopher on LinkedIn

🔗 Check Helios Corporation's website

➡️ Check out the entire article on How Sustainable Lithium Production Has an Overlooked 3rd Component on the Don't Waste Water Website

➡️ Reach out to me: [email protected]

More episodes in this Series:

1 - Why Water Technologies Matter in Lithium Mining (And Why You Should Buy Now!)

2 - The Shocking Requirements of Spodumene Processing (and other Lithium 101 stories)

3 - Standard Lithium's 10 Simple Secrets to DLE Success (and how that rolls out in El Dorado)

4 - How 'Reverse ZLD' made the World's Largest Water Company a Lithium Refinery Expert

5 - The Game-Changing Company with 60 Patents That's Disrupting the Battery Industry

6 - Vulcan's Clever Strategy to take off its Zero Carbon Lithium: Sell it Years Ahead!

7 - How to Eradicate Dead Zones, Cut Energy Needs by 80% and Double Lithium Selectivity

8 - How Lithium Refining & Water as a Service spark Growth for a Family Business

[Extract] "It's useless to bring on new critical minerals if we're costing the environment more!" - Christopher Brown - Helios Corporation

12 juli 2023 | 1 min

Christopher Brown is the CEO and co-founder of Helios Corporation. Helios acknowledges that the World's current trajectory is unsustainable and focuses its expertise in Energy, Power, Biomass, Capital Markets, and the latest environmental technology to achieve more, using less.

Over the past episodes, we've discussed why we need more lithium, where to find new sources, and how to unlock them from a technical standpoint. We've discussed fascinating projects and drawn a line toward a more sustainable future for the decade to come.

But sustainability isn't only environmental and financial impact; it's also the human dimension. And even when lithium is literally found in deserts, those places still belong to someone and to a culture, and they historically had a role and use that wasn't lithium extraction for several centuries.

That is true wherever you are on earth, from South America's first nations to Canada ones, through local communities in all the places where unconventional sources of lithium are to be mined in the future.

Everything in life can be done against someone else or instead in concertation. And to that extent, what we discuss with Christopher today offers a framework for comprehension, best practices, and way forwards.

As I mentioned in my intro, when Helios acknowledges that the World's trajectory is unsustainable, it's also important to ensure that the remedy is better than the plague. So sustainability is a keyword, for sure, and an ambitious one. From Argentina to Canada through the US, today's exploration is one of the deepest we've had in this mini-series, and I'm really thankful to Christopher for the incredible openness he demonstrated and the great pedagogy you'll get to experience in just a second.

Right before that, let me remind you that if you like what you hear, you can help others benefit from it by sharing this episode with a friend, a colleague, your boss, or your team, thank you from the bottom of my heart, and I'll meet you on the other side!

➡️ Check out the entire article on How Sustainable Lithium Production Has an Overlooked 3rd Component on the Don't Waste Water Website

Hosted by Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

S9E8 - How Lithium Refining & Water as a Service spark growth for a Family Business

5 juli 2023 | 47 min

with 🎙️ Devesh Sharma - CEO at Aquatech

💧 Aquatech helps the world's most recognized companies solve important water challenges such as lithium refining, desalination or food and beverage.

What we covered:

💡 How Aquatech is a Private Powerhouse in Industrial Water Treatment You Need to Know About

🏗️ How Aquatech delivers complex projects and how they tackle challenges in remote locations

🌟 Why Being the Best Matters More Than Being the Biggest: Aquatech's Winning Philosophy

🤝 How Aquatech and Ecolab Join Forces in a Strategic Partnership and how the company maintains a balance as a middle-sized global player

📈 Impact Metrics Unveiled: Aquatech's CEO Shares the Key to Their Success

🌍 Energy Transition and Green Revolution: How Aquatech is Shaping the Future, and how that involves lithium endeavors

🏭 How Aquatech won North America's most-awaited lithium refining contract at Thacker Pass and how they won Lithium America's confidence on the way

🎯 Planning for Success the Company's Short to Medium-Term Goals

🚀 Game-Changing Projects: From Trash to Jet Fuel - Aquatech's Mind-Blowing Endeavors

💧 Water Technology-as-a-Service: The Future is Here, and Aquatech Leads the Way

🔮 How Reuse and Digital Revolution might be The Next Big Trends in Water

💬 Aquatech's Secrets to Effective Communication and Recruitment, and how you could Join the Aquatech Family - exciting endeavors ahead?

💰 The importance of in-person connections, multitasking overload, ensuring modularity, creating memorable moments for employees - that feel like family, identifying the right growth opportunities, measuring impact... and much more!

🔥 ... and of course, we concluded with the 𝙧𝙖𝙥𝙞𝙙 𝙛𝙞𝙧𝙚 𝙦𝙪𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨 🔥

🔗 Come say hi to Devesh on LinkedIn

🔗 Check Aquatech's website

➡️ Check out the entire article on How Lithium Refining & Water as a Service spark growth for a Family Business on the Don't Waste Water Website

➡️ Reach out to me: [email protected]

More episodes in this Series:

1 - Why Water Technologies Matter in Lithium Mining (And Why You Should Buy Now!)

2 - The Shocking Requirements of Spodumene Processing (and other Lithium 101 stories)

3 - Standard Lithium's 10 Simple Secrets to DLE Success (and how that rolls out in El Dorado)

4 - How 'Reverse ZLD' made the World's Largest Water Company a Lithium Refinery Expert

5 - The Game-Changing Company with 60 Patents That's Disrupting the Battery Industry

6 - Vulcan's Clever Strategy to take off its Zero Carbon Lithium: Sell it Years Ahead!

7 - How to Eradicate Dead Zones, Cut Energy Needs by 80% and Double Lithium Selectivity

Hosted by Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

[Extract] "We're doing Water as a Service for Many many Years!" - Devesh Sharma - Aquatech

5 juli 2023 | 1 min

Devesh Sharma is the CEO of Aquatech. Aquatech helps the world's most recognized companies solve important water challenges.

There's a fine line between risk-taking and putting all you have at stake, between perseverance and obstinacy, and between grit and recklessness. And it's only when the dust settles that you'll know on which side of the line the ball decided to fall.

When I started my career in the water industry, veterans were telling me: keep your fingers off the industrial market. It's a "who's the cheapest" game, and they're so short-term-minded that it's depressing.

Yet, at the same time, these veterans opted out of the industrial game; Aquatech was created as an almost pure-play dedicated to that very specific end of the market. Risk-taking or putting all you have at stake?

A couple of decades later, and long before it was hype, that same Aquatech ventured into Water as a Service to speed up the adoption of its technologies. Perseverance or obstinacy?

And while the world of Water consolidates in a fashion we've probably never experienced before, Aquatech trusts it can keep growing and build its path as a private, family company. Grit or recklessness?

Well, I don't have all the answers, but what I can tell is that as the dust settles, the industrial end of the Water Market is the one thriving right now, as it's faced with the hottest challenges ever, which in turn generate new opportunities.

And as Devesh will explain in a minute, 30% of Aquatech's revenue today comes from its Water as a Service; said differently, they have a 30% - probably high-margin - annual recurring revenue with a plan to expand it to 50%. That's a ratio that kind of turns a hardware company into a software/tech type of play. And with that mix, Water suddenly becomes a much more scalable business - as we've seen with Gradiant recently turning into the water sector's first unicorn.

Well, Gradiant and Aquatech are certainly not the same, but they have similarities in the technologies they develop and the markets they serve. And Gradiant claimed its unicorn status, thanks to a 225 million dollar series D raised at that billion-dollar valuation. I'm throwing Gradiant in the discussion here because we're debating the possible next steps for Aquatech with Devesh today.

And my napkin calculations and estimates indicate to me that Aquatech is probably already a unicorn, given its revenue mix, proprietary technology, and turnover somewhat double of Gradiant's. Take it with a pinch of salt; none of these companies are public, so it's pure guestimates.

Now, I mention dust settling, and I'm using that metaphor on purpose. Because Aquatech was chosen by Lithium Americas to build the lithium refinery at its upcoming Thacker Pass lithium mine, which is extracting this "While Oil" from clay, so settled dust. And Aquatech has the perfect portfolio to take on this 2020s challenge because it tripled down on industrial water and zero liquid discharge since the 1980s - something we'll dive into much deeper with Devesh in today's conversation.

Finally, I think Aquatech's story is inspirational on many more levels. It's also the tale of a family business, taken to its today's shape and successes by two brothers that were respectively 24 and 14 when they took over. So let me avoid spoiling everything, and leave the floor to Devesh, just after reminding you that if you like what you hear, please take this episode and share it with a friend, a colleague, your boss, or your team, and also don't forget to subscribe.

➡️ Check out the entire article on How Lithium Refining & Water as a Service spark growth for a Family Business on the Don't Waste Water Website

Hosted by Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Thames Water is Failing: is it the end for UK's largest Water Company?

30 juni 2023 | 9 min

S9E7 - How to Eradicate Dead Zones, Cut Energy Needs by 80% and Double Lithium Selectivity

28 juni 2023 | 47 min

with 🎙️ Chris Wyres - CEO at Evove

💧 Evove aims to take membranes to the next level, overcoming the inherent flaws in conventional architectures, hence transforming membranes, transforming separation, and filtration.

What we covered:

🥇 How G2O Water Technologies was founded around the use of graphene to coat membranes, how that was game-changing by itself and how Evove still took it to the next level

🗝️ What the problem with incumbent membrane technologies is, and how Evove's technology aims to correct it

🆙 How Evove's technologies multiply a membrane's specific surface by three, reduce energy consumptions up to 80%, improve desalination's yield by 30% and double the membrane's selectivity

🖨️ How 3D-printed membranes at scale may disrupt the world of membrane filtration as we know it, and how they may unlock localized manufacturing

0️⃣ How producing lithium and green hydrogen is a great thing to do, but if it comes at the expense of heavy carbon and environmental impacts, it doesn't make sense

🚏 How Evove went down a different path than other companies developing graphene membranes and why

💪 How the company picks applications where existing tech struggle to leverage their specific edge

🕸️ How in the case of direct lithium extraction in particular, Evove's superior selectivity is an asset to sort out white oil from calcium, magnesium, sodium, potassium and all other salts

↔️ How Evove didn't "just" design a lithium-catered membrane, but an entire end-to-end solution for effective production of lithium carbonate

📏 How the company tailors its solution to every specific case, within 30 days, and supporting its customers end to end

🦄 How Evove intends to become the water sector's first unicorn (well, second to Gradiant, but still, that's a bright and bold ambition!)

💰 Precision engineering membrane pore size, preventing fouling and scaling, revamping the direct lithium extraction process train, Evove's business strategy, sub-sea desalination as a way to power green hydrogen, speeding up the pace of innovation adoption, advocating for increased capital focus on the water sector... and much more!

🔥 ... and of course, we concluded with the 𝙧𝙖𝙥𝙞𝙙 𝙛𝙞𝙧𝙚 𝙦𝙪𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨 🔥

🔗 Come say hi to Chris on LinkedIn

🔗 Check Evove's website

➡️ Check out the entire article on How Evove precision engineers its membranes (and contributes to a disruption) on the Don't Waste Water Website

➡️ Reach out to me: [email protected]

More episodes in this Series:

1 - Why Water Technologies Matter in Lithium Mining (And Why You Should Buy Now!)

2 - The Shocking Requirements of Spodumene Processing (and other Lithium 101 stories)

3 - Standard Lithium's 10 Simple Secrets to DLE Success (and how that rolls out in El Dorado)

4 - How 'Reverse ZLD' made the World's Largest Water Company a Lithium Refinery Expert

5 - The Game-Changing Company with 60 Patents That's Disrupting the Battery Industry

6 - Vulcan's Clever Strategy to take off its Zero Carbon Lithium: Sell it Years Ahead!

Hosted by Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

[Extract] "We're precision engineering Membranes - We're able to drive the energy requirements down up to 80%!" - Chris Wyres - Evove

28 juni 2023 | 1 min

Chris Wyres is the CEO of Evove. Evove aims to take membranes to the next level, overcoming the inherent flaws in conventional architectures, hence transforming membranes, transforming separation, and filtration.

In the middle of the 19th century, a Belgian inventor, Adolphe Sax, conceived what's known today as the saxophone, which is today the fourth most popular instrument, just behind the piano, the guitar, and the bass. Yet, it wasn't Sax's only invention, as he also conceived Saxtrombas, Saxtubas, considerably improved the bass clarinet and invented the Saxhorns that also still somewhat live today.

Yet, have you ever heard of the Ophicleide? Or of the serpent? I could keep naming many more less successful instruments, and if you want to get an anthology of all of them, look up an original score from Mendelssohn or Berlioz: Romantic era composers really leveraged that wave of new ways to produce all kinds of sounds.

Each of these inventions addressed specific needs, but not all overcame their flaws or found a clear use case, like the saxophones with the military orchestras. And so, only a few stood the test of time.

To me, the membrane world today resembles a lot of the mid-19th century orchestras. It's tingling with incredible ideas, new takes, new materials, radical approaches, and blooming innovation.

We've addressed several of them on that microphone, from Membrion's ceramic ion exchanging membranes to Zwitterco's zwitterionic material, through Cembrane, LiqTech, a membrane anthology with Graeme Pearce, or the history of MBRs with Andrew Benedek.

But with the boom in membrane applications, there are also new needs, new challenges, and new markets to address, which keeps incentivizing and rewarding innovation and differentiated approaches.

Evove actually ticks all these boxes. They're actively developing new application fields, such as lithium extraction or green hydrogen production while building the rocket on the go with their Enhance and Separonics product lines. They're also bringing new perks to membrane applications in desalination or food and beverage. And they're inventing a new type of company: decentralized, finely adapted to each vertical, and frankly ambitious:

"We want to be the Water Sector's first Unicorn!"

I won't spoil you too much of what Chris very openly shares in today's interview, don't worry; I'll leave him the floor just after reminding you that if you like what you hear, if this is of any value to you, please take that episode and share it with a friend, a colleague, your boss or your team. Thanks a lot to all the ones I see doing it every week; that's heartwarming to me. Is Evove a saxophone or an Ophicleide? Time will tell, but you can build an Idea for yourself by listening to the full episode!

➡️ Check out the entire article on how Vulcan enabled its Zero Carbon Lithium project by selling its products years ahead, including a teaser, a slider, and a full transcript on the (don't) Waste Water website!

Hosted by Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

How the Salton Sea may become a Lithium Cash Cow

22 juni 2023 | 15 min

S9E6 - Vulcan's Clever Strategy to take off its Zero Carbon Lithium: Sell it Years Ahead!

21 juni 2023 | 30 min

with 🎙️ Cris Moreno - Deputy CEO at Vulcan Energy Resources

💧 Vulcan aims to decarbonize the transition to electric mobility through its world-first Zero Carbon Lithium Projects for electric vehicle batteries and its renewable energy business.

What we covered:

🥇 How Vulcan aims to become the world's first integrated lithium chemicals company while also producing renewable energy...

0️⃣ ... and how they do all of this with net zero greenhouse emissions and without using any fossil fuels in their process

🔁 How Vulcan's Zero Carbon Lithium projects feature a 24'000 t/y first stage and what might be the next ones

💰 How Vulcan leapfrogged its path by acquiring an existing geothermal power plant in Hinsheim, Germany

👨‍🔬 How the company tested various Direct Lithium Extraction (DLE) methodologies to end up developing a proprietary sorption process

🇪🇺 How this sorption material belongs to the Dow / Dupont / FMC / Livent family, but with the added touch that it's made in Europe

🌊 How Vulcan desorbs it with fresh water, and how water availability is one of the perks of producing in the Upper Rhine Valley

🤑 How the company plans an 84% EBITDA on its Zero Carbon Lithium product, despite a forecasted lithium price way below the current spot

🚗 How, to whom, and under which conditions Vulcan sold its Zero Carbon Lithium product to battery and car manufacturers years ahead of actually producing it

🏗️ How 2023 shall be pivotal for Vulcan to transform from a development company into an actual production company

📈 How the Company has €120 Million in its bank account... and actively looks to increase its financing in order to cover for the first phase of the project

🫰 How the Upper Rhine Valley is Europe's largest lithium resource, and a globally relevant one and how CAPEX might be the only thing to slow it down to cover for the entirety of Europe's lithium needs

🛢️ How DLE combined with geothermal energy production might be seen as a complex mining project... or as a very easy oil and gas one!

📅 Kicking off production in 2025, producing renewable power & heat, next projects in the Upper Rhine Valley - and on the French side, building the right team to execute the project, kicking off the commercial scale in Q3 2023... and much more!

🔥 ... and of course, we concluded with the 𝙧𝙖𝙥𝙞𝙙 𝙛𝙞𝙧𝙚 𝙦𝙪𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨 🔥

🔗 Come say hi to Cris on LinkedIn

🔗 Check Vulcan's website

➡️ Check out the entire article on How Vulcan plans to take off its Zero Carbon Lithium assets in the Upper Rhine Valley

➡️ Reach out to me: [email protected]

More episodes in this Series:

1 - Why Water Technologies Matter in Lithium Mining (And Why You Should Buy Now!)

2 - The Shocking Requirements of Spodumene Processing (and other Lithium 101 stories)

3 - Standard Lithium's 10 Simple Secrets to DLE Success (and how that rolls out in El Dorado)

4 - How 'Reverse ZLD' made the World's Largest Water Company a Lithium Refinery Expert

5 - The Game-Changing Company with 60 Patents That's Disrupting the Battery Industry

Hosted by Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

[Extract] "It's not a complex Mining Project, it's a very easy Oil & Gas Project!" - Cris Moreno - Vulcan Energy Resources

21 juni 2023 | 1 min

Cris Moreno is Deputy CEO at Vulcan Energy Resources. Vulcan aims to decarbonize the transition to electric mobility through its world-first Zero Carbon Lithium™ Project for electric vehicle batteries and its renewable energy business.

This exploration of the Lithium World has taken me far from home. Canada, USA, Mexico, Australia, Argentina, Bolivia, UK... But one of the most exciting projects in this new wave actually happens to be a dozen kilometers away from where I cut my wastewater engineering teeth, and Vulcan, the project developer, just signed an off-take agreement with a car factory I can see if I climb up my village's hill.

And this makes sense for a ton of reasons! First, the Rhine Valley used to be a Salt Flat, exactly like the Atacama Desert nowadays, and this was just 35 million years ago. So on the geological scale of things, it makes sense.

Then, it is a geothermal region, and Germany actively pushes to add more geothermal plants to its energy mix, which means thousands of cubic meters of water that are pumped from that lithium-rich aquifer anyways, which allows you to emulate the example we heard from Standard Lithium, piggy-backing on Lanxess' Bromine business.

But maybe most importantly, Europe is actively building about 30 battery gigafactories. And that's a staple in the zero-carbon transition of mobility! But to feed those factories, Europe will need lithium at some point. Today, 97% of that lithium is imported from China. And with China's own plans to further build up the battery value chain, they may well use all their lithium themselves, which would leave Europe without any white oil.

So Vulcan's endeavors in the Upper Rhine Valley, today on the German side and anytime soon on the French side, would not only be one of the largest lithium projects in the World. But from 2026 on, it might also be Europe's EV strategy lifeline - as long as I'm not fully up to speed with my own backyard project.

So what's Vulcan's plan to a - quote unquote - "Glorified Water Processing Facility" able to deliver 24'000 tons of lithium hydroxide in its first phase, but also 300 GWh of renewable power and 250 GWh of renewable heat? Cris will be our guide, just after this reminder that if you like what you hear, if all of this is of any value to you, please take this episode and share it with a friend, a colleague, your boss, or your team, and I'll meet you on the other side!

➡️ Check out the entire article on how Vulcan enabled its Zero Carbon Lithium project by selling its products years ahead, including a teaser, a slider, and a full transcript on the (don't) Waste Water website!

Hosted by Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

S9E5 - The Game-Changing Company with 60 Patents That's Disrupting the Battery Industry

14 juni 2023 | 34 min

with 🎙️ Teague Egan - CEO & Founder of EnergyX

💧 EnergyX is on a mission to become a worldwide leader in the global transition to sustainable energy

What we covered:

🌵 How the story of EnergyX started in the salt flats of Uyuni with Teague Egan's initiatory journey to Bolivia

🗓️ How EnergyX has a masterplan and how this one goes beyond "just" supplying lithium extraction technology to the World

🔒 How the company's claims of a disruptive approach to direct lithium extraction are backed by an impressive amount of patents all along the value chain

☀️ What the problem with existing lithium evaporation ponds is, and how that offers significant potential for improvement for new technologies

📜 How lithium-ion battery legend and Nobel Prize recipient John Goodenough endorsed EnergyX's efforts in the battery space and how the company breeds his legacy

4️⃣ The four key aspects to consider when working on a lithium extraction process

🚱 How EnergyX's take at Direct Lithium Extraction needs water neither on the membrane nor on the solvent extraction side

🛑 How the company got kicked out of Bolivia's lithium tender for questionable reasons, and how they might come back in the game given their unique technological perks

🚼 How pure end-to-end DLE probably is the future of lithium extraction, but how DLE enhanced ponds are the best hybrid for a smooth transition

💰 How Global Emerging Markets Group placed a $450 million check on the table for the day EnergyX goes public, what it enables, and what it involves

🚀 How you scale a lithium extraction approach from pilot to demo and ultimately down the road to commercial-scale applications

👨‍🔬 EnergyX's Edisonian approach, the special sauce to the company's lithium extraction process, the lowest permissible lithium concentration for their technology (and why it's different than their competition), the company's bet as to the place where it will go full-scale first... and much more!

🔥 ... and of course, we concluded with the 𝙧𝙖𝙥𝙞𝙙 𝙛𝙞𝙧𝙚 𝙦𝙪𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨 🔥

🔗 Come say hi to Teague on LinkedIn

🔗 Check EnergyX's website

➡️ Check out the entire article on How the Lithium King and his 60 Patent-Company may well disrupt the Battery Industry

➡️ Reach out to me: [email protected]

More episodes in this Series:

1 - Why Water Technologies Matter in Lithium Mining (And Why You Should Buy Now!)

2 - The Shocking Requirements of Spodumene Processing (and other Lithium 101 stories)

3 - Standard Lithium's 10 Simple Secrets to DLE Success (and how that rolls out in El Dorado)

4 - How 'Reverse ZLD' made the World's Largest Water Company a Lithium Refinery Expert

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[Extract] "We have the best technology to complement an existing evaporation pond infrastructure! " - Teague Egan - EnergyX

14 juni 2023 | 1 min

Teague Egan is the CEO and Founder of EnergyX. EnergyX is on a mission to become a worldwide leader in the global transition to sustainable energy with breakthrough direct lithium extraction and refinery technologies, as well as more effective battery and energy storage solutions.

Imagine you're listening to "The End" - the famous hit of The Doors. You vaguely remember there's something pressing on your to-do list, but hey, who can resist the captivating voice of Jim Morrisson, right? 11'44 passes by, and you return to that to-do list. What's on top? Oh yeah, submit that folder for Bolivia's Direct Lithium Extraction tender.

But... 11'44 was 1'44 too long, and time is over; you're out. Kind of bitter, right? I obviously romanticized the anecdote, and I don't know if Teague is a fan of The Doors, yet one part of that story is true: EnergyX got kicked off of Bolivia's DLE tender for submitting 10 minutes late.

I wouldn't allow myself to joke about it if Teague wasn't seeing the positives in it: EnergyX leverages 60 patents across the lithium value chain, and they've leveraged Bolivia and Uyuni as a great proof of concept! Their technology suit stands the field test, and they're able to produce lithium in a country that maybe boasts the World's largest lithium reserves, but also a quite demanding 25 to 1 magnesium to lithium ratio that defeated many challengers in that race to get Bolivia's white oil off the ground.

In today's conversation, you'll get to explore how a Direct Lithium Extraction pure player builds its path to a future EV supply chain vertical, how there may be bumps on the road, but also how exciting it is to move an Idea from the lab to a pilot then a demonstration stage and down the line, a first commercial reference.

You'll hear of the lithium godfather and Nobel Prize recipient, John Goodenough, which is the second Nobel Prize winner we get to hear in this lithium series after Barry Sharpless that collaborated with Standard Lithium; you'll understand how an investment fund committed 450 million dollars on EnergyX and how Teague won his crown as Shale Magazine named him the Lithium King.

➡️ Check out the entire article on how the Lithium King got 60 patents for its battery vertical pure player, including a teaser, a slider, and a full transcript on the (don't) Waste Water website!

Hosted by Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

S9E4 - How 'Reverse ZLD' made the World's Largest Water Company a Lithium Refinery Expert

7 juni 2023 | 43 min

with 🎙️ Jim Rieke - VP of Process Engineering at Veolia Water Technologies

💧 Veolia Water Technologies specializes in water treatment solutions while providing a complete range of services for industrial & public authorities

What we covered:

👷 How HPD onboards all its hires through its service and commissioning groups and how that's the best learning experience to Veolia Water Technologies' portfolio

🤝 How the milestone Naraha Lithium Refinery reference started through a collaboration between Orocobre (now, Allkem) and HPD and what was the step by step road to success

🚢 What's the magic that turns Lithium Carbonate in South America into Lithium Hydroxide Monohydrate in Japan

🧩 How there might be standard building blocks but how every lithium carbonate is slightly different and hence requires a tailor-made lithium refining process

🏭 Where do impurities appear in a lithium refinery process and how to remove them to guarantee a battery-grade output

🧰 How extracting lithium from clay is still a very new process and what it changes in the lithium refinery set up

🛠️ How Veolia Water Technologies' holistic approach is a key differentiator in the development of a lithium refinery

🌍 How geopolitics and government incentives play a role in the economics of a lithium refinery

👰 How the newly wed SUEZ and Veolia offer an even broader portfolio of complimentary technologies to better serve the lithium market

📈 How DLE "suddenly" makes much more lithium available and how HPD's lithium refinery process copes with the source's specificities

♻️ How batter-grade lithium is just one of the outputs of a lithium refinery: Veolia Water Technologies' expertise also allows to valorize several more by-products along the way

💰 How Veolia Water Technologies' involvement in projects can help get junior lithium companies get financed as a valuable reference partner

🗺️ Building a Lithium Refinery step by step; leaching, evaporation, crystallization, ion exchange: the lithium refinery keywords; lithium refining in the broader scheme of the EV battery vertical; turning sodium sulfate into sodium hydroxide and sulfuric acid; empowering circularity... and much more!

🔥 ... and of course, we concluded with the 𝙧𝙖𝙥𝙞𝙙 𝙛𝙞𝙧𝙚 𝙦𝙪𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨 🔥

🔗 Come say hi to Jim on Linkedin

🔗 Check Veolia's website

➡️ Check out the entire article on How 'Reverse ZLD' made the World's Largest Water Company a Lithium Refinery Expert

➡️ Reach out to me: [email protected]

More episodes in this Series:

1 - Why Water Technologies Matter in Lithium Mining (And Why You Should Buy Now!)

2 - The Shocking Requirements of Spodumene Processing (and other Lithium 101 stories)

3 - Standard Lithium's 10 Simple Secrets to DLE Success (and how that rolls out in El Dorado)

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[Extract] "Veolia's involvement helps Junior Projects getting financed!" - Jim Rieke - Veolia Water Technologie

7 juni 2023 | 1 min

The Rise and Fall of North America's Largest Organic Waste to Energy Facility

5 juni 2023 | 12 min

S9E3 - What are the 10 Simple Secrets behind Standard Lithium's DLE Success?

31 maj 2023 | 62 min

with 🎙️ Robert Mintak - CEO of Standard Lithium

💧 Standard Lithium coins itself America's 21st century Lithium Company. They're expected to become the first lithium developer in the World to produce direct-extracted lithium at a commercial scale in El Dorado

What we covered:

5️⃣ How Standard Lithium built a plan to grow to commercial direct lithium extraction (DLE) scale in five years

🔁 How you can't take lithium extraction processes off-the-shelf and how you can't copy-paste what works on a lab scale for a commercial scale

💧 How there's an overlooked part of DLE: managing high brine volumes and flows

🎁 How Standard Lithium "surprised" Lanxess with a lithium add-on to their bromine business

🤝 How you need to know what you know but also know when to team up and get support to take your project off the ground

💰 How Standard Lithium used a simple trick most companies wouldn't dare to apply: paying their partner to kick things off

🗺️ How the Lanxess project will serve as a Blueprint for replication across Arkansas' Smackover formation

⚔️ How there's no silver-bullet universal lithium extraction process and how you need to tailor it to your regional parameters

⚡ How to be future-proof and keep all options open to the evolutions in battery technology

📍 Why El Dorado, Arkansas is the absolute best place to build a lithium chemical business in North America

👍 How having a positive impact and walking the talk is key to be serious about supporting the energy transition and the EV Revolution

🌇 Fluid handling as a boring but necessary evil, developing win-win agreements, relationships to Koch Engineering and Lanxess, California and further Arkansas projects... and much more!

🔥 ... and of course, we concluded with the 𝙧𝙖𝙥𝙞𝙙 𝙛𝙞𝙧𝙚 𝙦𝙪𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨 🔥

🔗 Come say hi to Robert on Linkedin

🔗 Check Standard Lithium's website

➡️ Check out the entire article on Standard Lithium's 10 Simple Secrets to DLE Success

➡️ Reach out to me: [email protected]

More episodes in this Series:

1 - Why Water Technologies Matter in Lithium Mining (And Why You Should Buy Now!)

2 - The Shocking Requirements of Spodumene Processing (and other Lithium 101 stories)

3 - Standard Lithium's 10 Simple Secrets to DLE Success (and how that rolls out in El Dorado)

4 - How 'Reverse ZLD' made the World's Largest Water Company a Lithium Refinery Expert

Hosted by Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

[Extract] The overlooked challenge with DLE: Fluid Handling - Robert Mintak

31 maj 2023 | 1 min

Robert Mintak is the CEO of Standard Lithium. Standard Lithium coins itself America's 21st century Lithium Company, and indeed, they shall become the first lithium developer in the World to produce direct-extracted lithium at a commercial scale in El Dorado.

What's not to love about Direct Lithium Extraction or DLE? We've seen in the first two episodes of this series how the World needs to scale from about half a million of yearly Lithium Carbonate Equivalent to 2, 3, or maybe even 5 million by 2030. And sure, you can probably extract more spodumene in hard rock mines. You can probably also evaporate more lithium-rich brines in the south american lithium triangle. But will that be enough? For many, that's still an open question, and not the only one.

How and where do you refine that lithium? Who does it? Where and how do you ship it around? And what if the ones with lithium don't want to sell to the ones with battery gigafactories.

To answer many of these questions and more, Direct Lithium Extraction comes in pretty handy. Indeed, with DLE and the extended CRC (if you don't know that acronym, you probably shall dive into the first episode of this series with Ben Sparrow), you have an all-in-one approach that turns low-concentration brines into battery-grade lithium carbonate or hydroxide.

Black oil fields can get a second life as a source of white oil. Geothermal projects can now kill two birds with one stone, leveraging the heat AND the lithium content. And existing brine operations, like the one Robert will talk about in a minute at the Lanxxess site in El Dorado, can start to multiply their value by adding an additional revenue stream.

Hence my question: what's not to love about Direct Lithium Extraction?

Well, yes, it leverages processes we know quite well in the Water Industry, such as adsorption, ion exchange, membrane, thermal or electrochemical processes.

And yes, in a quite specific shape, it's been partially used since the 90s in Argentina and China.

But as an end-to-end process where unconventional brines flow in and battery-grade lithium gets extracted on the other end, it's never been scaled up to commercial sizes. There have been impressive lab studies and pilot plants, and even a handful of demo plants, one of them being Standard Lithium's one in El Dorado, another, Vulcan's one in Germany we'll discuss in a future episode. Yes, that's a spoiler. But never, ever, a full-scale plant.

So the ability of pioneers such as Standard Lithium to manage the rollout of commercial scale DLE is something that's closely watched by an entire industry.

How do you pick the right place to roll out? How do you build the right team? What are the decisive parameters to monitor? What's often overlooked? What makes a potential world's first full-scale Direct Lithium Extraction project? I'll let Robert take it from there.

➡️ Check out the entire article on the 10 Simple Secrets of Standard Lithium's probable world-first commercial DLE, including several teasers and a full transcript on the (don't) Waste Water website!

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S9E2 - The Shocking Requirements of Spodumene Processing (and More Lithium 101 stories)

24 maj 2023 | 55 min

with 🎙️ Tony Strobbe - EV supply chain Projects Director

💧 Every Monday, Tony compiles a dedicated content piece he shares on LinkedIn that covers one aspect of that said supply chain

What we covered:

⚡ How there are no electric vehicles without batteries, no batteries without lithium, and no lithium without some kind of mining, hence you have to build a supply chain

🤝 How the closer you are to your customer, the higher the margins for your product, and the consequences this has on the lithium mining vertical

📉 How car manufacturers could well end up being left without lithium if they donc tackle the challenge seriously

2️⃣ How there are two ways to approach the vertical, from the bottom and from the top and where those two paths cross and meet

💰 How the large lithium companies currently "printing money" have two paths to continue doing so, and which one is probably the best for them

🛠️ What are the material requirements to process one ton of spodumene and turn it into battery-grade lithium carbonate or hydroxide

💧 How ESG considerations will impact the lithium value chain today and tomorrow

🧮 What parameters to consider when conceiving and building a lithium refinery and where to ideally locate it

🌍 How geopolitics and history shape the current and future lithium markets

😈 How there may well be a Powerpoint path to lithium equilibrium, but how the devil lies in the execution

🍲 How DLE deals with a hot soup, and how this comes with its own challenges

🚢 Lithium offer and demand, high prices solving high prices, the shelf life of Lithium Hydroxide, shipping spodumene across the World, extracting as much value as possible locally, lithium from new sources... and much more!

🔥 ... and of course, we concluded with the 𝙧𝙖𝙥𝙞𝙙 𝙛𝙞𝙧𝙚 𝙦𝙪𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨 🔥

🔗 Come say hi to Tony on Linkedin

➡️ Check out the entire article on The Shocking Requirements of Spodumene Processing

➡️ Reach out to me: [email protected]

More episodes in this Series:

1 - Why Water Technologies Matter in Lithium Mining (And Why You Should Buy Now!)

2 - The Shocking Requirements of Spodumene Processing (and other Lithium 101 stories)

3 - Standard Lithium's 10 Simple Secrets to DLE Success (and how that rolls out in El Dorado)

4 - How 'Reverse ZLD' made the World's Largest Water Company a Lithium Refinery Expert

Hosted by Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

[Extract] The two options for Lithium Giants such as SQM & Albermarle - Tony Strobbe

24 maj 2023 | 1 min

Tony Strobbe is EV supply chain Projects Director. Every Monday, he compiles a dedicated content piece he shares on LinkedIn that covers one aspect of that said supply chain, so if you like what he shares today, make sure to follow him!

I hope you haven't missed last week's conversation with Ben Sparrow from Saltworks! If you have, shame on you, but let me bring you up to speed: we're diving into the lithium value chain to discuss, evaluate and uncover the opportunities for water technologies and professionals in this rapidly growing application that taps into several layers of the water industry.

Now when you visit a foreign country, it's often a smart move to start by getting the basics of language and culture. So that's the mission I tasked Tony with today: let us break down the fundamentals of lithium processes. Why, where, and how do we refine lithium. What do we need to know on the technical side of the equation, but also on the geopolitical aspect of things. Where does the lithium value chain sit in the greater scheme of the EV supply chain?

Those are just some of the questions we'll get to answer today. And that will give us valuable keys to leverage the next nuggets in this series, such as the company that shall build the first ever commercial scale Direct Lithium Extraction project, or the dedicated team within the World's largest water company that's conceived some of the most emblematic lithium refining projects.

Before kicking off, let me just share with you that I'm back from the Global Water Summit in Berlin and then the BlueTech Forum in Edinburg; it was a great experience to get to meet many of you and to discuss water, wastewater, water entrepreneurship, and much more. I'm so grateful for the many heartwarming feedbacks you gave me on the podcast, it means the World to me, and beyond just an ego-boost, it's critically important for me as I strive to produce you the most useful content every week. If it's the case, I'm glad it is, and you can help me out by sharing the pod with your friends, colleagues, boss, or team. Yet if you feel there's something I shall be doing differently or better, hey, feedback doesn't have to be positive: come share me your thoughts on LinkedIn or by mail: [email protected].

I also came back from both Berlin and Edinburg with great pieces of content, I spoke with the GWI team and the BlueTech team, I also cut some quite insightful interviews with Xylem, Veolia, Aquatech, Kemira, Evoqua, Gingko Bioworks, and more, I can't wait to share you all of this, once I've digested and edited it, but enough for that sidetrack and all that teasing, I'll leave the floor to Tony, and I'll meet you on the other side.

➡️ Check out the entire article on how to sell smaller-sized Water Companies, including an infographic and a full transcript on the (don't) Waste Water website!

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S9E1 - Why Water Technologies Matter in Lithium Mining (And Why You Should Buy Now!)

17 maj 2023 | 50 min

with 🎙️ Benjamin Sparrow - CEO and Co-Founder at Saltworks Technologies

💧 Saltworks provides innovative products and solutions for industrial wastewater treatment and desalination.

What we covered:

🎢 The current state of Direct Lithium Extraction (DLE) and its possible technological paths

🤝 How DLE gets paired with Concentrate Refine Convert (CRC) processes and how this takes lithium to battery-grade

4️⃣ The Two main sources of Lithium in the World and their Two Contenders (DLE & Battery Recycling)

📆 The timelines of a lithium mining project and how fast tracks are myths

🏃 How speed to market is going to be a key metric for a new lithium player's success and how to maximize your chances of success

🇨🇦 How regions with a rich mining history, such as Canada and Australia, will lead the charge in the lithium mining revolution

💧 How water processes being massively used in lithium extraction projects will have consequences on lead times and technology availability in the Water Sector

📈 How lithium mining is an industry where everybody is growing and how there is more money flowing into the sector than companies ready to receive it

🚀 Generation 1 vs 2, Evaluating a Surprise Lithium Project, what's important for DLE's Success, Key market players, Growing as a water technology scale-up... and much more!

🔥 ... and of course, we concluded with the 𝙧𝙖𝙥𝙞𝙙 𝙛𝙞𝙧𝙚 𝙦𝙪𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨 🔥

🔗 Have a look at Saltworks' website

🔗 Come say hi to Benjamin on Linkedin

➡️ Check out the entire article on Why Water Technologies Matter in Lithium Mining (And Why You Should Buy Now!)

➡️ Reach out to me: [email protected]

Other Episodes in this Series:

1 - Why Water Technologies Matter in Lithium Mining (And Why You Should Buy Now!)

2 - The Shocking Requirements of Spodumene Processing (and other Lithium 101 stories)

3 - Standard Lithium's 10 Simple Secrets to DLE Success (and how that rolls out in El Dorado)

4 - How 'Reverse ZLD' made the World's Largest Water Company a Lithium Refinery Expert

Hosted by Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

S8E20 - I Scammed the UN using ChatGPT (What a Season Finale!)

10 maj 2023 | 16 min

The UN is Lying to You about SDG 6's Money!

10 maj 2023 | 1 min

S8E19 - The Fascinating Story of the Man Who Has 35 Water Companies to Sell

3 maj 2023 | 45 min

with 🎙️ Karl Michael Millauer, Founder of KMM Consulting and a former C-Level executive in some emblematic water groups like BWT, Christ Water Technology, Aquatech International, and Aquarion AG.

💧 KMM Consulting helps clients around the globe leverage opportunities in the world of water through mergers & acquisitions, finance & funding, business development, and strategic support.

What we covered:

▫️ How unlike McKinsey, Roland Berger, or KPMG, KMM Consulting works with small Water Companies and helps them get sold, further distributed or raising money

👴 How the most common case is to put a water company for sales to solve a succession challenge

🔨 How some other water businesses have reached a glass ceiling for their growth and how a M&A move is the way to break it

👐 How healthy water companies can be profitable for 45 years, active in a very good niche and scalable, and still not find any interested investor

🤑 How founders often overestimate the value of their Water Company, why they do so, and what's a good rule of thumb to determine the right valuation

⏰ How long a typical due diligence process lasts and what key milestones have to be crossed

🤝 How marketing is key in selling a water company and how that often boils down to the founder's ability to convey his message and value proposition

👔 How KMM Consulting packages its relationship to small water businesses and how that's a different approach to what most market players do

👨‍🏫 How ESG and sustainability investors may need to get educated to the specificities of the water sector when they first step in

📈 How some water companies are perfectly healthy and profitable and simply don't want to grow, why, and why that's absolutely fine!

👋 How when acquiring a small water company, new owners may get nervous if the founder leaves too quickly and which kind of mechanisms, such as earn-outs, work the best to please everyone

🍴 How the freshly created Aquarion AG acquired the established Hager und Elsässer behemoth and what you can learn from it

💰 Drivers that amend a company's valuation, healthy growth vs. burning money, the biggest hurdles in a water company sales process, how it's a people's business, the importance of risk management, pairing technical and commercial skills, focusing on the smaller end of the water sector's pyramid... and much more!

🔥 ... and of course, we concluded with the 𝙧𝙖𝙥𝙞𝙙 𝙛𝙞𝙧𝙚 𝙦𝙪𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨 🔥

🔗 Check KMM Consulting's Website

🔗 Send your warmest regards to Karl Michael on LinkedIn

➡️ Check out the entire article on how to sell smaller-sized Water Companies, including an infographic and a full transcript on the (don't) Waste Water website!

➡️ Reach out to me: [email protected]

Hosted by Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

[Extract] "He falls in so many nitty-gritty details that all investors fall asleep!" - Karl Michael Millauer - KMM Consulting

3 maj 2023 | 1 min

Karl Michael Millauer is the founder of KMM Consulting and a former C-Level executive in some emblematic water groups like BWT, Christ Water Technology, Aquatech International, and Aquarion AG. KMM Consulting helps clients around the globe leverage opportunities in the world of water through mergers & acquisitions, finance & funding, business development, and strategic support.

The water industry features some behemoths that regularly make the news: Veolia, Xylem, Suez... I mean, you know the usual suspects, as I have been featuring them every time there was noteworthy news to share about them.

Then, there's a fascinating wave of cool kids worth several thousands of millions, like 374Water, which I had on this microphone, or NX Filtration, which I should have on this microphone at some point; that's my mistake for not inviting them yet, and a growing pack of high-profile scale-ups raising tens of millions in seed rounds and Series A like my former guests Klir, Epic Cleantec, Source, or ZwitterCo.

Yet the water sector is also one of these typical places where the iceberg metaphor holds true! I see you rolling your eyes because that damn iceberg is overused but bear with me.

The 50 largest water companies combined only represent 25% of the total market, which by extension, highlights how there's an ocean of small-sized players that support all shades of water applications! How many? I can't tell, and despite looking around, I couldn't put my hands on even the beginning of a statistic that would depict this bottom of the pyramid.

I guess that's one more proof that while big players get a lot of attention, expert support, and coverage when they merge or consolidate, smaller actors have long been left in a no man's land.

Well, this is the no man's land I'm inviting you to explore this week with Karl Michael. And it's pure serendipity: I wanted to cover that topic for a while, so I got very curious when Global Water Intelligence introduced their opportunity exchange platform, featuring dozens of smaller-sized water companies looking for funding, a new owner, a distribution partner, or a licensee. Why serendipity? Well, the 35 first opportunities listed on this marketplace were all coming from Karl Michael Millauer. So I reached out, and you'll get to discover in a minute all of his openness to share a bit of his work and world!

Right before that, I'd like to thank from the bottom of my heart all the new listeners that came and joined me on this podcasting journey over the past weeks; I'm so happy to see the nice growth of this channel! I'm a one-man band, and I'm running this podcast on my free time and, let's be real, at my own expense as well, I love doing it for sure, but it's good in my long and tiring editing evenings to realize it's not for nothing, and it's bringing you some value.

So here's today's call to action: we'll have a special episode next week to close this season 8, and I have almost finished recording a special mini-season 9 that will look into the depth of the lithium industry and value chain and how that's an incredible opportunity for the water industry. I'm super excited to share this one with you, so stay tuned! This also means that I now have a bit of time to think of the upcoming season 10, and that's where I need you! If you have special wishes, areas you'd like me to explore for you, questions that keep you up at night, or guests you'd like to suggest to me, that's your chance: reach out to me on LinkedIn or send me an email at [email protected] and I'll make sure that Season 10 serves you well! Come on, do it, and I'll meet you on the other side.

➡️ Check out the entire article on how to sell smaller-sized Water Companies, including an infographic and a full transcript on the (don't) Waste Water website!

S8E18 - How to Leverage Water Risk Assessment to Unlock Business Opportunities

26 april 2023 | 65 min

with 🎙️ Jennifer Möller-Gulland, Water Risk Expert and Water Economist for the World Bank and the United Nations Development Programme

💧 Jennifer is the founder of the Water Risk Assessment Blueprint Training, a 12-week online course that helps water professionals to know the Water Risks, convince decision makers to consider and address them, be part of the solution, and accelerate their career.

What we covered:

3️⃣ How there are three types of Water Risks, physical, infrastructure, and governance, and how one should tackle the assessment of these risks

👨‍🏫 How water risks shall be understood at all levels, from government to companies and individuals

📈 How water risks are connected to economic development, social development and gender equality and how ignoring water risks can have long-lasting impacts on individuals and communities

🚱 How the governance risk in managing water crisis (such as Flint) is often not given the attention it deserves

😵 How the "40% water availability gap" risk given by the 2030 Water Resource Group is often misused and doesn't consider qualitative risks such as polluted water

😅 How the UN Water Conference can be taken with a positive spin, assuming you joined with no expectations, and how the outcomes are pretty typical of this kind of multilateral behemoth

♻️ How political cycles don't match with the infrastructure investments required for long-term sustainability and how decision-makers over-focus on making voters happy

💰 How infrastructure problems cannot always be fixed incrementally, how they may require complete overhauls and how there's no clear plan on how to finance it

💵 How linking a water risk assessment to GDP impact can help incentivize governments to take action based on it

💪 How Jennifer created her water risk assessment training, who it caters to, and what one can expect to learn from it

✋ Positive reinforcement of Water newcomers, the human right to Water, PFAS and its potential health consequences, the fate of a consultant's report, working for the World Bank or the UN, Water Futures, Water Markets... and much more!

🔥 ... and of course, we concluded with the 𝙧𝙖𝙥𝙞𝙙 𝙛𝙞𝙧𝙚 𝙦𝙪𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨 🔥

➡️ Join me (and many others!) at the BlueTech Forum

Get a 20% discount on checkout by using the code ANTOINE20

👋 See you in Edinburgh!

🔗 Check the Water Risk Blueprint Website

🔗 Get a Water Risk Crash Course

🔗 Get a FREE Masterclass on how to assess and communicate Water Risks

🔗 Send your warmest regards to Jennifer on LinkedIn or on Instagram

➡️ Check out the entire article on the importance of Water Risk Assessment, including an infographic and a full transcript on the (don't) Waste Water website!

Hosted by Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

[Extract] "This attitude is very Dangerous! Especially around Water." - Jennifer Möller-Gulland - Water Risk Assessment Blueprint Training

26 april 2023 | 1 min

Jennifer Möller-Gulland is a Water Risk Expert and Water Economist for the World Bank and the United Nations Development Programme. Jennifer is also the founder of the Water Risk Assessment Blueprint Training, a 12-week online course that helps water professionals to know the Water Risks, convince decision-makers to consider and address them, be part of the solution, and accelerate their career.

Somewhere in Paris' headquarters of the OECD, an independent and diverse group of eminent policymakers joined forces in May 2022 to create the Global Commission on the Economics of Water.

After the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change released in 2006 and the Dasgupta Review on the Economics of Biodiversity issued in 2021, they were about to complete what they called the Sustainability Trilogy with the release of their Pact for Voluntary Commitments - an incredible report that they launched on 22 March 2023 at the UN Water Conference.

Did you hear of it? Well, let's say it wasn't a banger, but they must have a good PR team, so it gathered some mainstream media attention. That's where Jennifer picked it up and looked up their Water Risk Assessment.

The result is history: a nicely crafted, pedagogic, positively toned yet affirmative LinkedIn post shared 113 times, where she calls out their b***s***.

Hey, that intro is not about name and shame. But I'm telling you that story because it seems that even though the World Economic Forum's yearly Global Risk Report has water-related ones all over its top ten, there's a severe deficit in understanding, framing, and running water risk assessments.

Yet how can we solve problems we don't understand and cannot size correctly? As Jennifer will explain in a minute, that's a challenge that shall be understood at all levels, from the government to companies and individuals, because water risks are connected to economic development, social development, GDP, every facet of the economy and even gender equality so clearly, ignoring water risks can have long-lasting impacts on individuals and communities.

So let's fix that, and let me close this intro and leave the floor to Jennifer, just after reminding you that you still have a couple of days left to book your seats for the upcoming BlueTech Forum, happening in Edinburgh on the 17th and 18th of May under the tagline of Innovation with Impact.

The agenda is packed with great speakers, mastermind roundtable sessions, "innovation for impact" box design sprints, 5 by 5 partnership case studies, lots of networking opportunities, and BlueTech's signature cherry-picked disruptive water tech innovations.

Check out the full agenda on bluetechforum.com - the link is in the description - and consider joining me and many former guests of this podcast in Edinburgh this May. If that's of interest, here's the cherry on the cake: with the code Antoine20, like my name, 20, you'll get a 20% discount on your registration if you book before the end of April, so hurry up; the doors are closing!

➡️ Join me (and many others!) at the BlueTech Forum

Get a 20% discount on checkout by using the code ANTOINE20

👋 See you in Edinburgh!

🔗 Check the Water Risk Blueprint Website

🔗 Get a Water Risk Crash Course

🔗 Get a FREE Masterclass on how to assess and communicate Water Risks

🔗 Send your warmest regards to Jennifer on LinkedIn or on Instagram

➡️ Check out the entire article on the importance of Water Risk Assessment, including an infographic and a full transcript on the (don't) Waste Water website!

S8E17 - Zwitterions' Super Powers Could Solve Wastewater Membranes' Number One Problem

19 april 2023 | 57 min

[Extract] "I was not the student they would have expected to have a career!" - Alex Rappaport - ZwitterCo

19 april 2023 | 1 min

Alex Rappaport is the CEO and Co-Founder of ZwitterCo. ZwitterCo leverages the benefits of Zwitterions to build Membranes that treat the world's toughest wastewater.

Theoretically speaking, wastewater treatment is easy. You have water with stuff inside at the inlet, and you want water with much less stuff inside at the outlet. So you just have to define what has to be removed, and you could size a membrane to do exactly that job.

Let's say, you want everything that's larger than 1 nanometer to be out of the picture. You take a reverse osmosis membrane, you push your wastewater on one end, and whatever comes out on the other end will fit your specification. Easy, the job's done, goodbye!

Well... The problem is that if that system was to work, it would for sure not work long. Your membrane would be clogged, and irreversibly fouled, and after minutes to hours, you would have to throw it away and start fresh.

Now, nobody except me would be stupid enough to try something like that out. So in most cases, you won't go for a one-step treatment; you'll rather opt for a clever combination, where stuff gets removed from water layer by layer with optimized efficiency.

Stages of this process will probably be done with membranes, and if you want to end up reusing that water, the last step will for sure be done with membranes.

But even if you have this time designed everything right, your membranes will still clog over time, and backwash will lose efficiency cycle after cycle until irreversible fouling is so high you have to replace your system.

So, every 7 to 12 years, you're good to reinvest in membranes, modules, and some peripherals. Unless someone cracks the code for fouling-free membranes... But that's physically not possible, right?

Well, that's before looking into the surprising physical properties of Zwitterions, a special family of molecules that are simultaneously positively and negatively charged. As a result, they're highly hydrophilic and very resistant to non-specific adhesion.

So wouldn't that make them the best special sauce to pump up a membrane filtration system? I'll let Alex answer this in a minute, as he'll do it so much better than me.

But you'll swiftly notice that it's a fascinating take at the toughest wastewaters and most difficult industrial reuse riddles.

To that extent, ZwitterCo is a perfect example of innovation with impact. If that's a theme you'd like to explore in greater depth, Innovation with Impact is also the tagline of the upcoming BlueTech Forum, happening in Edinburgh on the 17th and 18th of May. The agenda is packed with great speakers, mastermind roundtable sessions, "innovation for impact" box design sprints, 5 by 5 partnership case studies, lots of networking opportunities, and BlueTech's signature cherry-picked disruptive water tech innovations.

That's just a bite-sized summary of a packed agenda - if you'd like to know more, check out bluetechforum.com - and consider joining me and many former guests of this podcast in Edinburgh this May. I talked of cherry-picked innovation: well there's a cherry on the cake as well: with the code Antoine20, like my name, 20, you'll get a 20% discount on your registration if you book before the end of April.

➡️ Join me (and many others!) at the BlueTech Forum

Get a 20% discount on checkout by using the code ANTOINE20

👋 See you in Edinburgh!

➡️ Check out the entire article on ZwitterCo's leverage of Zwitterions and how it could revolutionize the World of industrial wastewater treatment, including an infographic and a full transcript on the (don't) Waste Water website!

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4 Money Bleeding Water Companies You Should Invest In (and one that's in Danger)

17 april 2023 | 10 min

S8E16 - Could Neglecting 92% of Your Tasks be Costing You Money? Water Marketers Beware!

12 april 2023 | 62 min

with 🎙️ Björn Otto, founder, and Managing Director of Interius Solutions.

💧 Interius Solutions supports Water Technology Companies with outsourced marketing solutions and a very special touch - it's marketing done by water professionals that understand water technologies.

Marketing is not the Water Industry's forte. I dare you to find one out of the 187 previous episodes of this podcast in which we don't at least allude to the flaws in our sector's marketing.

We've discussed how it impacts water's value, water's perception, water technology's take-off and market adoption, the general public's understanding of our sector, how it inhibits the fight against water scarcity, how it opens boulevards for bottled water or unsustainable practices and much more and much worse.

But, once we've said all that. What do we do about it?

Sitting on our hands and complaining is not really in the DNA of this sector, so it's about time we apply this forward thinking to marketing as well. That requires some know-how, some understanding of the root causes of the situation we're in, a ton of expertise, and, more important: practical, concrete, and actionable pieces of advice.

That is why I reached out to my co-host on the Water Show, Björn Otto, and gave him this simple task. Provide water industry decision-makers, investors, and key actors with a blueprint for action. And god, did he deliver on the request! So without further due, I'll let you dive into my discussion with him.

Last stop before that - if you like today's content, consider subscribing and sharing that episode with your boss, a colleague, your marketing manager or that promising young engineer in your team you'd think would make an incredible marketer going forward

🔥 ... and of course, we concluded with the 𝙧𝙖𝙥𝙞𝙙 𝙛𝙞𝙧𝙚 𝙦𝙪𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨 🔥

🔗 Send your warmest regards to Björn on LinkedIn

🔗 Check out Interius Solution's website

▶️ Find the full article on why and how Water Companies shall Better their Marketing Game on the (don't) Waste Water website!

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S8E15 - How to Frustrate 90% of Start-Up Founders in 15 Minutes in their Best Interest

6 april 2023 | 59 min

with 🎙️ Paul Gagliardo, Judge and advisor at Imagine H2O, and Principal at Gagliacqua.

💧 Paul also runs the Water Entrepreneur, an incredibly good water podcast that is one of my personal favorites and which also turns out to be a family business as Paul will elaborate on later on in the conversation.

What we covered:

🚽 How leading the project that infamously popularized the term "toilet to tap" made Paul famous and what his job was in San Diego

👨‍🔬 How Paul led a research center that tested equipment, gave a brutally honest feedback and assessment and how he rapidly got praised for that

🈂️ How becoming a consultant engineer, one of his first duties was to translate what utilities said so that his colleagues could understand it

🏰 How the water sector used to be extremely conservative and somewhat trapped in the 19th century and how things drastically changed over the last decade

🧑 How the startup founder is almost as important as the technology and the market the company aims for, why, and what to do now that you're aware of that

🚧 How some inventors believe in their technology despite the fundamental laws of physics and how to overcome their harassing demands

⚖️ Defining a set of rules to check and assess technology in the most effective manner and how despite all precautions taken to make it a science, there is still some subjectivity in it

🧑‍⚖️ How the more disruptive your technology is, the more people will want to compare it to things they know and understand to better assess the value you're delivering

📊 How you need to think of data collection from the onset when piloting and how there are a set of best practices that support your efforts in this endeavor

🤌 How expertise can be tricky: the more expertise someone has, the less likely that person is to look at something new because they think they already know everything

0️⃣ Startups having zero experience in the water business, getting paid as a utility and having to figure out what to do with the money, how founders have to be prepared to be replaced when the company grows, being an open book, being smarter than everybody else, seeing the future... and much more!

🔥 ... and of course, we concluded with the 𝙧𝙖𝙥𝙞𝙙 𝙛𝙞𝙧𝙚 𝙦𝙪𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨 🔥

🔗 Send your warmest regards to Paul on LinkedIn

🔗 Check out the Water Entrepreneur Podcast's Website

🔗 Find the full transcript of my conversation with the inventor of the Toilet to Tap on the (don't) Waste Water website!

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[Extract] "You need everything: Market, Technology, Founder and Team!" - Paul Gagliardo - The Water Entrepreneur

6 april 2023 | 1 min

Paul Gagliardo is a judge and advisor at Imagine H2O, and the Principal of a consultancy dedicated to developing water start-ups, Gagliacqua. If you're into podcasts, and I hope you are as you're listening to this, Paul also runs the Water Entrepreneur, an incredibly good water podcast that is one of my personal favorites and which also turns out to be a family business as Paul will elaborate on later on in the conversation.

The path to success for a Water Start-Up is often everything but a straight line. It takes time, patience, effort, grit, passion, and a lot more to take a water company from zero to one, one to ten, ten to one thousand, and one thousand to one million.

And we've covered some of the emblematic examples of that long road on that microphone, for instance, with Andrew Benedek, who told us how he maybe took Zenon from the lonely prophet in the middle of the desert to the leader of the MBR revolution, but in no less than two decades.

Now, what Paul brings into the discussion today, as you already heard in the extracts, is that the Water Sector is evolving. It doesn't get easier, but it goes at a faster pace. And interestingly, the turning point that started that acceleration coincides with the inception of Imagine H2O - a story we've covered with Scott Bryan on that microphone, and in which Paul is an important actor.

This new age of breaking things fast and striving for swifter impact materializes in many shapes. For instance, the financial results recently published by the new cool kids on the block in the Water Industry show that the money-burning path to scale, once reserved for the Uber, Twitter, or WeWork of this World, now also applies to the Water Sector. To take only one example.

With a faster pace also comes greater uncertainty and increased importance in making the right decision at the right time. This is where profiles like Paul's are an incredible resource: having been on all ends of the Water Spectrum, they've gathered experience that can prove invaluable to the C-suite and founders of these scale-ups. To that extent, you'll see that today's conversation doubles down and enhances on concepts we've heard from Wayne Byrne, Graeme Pearce, Reinhard Hübner, or Piers Clark.

In conclusion to this lengthy introduction, I can tell you that I enjoyed spending that hour with Paul, that I hope you will as well, and that if that's the case, I'd strongly encourage you to take this podcast and share it with a friend, a colleague, a start-up founder or an investor! So please do it, and I'll meet you on the other side.

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Water Wars in France? The 4 Riddles it Raises

29 mars 2023 | 8 min

S8E14 - I Watched The UN Water Conference So You Don't Have To - Day 3

25 mars 2023 | 10 min

S8E13 - I Watched The UN Water Conference So You Don't Have To - Day 2

24 mars 2023 | 15 min

S8E12 - I Watched The UN Water Conference So You Don't Have To - Day 1

23 mars 2023 | 13 min

S8E11 - How To Win at Negotiating With the Most Powerful Stakeholders?

22 mars 2023 | 45 min

Is SUEZ's CEO Quietly Quitting?

17 mars 2023 | 8 min

S8E10 - 30 Experts Rewrite The UN Water Conference's Agenda. For The Better?

15 mars 2023 | 25 min

S8E9 - How to Win in a Competitive & Mature Niche Market: The Astonishing Aclarus Ozone

8 mars 2023 | 53 min

[Extract] "Our clients aren't looking for Ozone, they're looking for Help!" - Michael Doran - Aclarus Ozone

8 mars 2023 | 1 min

Michael Doran is the president and co-founder of Aclarus Ozone. Aclarus aims to solve complex water problems with advanced ozone technology.

The ozone world is a 1.4 billion-a-year niche I used to know pretty well, as that's where I've cut my water teeth. It's been around for over a century, with the ozonation step of the Nice drinking water plant in France continuously operating since 1906.

On the players' end, you've got Veolia and Xylem as established market leaders, a new wave of Chinese players that might well be of equivalent size today, like Newland or Guolin, proponents of modular approaches such as Primozone or Pinnacle, and historic Japanese moguls that quietly exist to hunt a white elephant from time to time, such as Metawater or Mitsubishi.

All that little band meets several times a year in International Ozone Association gatherings, where they are joined by academics, and grows steadily under the influence of new regulations and higher water quality expectations on both ends of the Water Cycle.

On the technological side, I remember how excited my R&D colleagues were when a multi-year development program yielded some percent of performance improvement - and they were and probably still are the top-notch guys in this industry. So safe to say there's a technological asymptote, and that sector tends to it.

All in all, it's not the worst business to be in, I've enjoyed my ozone years, and I've learned so much, but it's probably not the most exciting either, still, if you ask me.

So if you can't really expect to disrupt the technology, if it's around for a while, if it has established players, and if it won't go through the roof. Why would you start a company in this field?

Well, that's one of the keys to today's conversation with Michael. Because it goes against all the preconceptions: there's much to innovate on the business side, the customer service, the go-to-market, the overall approach, the solution mindset, and many more that Michael will detail in a minute.

You don't have to create a category or prove a technology from scratch. Executing better than anyone is also a key skill - if not THE key skill - but enough from hearing it from me. My guest will tell you all of that much better.

So let us take off, just after this reminder, that if you like what you hear, if you think this will be of interest and value to someone else out there, there's only one way to spread the message: take this episode and share it with them. Drop a WhatsApp message, a LinkedIn InMail or status, an SMS, a hint at the coffee machine or simply tell them. Really, that's how podcasts spread, and that's how I know I shall continue to provide more of them! Come on, do it, and I'll meet you on the other side!

How to Win in a Competitive & Mature Niche Market: The Astonishing Aclarus Ozone

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S8E8 - How to Leverage Life Cycle Assessment To Take Better Decisions

1 mars 2023 | 47 min

with 🎙️ Dubravka Skunca, LCA Representative and Expert for the European Commission, but also an SME Support leader at the European Regional Development Fund, Business Consultant, and Council Representative at various EIT groups.

💧 Dubravka is also LCA Leader for Green Protein, a European project which aims at a major innovation in the fields of protein production and food loss reduction in the EU by producing high-added value, food-grade functional proteins, and other ingredients out of green field waste.

What we covered:

♻️ What Life Cycle Assessment actually is, and what outcomes to expect from it

🦶 How Water Footprint is one of the dimensions of Lifecycle Assessment

🌐 How there won't be any water circularity without a global circularity - a topic we had already addressed with Gonzalo Delacámara last week

👨‍⚖️ How sustainability can involve difficult calls to make for decision-makers and how LCA can help make the right decisions

🌱 How SMEs can benefit from Lifecycle Assessment not only for their own growth path but also to better interact with large companies

🛣️ How sustainability is on the roadmap of most CEOs for their companies' future but also their present

🍲 How circularity will have to play an increased role in the agri-food value chain

🛠️ What to do once you've completed your Lifecycle Assessment and which tools and steps come next

🗑️ How wasted food is also a lot of wasted water, and how new approaches strive to fight that sustainability non-sense

🫲 Coaching SMEs, Lecturing at the University, startups as a way to feed major's innovation, demonstrating impact to a wide audience... and much more!

🔥 ... and of course, we concluded with the 𝙧𝙖𝙥𝙞𝙙 𝙛𝙞𝙧𝙚 𝙦𝙪𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨 🔥

🔗 Send your warmest regards to Dubravka on LinkedIn

➡️ Check out the entire article on how life cycle assessment can help make sustainable decisions, including an infographic and a full transcript on the (don't) Waste Water website!

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[Extract] "I would start with Circularity as a Concept" - Dubravka Skunca - European Commission

1 mars 2023 | 1 min

S8E7 - Why do we have so many Good Reasons to make Wrong Water Decisions?

22 februari 2023 | 62 min

[Extract] "We've got 19th century institutions making decisions about 21st century challenges!" - Gonzalo Delacámara

22 februari 2023 | 1 min

Gonzalo Delacámara is Consultant on Natural Resources Economics for the United Nations and Water Policy Advisor for the OECD, the European Commission, and the World Bank. Gonzalo is also Director of the Center for Water & Climate Adaptation at IE University, aiming to reinvent education and train the people who will change the World tomorrow.

Why does the World misbehave when it comes to Water? Why can't Water be truly circular when all water professionals agree it should be? Why do we still have to evangelize the World to the treasures of resource recovery? The list goes on and on. And from inside the Water Industry, it can get frustrating.

Yet, there's an unpleasant truth to accept: the Water Sector is an epiphenomenon on the broader scale of things. I know it's unfair, and it probably doesn't make sense, but it is simply and coldly true. This is how, as per the example Gonzalo shares today, people will pump up desalinated Water from the Sea to the Atacama desert - which represents the trifle of 250 bars of pumping - just because the commodity market can cover the cost.

No one will dare to argue that it is sustainable to waste Water and energy just for some bits of copper. But as Gonzalo will demonstrate in a jiffy, the wrong incentives lead to the wrong results.

So I'll let him develop the argumentation, as he'll do it much better than what I would bastardize here, but I will lead into that conversation with a straightforward question for all of us.

In one month from the date I release this episode, the Water's who's who will converge to New York for the UN Water Conference. You've heard it all: once in a lifetime, didn't happen since Mar Del Plata in 1977, bla bla bla.

But are we sufficiently applying this advice we've got from Claudia Winkler and Alice Schmidt on this microphone by Season 3, Episode 6? Are we zooming out before we zoom in? Will we aim for real solutions that break the water silo and really embrace the circularity nexus, or will we waste this opportunity with short-sighted debates?

If one assembly has the power to finally set the right incentives, that should be this one. So if you know a delegate that will attend the main or a side event, take this episode, and send it to him. Tell that water who's who that water people won't solve water alone. That we need circularity in the decision-making so that the entire system of systems ultimately gets circular.

Tell them, do it, and I'll meet you on the other side!

Why do we have so many Good Reasons to make Wrong Water Decisions?

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Why Greedy Capitalists is the Best Thing for America’s Water

18 februari 2023 | 18 min

S8E6 - This CEO That Raised $22M Reveals His One Trick You MUST Copy Today

15 februari 2023 | 48 min

with 🎙️ Greg Newbloom, CEO and Founder of Membrion.

💧 Membrion strives to help industrial water users who aren’t satisfied with processes that are thousands of years old, and who’ve been searching for a better and lower-cost way to recycle or reuse their wastewater.

What we covered:

🚀 How Membrion ended up becoming a Water Company and how it was due to some smart investors

♻️ How shocking some of the common traits of the Water Industry can be for outsiders, and how that's an opportunity to have a high impact

🔗 How the most precious asset for a young water company is to have a direct link to its customers and how to actually foster it

🛞 How there is nothing to win in reinventing the wheel: you shall leverage your peer's knowledge. Plus, they're willing to share!

💡 How you can treat any stream with a membrane, but only a few profitably - unless you have a trick to optimise or short-cut pre-treatment

🚚 How industrial wastewater that gets trucked away is a very complex soup to handle, and how to solve that riddle

🙌 How the right solution leads to a win-win: it is both profitable and sustainable

🤝 Starting a relationship by proving the solution can work in the worst possible conditions to win a customer's confidence

🎲 Pivoting the company to define the right value chain segment to cover and growing from a membrane to a module

📈 How to transform a pilot into a demo, a full scale and ultimately a flagship reference

💧 How water scarcity brings back the real sense of the value of water, especially in an industrial context

🏎️ Connecting passion, technology, entrepreneurship, and harsh realities, how it feels to get accelerated from the inside, derisking new solutions, replacing an industry standard, testing waters to find the best market fit, the perks, and limits of ceramics

🔥 ... and of course, we concluded with the 𝙧𝙖𝙥𝙞𝙙 𝙛𝙞𝙧𝙚 𝙦𝙪𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨 🔥

🔗 Check Membrion's Website

🔗 Send your warmest regards to Greg on LinkedIn

➡️ Check out the entire article on Membrion's path, including a teaser, an infographic and a full transcript on the (don't) Waste Water website!

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[Extract] "A 2-3 payback period can change to a 1-2 months payback!" - Greg Newbloom - Membrion

15 februari 2023 | 1 min

Greg Newbloom is the Founder and CEO of Membrion. Membrion strives to help industrial water users who aren't satisfied with processes that are thousands of years old and who've been searching for a better and lower-cost way to recycle or reuse their wastewater.

Marketing guru Louis Grenier has some key advice within his STFO methodology. But whenever he has a chance to rank a number one within his selection, he mentions that you should talk with your customers. And not just talk: engage with them, get to know them beyond any made-up persona, and steal as much as you can from them.

Not stealing like scamming or going out of their offices with some furniture. But stealing, in the sense that you'll let them tell you their real pains and cater your solution to what's really matters to them.

Ok, so much for this hashed-down Marketing 101; where am I heading with that.

Actually, this is something like my 150th interview on this podcast. And I think I never heard anyone else implementing the simple trick Greg has put in place at Membrion and shares today. And yet, it's disarmingly genius!

Every single request you put in on Membrion's website actually goes straight to Greg. Don't spam him right away, but if you enjoy what he shares today, you can probably go tell him directly with Membrion's contact form!

You'll hear in a minute how there's more than this trick. How even Membrion's presence in the Water Sector is actually the result from listening to market voices. And there's a ton of actionable advice in what you'll hear, so I'll let you make up your own minds, but I sense you will want to follow my advice and drop him a message by the end of today's episode!

We actually recorded this episode some months ago - you know, I'm still a one-man-band, so sometimes production times are a bit longer; sorry for that, but I may have big news soon. The reason I mention it is that Membrion closed a Series B early this year for $7 million, and you might be surprised I didn't raise the question in the interview. But don't worry, I raise many others, including one that really puzzles me that comes even after the rapid-fire questions.

I'll let you discover all of that, and remember, if you like what you hear, please take this episode and share it around you with a friend, a colleague, or an aspiring water entrepreneur that would praise some incredibly actionable advice and I'll meet you on the other side!

Membrion's CEO That Raised $22M Reveals His One Trick You MUST Copy Today

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The Investor Who Built a $1 Billion Water Revenue Company from Scratch in 12 Years through 38 M&A Moves

8 februari 2023 | 62 min

with 🎙️ Reinhard Hübner, CEO of SKion Water, 2021's Water Company of the Year

💧 SKion Water is an international water technology platform, that aims to empower water technology companies to make a difference.

What we covered:

📈 How SKion Water was built from scratch in a decade, to reach about 750 M€ yearly turnover

🛣️ How building a successful water company all starts with choosing your path (and what the options are)

🤑 How cheap money comes with drawbacks and how this can be problematic for water entrepreneurs

🤪 How water market capitalizations totally go through the roof these days (and what to think about it)

☠️ How there's no magical way to skip steps and how it is dangerous to even try

💧 How the water industry is segmented, and how important it is to target the right section of the food chain

🤯 How it might be tempting to see yourself as much more clever than everyone before, and how that can lead to terrible mistakes as a water entrepreneur

🌳 How trees don't grow up to the sky, and how being reasonable on your business expectations is the best way to really deliver

🤝 How it might be tempting to see tremendous synergies between various branches of the water industry... and how those rarely (if ever) exist

🍏 How what matters at the end of the day is less the plan than the way you execute it (and how you might have to go in the trenches)

🧱 All in all, how Reinhard built the 2021 "Water Company of the Year"

💧 How Reinhart almost fell into investing by accident

🍏 The two reasons why one would want to invest in Water (despite all the challenges)

🍎 How SKion's success was born in early, rapid, and spectacular failures

🍏 How the focus is not to acquire companies but to serve the real customer needs (and the foolproof trick to always keep that market pulse)

👝 How the Water Sector's structure is quite unique in terms of company sizes and how a certain one doesn't exist at all

💰 What's the best way to invest in water companies and why

🧍 Who are the best water entrepreneur profiles, why, and how they have to take risks

💸 Water Industry's consolidation frenzy, too much money potentially killing companies, crazy valuations, learning from history, giving atypical companies a chance... and much more!

🔥 ... and of course, we concluded with the 𝙧𝙖𝙥𝙞𝙙 𝙛𝙞𝙧𝙚 𝙦𝙪𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨 🔥

The Dynamics of Water Innovation

➡️ Come say hi to Reinhard on LinkedIn

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S8E5 - Why bother with Residential Water Struggles? It's an Industry Risk!

1 februari 2023 | 20 min

[Extract] "Water is not Energy or Agriculture: it's All of that!" - Damian Georgino - Womble Bond Dickinson

1 februari 2023 | 1 min

Damian Georgino is Partner at Womble Bond Dickinson. Womble Bond Dickinson is a leading law firm that provides support to organizations operating within the fast-moving, challenging, and dynamic energy, water, and food nexus.

That was a hell of a ride. What am I talking about? Well, this exploration of the Water Crisis in America. I know, to some of you, it may sound like the definition of a First-World problem. Yet, when you look at the challenges that the wealthiest country on earth faces when it comes to water, you get a better sense of the global water riddle we have to solve.

I hope that with the twenty stops on that journey, we started in September, you got to grasp that beyond the real and daunting challenges, there's also an array of solutions. That it's not a lost battle at all and that we can win it, assuming we align ourselves, put all the pieces of the jigsaw in place and get the ball rolling at all levels.

Now I get it as well that it can be challenging to connect so many dots - here's why I have a special offer for you. If you go to dww.show/water-crisis-in-america you can download a 104 pages cartoon that synthesizes what all my New York guests have told us over the past weeks, combined with the best insights from previous guests and literature review, with a bit of my own brain juice to do the jointing.

104 pages of a simple, down-to-earth cartoon that's taken me 6 months to write, design and compile. 104 pages where you'll find all the protagonists you've heard on that microphone, carefully pictured in a cartoon shape by my talented illustrator.

What do I ask you in exchange of that download? Well, nothing. It's free. Forever. What's the catch? Well, I hope you'll trust me if I tell you that there is absolutely no catch. I simply want that knowledge to go to as many people as possible!

Now, if you want to help me in this endeavor, you can share the cartoon with whoever you think shall read it! And if you have a website, internet is about linking, so you could consider linking to the cartoon page from your resources section, your blog, or your media page. Whatever suits you suits me and brings us one step forward!

Finally, if you don't like reading and prefer to listen to or watch the content of the cartoon, I've already released chapter one as a podcast on this podcast channel and as a video on my youtube channel - go check it out; three more are in the making, my one-man-band is spinning its wheels to make it happen as fast as possible.

That being said, we have a last leg in our interview journey to air today: that's my conversation with Damian. I swear you'll swiftly get why I thought it would be the proper one to close the series: we're revisiting some of themes we already covered, like water fit for purpose or distributed approaches, but we're also framing it by looking at it from a different angle.

Sure, residential water is a trouble, and we're rightfully concerned about getting water of sometimes questionable quality. But all the industrial goods and food we rely on every day also need water, and actually a lot more. So, by the volumes, different parts of the water cake may request more of our attention, and Damian will remind us of that!

I've already been exceptionally long with this intro, so I'll leave the floor to Damian, and I'll see you on the other side!

Why bother with Residential Water Struggles? It's an Industry Risk!

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S8E4 - Where's Practical Climate Data when you Desperately Need It?

25 januari 2023 | 15 min

[Extract] "Climate Issues aren't decades off from now..." - Sarah Kapnick - National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration

25 januari 2023 | 1 min

Sarah Kapnick is Chief Scientist at the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration. The US NOAA aims to enrich life through science. From the sun's surface to the ocean's depths, the Agency works to keep the public informed of the changing environment around them.

There are a lot of parameters to consider when planning infrastructure for today and the decades to come. It is a compound of existing assets, communities, social issues, vulnerabilities, and so on and so on.

But maybe before all of that, there's one essential compound: data. Indeed, if you don't know where your infrastructure lies - sounds crazy, I know, but that happens every day; check my conversation with Olivier Narbey if you want to hear some nasty stories about that - how are you supposed to plan your infrastructure's evolution?

Yet, that's arguably data you can acquire locally, which almost depends entirely on you. The same is true for social issues or, to a certain extent, communities and their evolution.

But when it comes to broader climate insights, that changes quite a bit. Climate change is global, and even if its impact is very local, linking both isn't a piece of cake at all. Information exists, but it's often quite scattered and hard to compile.

This is why having central initiatives to compile relevant datasets, combine them in a purposeful way, and deliver them in a format that ensures they can be used straight away is so important. And that's the baton the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration has taken up in the US; I'll let Sarah explain how and why.

For now, I'll let you dive into her work with my usual reminder that if you like what you hear, please take this episode and share it with a colleague, a friend, or your LinkedIn network! That's the best way to support me and to get that podcast known to more people, one pair of ears at a time. Come on, do it, and I'll meet you on the other side!

Where's Practical Climate Data when you Desperately Need It?

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BREAKING NEWS - Will Xylem succeed with Evoqua where Veolia and Siemens failed?

23 januari 2023 | 8 min

The 4 Horsemen of America's Water Apocalypse

22 januari 2023 | 19 min

S8E3 - Can Private Capital Change the World of Water for the Better?

18 januari 2023 | 20 min

[Extract] "People don't even know where their Water Asset is" - Henry Cordes - Sciens Water

18 januari 2023 | 1 min

Henry Cordes is Principal at Sciens Water. Sciens is a research-driven investment fund that identifies uncovered, under-researched, or misunderstood water sector opportunities that are undercapitalized.

I could say a lot about the pre-conceptions out there on the involvement of private capital in the Water Sector. I've already told several times the story of when a group of university professors named me the devil's right hand for explaining during a conference how private capital could help solve some of our water challenges.

But this time, I'll play it slightly differently, I'll pass on the microphone to a student I met at the Columbia Water Center in New York. I think it sums it all.

I've often been very quick to dismiss the role of the private sector. I've often been led to believe that the privatization of water is inherently and unequivocally harmful. It is going to limit access. It is gonna make water more expensive. It's unjustifiable. But listening to the harsh realities of the water sector or water infrastructure is extremely underfunded in the United States.

And one way to overcome it, like very pragmatically and feasibly, is by privatizing elements of it. And I think that was a hard pill to swallow because it's acknowledging that what I've been told in class might be wrong. but it's also accepting there is no either or, and the public sector isn't inherently pitted against the private sector, rather for water problems to be kind of find a resolution. This collaboration is so critical.

Indeed, we shall maybe stop opposing public and private money, something Gaetane Suzenet already shared on that microphone, and rather focus on what each of both has to offer. That is what Henry will strive to do today, so I'll leave him the floor.

But right before I'll do that, remember that if you like what you hear, please take this episode and share it with a colleague, a friend, or your LinkedIn network! That's the best way to support me, and I'd be grateful if you took a minute of your time to do it. Can I count on you? I'm sure I can, let's meet on the other side!

Can Private Capital Change the World of Water for the Better?

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S8E2 - What do you Need to Know to Invest Wisely in Water Technologies?

11 januari 2023 | 17 min

[Extract] "You would think no one still does that, and yet..." - Meshal Alduraywish - Sciens Water

11 januari 2023 | 1 min

2023 Insider Info: Did Pinterest Actually Expose the Future of Water?

4 januari 2023 | 6 min

What's the Value of your Poop? - TEDx Special

28 december 2022 | 18 min

S8E1 - Are Amazon Water Filters the Best Way to Quench our Thirst?

21 december 2022 | 26 min

[Extract] "It's happening in various places - we just don't realize it yet!" - Upmanu Lall - Columbia Water Center

21 december 2022 | 1 min

Upmanu Lal is the Director of the Columbia Water Center at Columbia University in New York. The Columbia Water Center is on a mission to creatively tackle the water challenges of a rapidly changing world where water and climate interact with food, energy, ecosystems, and urbanization.

Over the past two years, governments around the World have announced unusual water infrastructure investments, with, for instance, 111 billion dollars in the Infrastructure act in the US.

All of that triggered a sizeable 3 to 4% yearly increase in investments in that sub-segment of the Water Sector. But there's a cooler kid in town: decentralized or distributed water treatments grow at three times that pace.

Let me repeat that. We see unprecedented investments in centralized infrastructure, and yet, investments in their decentralized counterpart grow three times faster!

That honestly gets you thinking. Does the centralized push arrive too late? You'll hear me asking that to Upmanu in even straighter terms in just a minute when I'm asking if we're pushing a dead beast.

I think the question is worth asking when you hear Upmanu deconstruct why these radically decentralized water treatments trump central infrastructure on nearly every level.

We might well enter the post-utility era or at least an age that's thus far from the model we imagined at the turn of the 19th century or in the sewers of Babylonia 5'000 years ago, that water and wastewater utilities will have to seriously reinvent themselves.

And as we've already discussed with Seth Siegel on that microphone, I see good and bad in that new normal. Now, if you ask me, I'd rather advocate for a slightly lighter disruption as the one Upmanu described, where decentralized treatments still happen at community or building level rather than under every sink.

But that's just my two cents, and I'm pretty sure I never got a scientific citation when Upmanu draws on almost 18'000 for his extensive work on the topic - kind of the definition of an expert, right?

So without further due, I'll let you dive into the nuggets he shares with us. Well, wait, without further due, yes, but not without reminding you that if you like what you hear, you can make some of your friends, colleagues, or LinkedIn contacts the best Christmas present there is by sharing and recommending them this episode. If you wonder how I attract someone the caliber of Upmanu on my microphone, well, it's a one-stop trick: it's thanks to these recommendations. You have that power; I'm so grateful when you use it! Please do it, and I'll meet you on the other side.

Are Amazon Water Filters the Best Way to Quench our Thirst?

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S7E20 - The Climate Change Adaptation Opportunities You Don't Want To Miss Out

14 december 2022 | 55 min

[Extract] "Put your Money where Water will be in the right amount at the right time!" - Lauren Enright - Michael Stanley Gallisdorfer

14 december 2022 | 1 min

Lauren Enright is the Founder of Axiom Climate, and Michael Stanley Gallisdorfer is a Water Sustainability Strategist you've already heard on that microphone by the excellent Episode 17 of Season 2. Together with Indrani Pal, Lauren and Michael will lead a Session Day at the upcoming American Geophysical Union Meeting in Chicago titled "Adapting to Climate Change: Innovative Solutions for Building Water Resilience to Long-term Meteorological & Hydrological Change."

If you've followed the series of COP Conferences that aim to take on Climate Change challenges, you've probably noticed a difference between the latest COP 27 and the previous 26.

So far, we mostly talked about climate change mitigation - and hence, it was much of a carbon topic. COP 27 happened to be different: for the first time, the focus was on climate change adaptation. And in that new realm, much of the focus is switching to water.

Why so? Well, because climate change is increasing variability in the water cycle, thus causing extreme weather events, lowering the predictability of water availability, decreasing water quality, and threatening sustainable development, biodiversity, or simply the enjoyment of the human rights to safe drinking water and sanitation worldwide - for the ones that are blessed with it.

Those would be just some of the consequences, but in a nutshell, we can say: climate change will be felt through water.

So what do we do about it? That's where climate change adaptation kicks in. We don't have to reinvent the wheel; we just - between quotation marks - have to implement existing technology and fast-track the path to market for the right innovations.

It's not because we start deploying climate change adaptation that we accept our fate and stop with the mitigation efforts; both can and should work hand in hand. But if we accept that, by now, a good chunk of the effects of climate change can't be reversed for a long time, we better leverage our water knowledge to limit how much it will affect populations across the globe.

That is Lauren, Michael, and Indrani's proposal to the World: kickstarting actionable innovative solutions for the World to start adapting and protecting every crew member of spaceship earth. If you like what you hear today, you'll probably enjoy their session at the American Geophysical Union Meeting in Chicago as they schedule an entire day on Friday to light the climate change adaptation topic with fresh angles and new approaches.

And for today's conversation, if you feel more people shall hear it, you have that power: share it with a friend, a colleague, or your LinkedIn network! Come on, do it, and I'll meet you on the other side.

The Climate Change Adaptation Opportunities You Don't Want To Miss Out

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S7E19 - 800 M&A Moves in a Decade, Yet You’ve Never Heard of this Water Utility!

7 december 2022 | 20 min

[Extract] "There's a market niche that no-one want's to do!" - Josiah Cox - Central States Water Resources

7 december 2022 | 1 min

Josiah Cox is the founder and president of Central States Water Resources. Central States Water Resources transforms how water utilities work by acquiring small, often non-compliant systems and then using expertise, technology, and innovation to quickly assess and turn them into reliable infrastructure.

I bet you've never heard of Central States Water Resources. Please don't get offended; I had never heard of the company either before my interview with Alex Loucopoulos on that microphone a bit over a year ago.

I did a little Google Trend exercise before recording: I've compared the occurrences of "American Water" and "Central States Water Resources" in search terms, and AW wins by a 99 to 1 score.

Now, I hear you rolling your eyes and telling me it's an absolutely unfair and non-sense comparison, and you're widely right. Yet, last year, Central States Water Resources completed 40% of the recorded M&A moves in water and wastewater utilities in the US.

Over less than a decade of existence, the company has been closing over 80 moves a year on average - which is far more than any other water or wastewater utility company in America.

So why does it fly under the radar? Well, simply because all of these systems are small, located in the states that rarely make the news, and aim to better the lives of communities, we all simply ignored they were such distressed about water.

There's a major difference, though, with the projects we discussed last week with Sean Davis. CSWR isn't a charity or philanthropy. It's a private company backed by Sciens Water, and aiming to turn these non-compliant water systems not only into better, safe, and reliable services but also to make them profitable.

If you recall my discussions with Seth Siegel and Trace Blackmore some weeks ago, 85% of American utilities have three or fewer employees. This means they lack the critical scale to apply best practices, embrace innovations and new technologies and are at high risk with the upcoming silver wave.

So in a sense, Central States Water Resources is the typical portrait of a distributed water utility that may become the norm in the very near future. I'm carefully using "distributed" and not "decentralized" because you'll see that Josiah firmly refuses the decentralized concept - I'll let him explain why.

In this week's exploration, I'm scratching the surface of something that could become a major trend, and not only in the US, when you think of Germany's 10'000 utilities or Switzerland's 700 wastewater treatment plants, to just name the two first examples that crossed my mind.

If that's a topic of interest for you, let me know, and I'll make sure to dive deeper anytime soon! How can you express your interest? Well, you know the maxim I keep repeating week after week: if you like what you hear, share it with a friend, a colleague, or simply your LinkedIn network. I'm thrilled to see the number of these shares increase because that means we're all spreading the word and coming closer to my vision: when you understand Water, you solve the World! So come on, do it, and I'll meet you on the other side!

800 Water Consolidation Moves in a Decade, Yet You've Never Heard of this Water Utility!

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S7E18 - How to Actively Invest Philanthropy and Save the (Water) World?

30 november 2022 | 17 min

[Extract] "It's harder to Give Away Money than it was to Make the Money!" - Sean Davis - Merton Capital Partners

30 november 2022 | 1 min

Sean Davis is the founder and managing director of Merton Capital Partners, an adjunct professor at Palm Beach Atlantic University, and the Author of "Solving the Giving Pledge Bottleneck." Merton Capital Partners develops innovative investment strategies to unlock philanthropy's potential by incentivizing corporations to generate large-scale good in their core businesses.

What the heck is the link between philanthropy and water? That may be very obscure if you're like me before meeting Sean. Yet you'll see that it will make a lot of sense in just twenty minutes.

I've often discussed with brilliant minds on that microphone how people without safe water or cities without wastewater treatment made little economic sense. We've talked about wrong pockets issues and highlighted all the reasons why we thought something could be done.

Yet, I was long seeking the spark that could ignite the revolution, and I fear that I'm not the only one. In their "Worth of Water" book, Gary White and Matt Damon say nothing else: they have a proven path to scale to solve the water challenges within two decades, but they lack the seed money to get the ball rolling.

Sure, we could all wait for states to walk the talk. But if we're still discussing SDG 6 or aging infrastructure at the end of 2022 in pessimistic or alarming terms, it's probably a sign that we should not have too high hopes from that path.

So what's left? Tears and sighs? Well, that's where the new path Sean introduces today brings a bright new hope. Philanthropic money doesn't have to be spent at a loss - and there are significant pockets of investments that look for the right vehicles.

This is how in a minute, we'll discuss evergreen investment strategies, blended capital, helping philanthropists to get the highest bang for their buck, and much more.

My conversation with Sean made me think of many new ways to connect the Water dots, so I'm pretty sure it might do the same for you! If that's the case, spread the word and share that episode with your friends, colleagues, or LinkedIn network.

And if you want me to dive deeper into the topic, I'd be honestly delighted to, now that I've got a bit more knowledge thanks to Sean's book (the link to it is in the show notes, check it out!)

Come tell me on LinkedIn, remember to share that episode, and I'll meet you on the other side!

How to Actively Invest Philanthropy and Save the (Water) World?

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S7E17 - How does Maslow explain a lot of America's Broken Water Economics?

18 november 2022 | 23 min

[Extract] "Being in the Water Industry feels like Sisyphus pushing the Rock up the Hill!" - Tom Rooney - Sciens Water

18 november 2022 | 1 min

S7E16 - How De Nora Grew from 0 to IPO in 7 Years (with Cheat Codes!)

16 november 2022 | 16 min

[Extract] "That will translate into all sorts of financial KPIs but that's NOT the driver!" - Mirka Wilderer - De Nora Water Technologies

16 november 2022 | 1 min

Mirka Wilderer is the CEO of De Nora Water Technologies. De Nora is a leading provider of equipment, systems, disinfection, and filtration solutions for water and wastewater treatment.

Back in my years as a sales engineer, I used to map the competitors' landscape when working on large projects. And in my quite specialized world of advanced wastewater treatments, I was very good at predictions, or that's what I thought.

One day, on a very large project, I was discussing with the design office, and they had curious Ideas as to how to shape their process. I couldn't recognize any of the patterns; the usual suspects would have left! The reason would reveal some weeks later: there was a new kid on the block, De Nora Water Technologies.

If you recall my discussion on that microphone with Reinhard Hübner, we've already seen examples of companies rapidly built from the bottom up in our otherwise conservative sector. But DeNora is again another breed than SKion Water. The water division was created in 2015 from an M&A move involving Severn Trent Services.

And since then, the company has followed quite an aggressive track, through internal and external moves, with a double-digit growth that led to a successful initial public offering on the Milano stock exchange last summer.

It's been a while that I wanted to address this trajectory on the podcast, and I had already approached Mirka for this around the BlueTech forum last year in Vancouver, but with the IPO on the horizon, the timing wasn't right.

So when our paths crossed again during Sciens Water's Rethinking Water conference in New York, I couldn't let the opportunity slip away to get some valuable insight on how to successfully go public, keep and develop a hunter mindset, or grow into a fully different area as a before quite traditional family business.

As for Patrick Dekker last week, I was a bit short on time to go into the level of depth I would have liked to. But you'll see that Mirka goes straight to the point and probably delivers a new record in insights per minute on that microphone!

So without further due, I'll let you dive into our conversation. Just remember that if you like what you hear, please take that episode and share it with a colleague, a friend, or your LinkedIn network! Come one, do it, and I'll meet you on the other side!

How De Nora Grew from 0 to IPO in 7 Years (with Cheat Codes!)

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S7E15 - Should We Really Destroy PFAS? No! Your Fridge Knows a Better Way.

9 november 2022 | 55 min

[Extract] PFOA is 100'000 times more toxic than we thought - Henrik Hagemann - Puraffinity

9 november 2022 | 1 min

Henrik Hagemann is the CEO and co-founder of Puraffinity. Puraffinity is a GreenTech Company that designs smart materials for environmental applications. As you may have discovered by Season 4, Episode 1, they strive to solve the daunting PFAS / Forever chemicals challenge we face.

We all have PFAS in our blood, and this for quite a simple reason: forever chemicals are everywhere around us. For the better and, let's face it, often the worse, we use PFAS in so many parts of our daily lives that it would be almost impossible to ban them.

This wouldn't be much of a problem if they weren't that toxic: I know, thank you, captain obvious.

Yet, PFAS also confronts the Water Sector with a complex equation to solve. On the one hand, we'd like to protect everyone from toxic substances, and with the advancement of technology, we can, but on the other hand, doing so is still prohibitively expensive today if we were to do it on a large scale.

Sure, promising new ways might change the name of the game; we've, for instance, discussed on that microphone how supercritical water oxidation could eliminate PFAS and everything else theoretically in an even energy-positive fashion. But we're still far from the large scale today.

Let's pause here for a second and apply some advice we heard here a while ago from Claudia Winkler and Alice Schmidt: let's zoom out before we zoom in. We need PFAS in so many of the products we use, so we produce PFAS. And then, we realize more and more how dangerous they are, so we destroy PFAS. And the cycle goes on.

Don't you think there may be a better way? Well, that's what we'll explore today with Henrik. And he'll do that much better than me, so I won't spoil you with what he explains so well!

I'll let you buckle up for a fascinating 360-degree update on PFAS, where we discuss regulations, recycling, new treatments and their limits, perspectives, and even Erin Brockovich! And remember, if you like what you hear, please share that episode around you. Send it to a friend, a colleague, or your LinkedIn network; come one, do it, and I'll meet you on the other side!

Should We Really Destroy PFAS? No! Your Fridge Knows a Better Way.

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S7E14 - What's Patrick Decker's Call To Action? Let Us Solve Water!

2 november 2022 | 16 min

[Extract] How Xylem evolved from a Pump Company to a Solution Provider - Patrick Decker

2 november 2022 | 1 min

Patrick Decker is the CEO of Xylem. Xylem is the fourth largest water business in the World and a water and wastewater technology company that's well known for its motto: "Let's solve water."

Eleven years ago, almost day for day, ITT spun off its water business to create Xylem. That move itself didn't change much, but the eleven years' journey that followed profoundly reshaped the company and, by extension, many aspects of the Water Industry itself.

Patrick Decker has been leading that transformation for now almost nine years, and in a sometimes very conservative Water Sector, he's bringing much of a fresh breath!

For instance, a couple days ahead of his WEFTEC visit, he shared on social media which days he would attend and invited anyone to come to talk with him at Xylem's booth. And as we'll discuss today, as walking the talk is a critical pillar of his values, he also really had those informal discussions: the perks of being approachable.

Does Xylem need the exposure of this podcast? Not at all; they already draw 1 billion people to their campaigns through their partnership with the City Football Group. But I think we all need the inspiration Patrick shares today.

Before even recording, he mentioned how he would be worse of a guest than his brilliant colleagues Austin Alexander and Sivan Zamir that already appeared on that microphone. It wasn't humble brag but a sound respect for his team.

And during and after recording, he addressed me as a peer in this Water Industry - which arguably I'm by no means, as I would be aware if I was leading a 5 billion business.

What I want to underline here is how inspirational it is to see this kind of Water Leader. We know the challenges ahead, and it's good to see those qualities in the captains of the boats!

Patrick was kind enough to stop by my microphone to share this wisdom shot. But he also had to continue his journey, as he was awaited on scene to give his talk, which makes for a short episode today.

As you can imagine, I have dozen more questions that I would love to raise him, and that's where you can help me to provide you with the answers.

If you like that first session and enjoy Patrick's answers, share that episode around you. Recommend it to your friends and peers, and come leave me a comment under my LinkedIn post to encourage Patrick to come back! I'm pretty confident that with the right level of support from all of you, I can win him over for a deeper dive. So come one, do it, and I'll meet you on the other side!

What's Patrick Decker's Call To Action? Let Us Solve Water!

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S7E13 - Can Nature Protect New York From Water Catastrophes? Yes!

28 oktober 2022 | 22 min

[Extract] "We need to Bring People into the Equation!" - Paul Gallay - Columbia Climate School

28 oktober 2022 | 1 min

Paul Gallay is Lecturer & Co-Director at the Columbia Climate School. Columbia University is a global leader in climate and sustainability education, aiming to bring an interdisciplinary knowledge base for future climate leaders to work with businesses, communities, governments, and civil society to address the climate crisis.

If you recall Season 3, Episode 13, I had David Lloyd Owen on that microphone to discuss his book, Global Water Funding. I've said it several times ever since, but if there's one book you shall read to understand the water challenges ahead, it's this one. It's hard to read, it's packed, and it's dense, but it's invaluable!

So, in that book, I discovered the Catskill Mountain and Croton Watershed agreements, which the city of New York concluded in the 1990s. The Idea was to leverage nature-based solutions to prevent pollutants from entering New York's water scheme rather than heavily investing in a treatment plant that would take them out.

Since then, we've further explored nature-based solutions on that microphone, with the City of Glasgow, the City of Paris, or watershed experiments in Italy and Austria.

Yet, I had never heard of the one Paul will touch on in a minute after expanding on the New York watershed example I just mentioned.

And that new program he'll introduce to us is the perfect example of a clever application of the Climate Change adaptation we discussed with Kevin Sofen last week. Climate Change is here to stay; it will have consequences, and fencing those off using nature sounds like a very sensible approach!

Water quality, involving communities, teaching, or further researching, there's a dense agenda for today's conversation. So without further due, let me remind you that if you like what you hear, please - and I can't stress that enough - share it around you. Grab your friends' phones, and subscribe them to the podcast. Recommend your favorite episode to a colleague, or tell the World with a LinkedIn post! And, of course, if there's anything you don't like about the podcast, come tell me!

Can Nature Protect New York From Water Catastrophes? Yes!

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S7E12 - How to Make Carbon-Negative Fuel, Boost Utility's Revenue and Save the World!

26 oktober 2022 | 66 min

with 🎙️ Kunal Shah - Chief Growth Officer at Anaergia and council member of the World Biogas Association, the Singapore Water Association, and Imagine H2O Asia.

💧 Anaergia ambitions to convert waste into a carbon-negative fuel for a sustainable future.

What we covered:

🔸 How we only tap into a fraction of the biogas potential today and why

🌎 How biomethane can change the Water Industry's carbon path at scale and today

🤝 How beyond just wastewater's organic potential, there's an incredible synergy to develop with other waste streams and how to leverage it

⛽ How a wastewater treatment plant can finally become a water resource factory, producing carbon negative fuel

💰 How achieving this shift will prevent cities from disposing of valuable waste in landfills while increasing their overall revenue

🧑‍🤝‍🧑 How Climate Change and Decarbonization talks should be integral parts of a modern company's culture

3️⃣ The three sources of waste Anaergia leverages to feed its renewable natural gas supply chain

🚀 The potential and limitations of all the current fads around new gas and energy sources

⏲️ The scale at which a biogas project becomes viable and the secrets to fast-track payback times

🧱 How breaking a Chinese wall inside a utility family actually changes the name of the game

🌟 How the north star of utility decision-makers is evolving and how resilience trumps all other KPIs

📆 How some still pursue fluffy targets while forward-looking utilities have clear marks with year-by-year rollouts

🌱 How challenging it is to lead complex project sales in the Water Industry as a young professional

💵 How much of a game-changer it was for Anaergia to walk the talk and finance its own endeavors from Day One

3️⃣ The three bottlenecks of Anaergia’s growth (that don’t include the usual suspects)

⚡ How Anaergia intends to become the “Tesla of Renewable Natural Gas” and how they execute that vision

🧑‍🏫 How the Water Industry is a living MBA for young water professionals, how they are desperately needed, and how they can get support

📈 The meaning of “Anaergia,” the common pitfalls of water entrepreneurship, resource recovery, Anaergia’s Ideal Customer Profile, Developing projects, Having skin in the game, Becoming a management partner for your customers... and so much more!

🔥 … and of course, we concluded with the 𝙧𝙖𝙥𝙞𝙙 𝙛𝙞𝙧𝙚 𝙦𝙪𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨 🔥

➡️ Send your warm regards to Kunal on LinkedIn

➡️ Check Anaergia's website

➡️ Check out the full story (and an infographic) on how Carbon-Negative Fuels will decarbonize our World on the (don't) Waste Water Website!

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[Extract] "The Word that S*** Scares Utility Bosses" - Kunal Shah - Anaergia - Carbone Negative Fuels to Save the World

26 oktober 2022 | 2 min

Hallo, bonjour, and welcome to the Don't waste water podcast! I am your host, Antoine Walter, and in today's episode, I am delighted to welcome Kunal Shah as my guest! Kunal is Chief Growth Officer at Anaergia, and a council member of the World Biogas Association, the Singapore Water Association, and Imagine H2O Asia. Anaergia ambitions to convert waste into a carbon-negative fuel for a sustainable future.

By Season 5, episode 12, we got to meet one of the Water Industry's legends, Andrew Benedek, the founder and architect of Zenon. There were so many nuggets to dig, from wastewater membranes to entrepreneurship through some of the boldest moves in our industry, that I didn't really cover his new endeavor with Anaergia.

Actually, to be honest, I did it on purpose at the time. Because when I interviewed Andrew, I had just met Kunal a couple weeks before at the Global Water Summit.

And the least I can say is that I got incredibly impressed by his speed of thought, his knowledge, and his accuracy. And as he had almost agreed to join me on that microphone, I wanted him to be our guide into the present and the future of biomethane production, aka our sector's carbon-negative fuel.

I finally could take my microphones to Anaergia's office in Singapore some weeks ago, and let's face it, the rest is gold.

But don't take my word for it; experience it for yourself. So I'll strive to keep this intro short and let you dive into Kunal's insight as fast as possible.

Because when interviews are on my editing table, I always extract some highlights to share them on social media. Kunal broke a record: right now, I have about 14 minutes of highlights!

So remember, if you like what you hear, don't keep that knowledge for you. Sharing is Caring, take this episode and share it with a colleague, come tell me what you liked about it on LinkedIn, grab your friend's phones and subscribe them to the podcast, come on do it, and I'll meet you on the other side!

How to Make Carbon Negative Fuel, Boost Utility's Revenue and Save the World

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S7E11 - The Dear Link Between Water, SDGs and our Everyday Lives

21 oktober 2022 | 19 min

[Extract] "I look at Water from the Human Connection" - Kevin Sofen - W.S. Darley - SDG Talks - Smart Firefighting

21 oktober 2022 | 1 min

Kevin Sofen is Director of Innovation at W.S. Darley, but also a repeat podcast host with the Smart Firefighting podcast and the SDG Talks, a social entrepreneur with Wristsponsible, and adjunct professor at DePaul University, a multiple board member and a talent at Unleash. And if you wonder how he packs all of this in one life, don't worry, I wonder too! The SDG Talks podcast highlights Change Makers and their work towards the UN SDGs with a sound passion for highlighting people and organizations that will transform the World into a better place for everyone.

To me, teamwork is the beauty of our sport. Where you have five acting as one, you become selfless. That's not from me; it's a quote from Coach K, the legendary 3 times basketball Olympic champion, 5 times NCAA winner, and Hall of Famer.

Why do I talk about basketball? Well, because among all Kevin's activities, he's rolling out a coaching program that enforces people's ownership and intentionality toward their water. I'll let him expand on it in a minute.

But beyond the anecdote, the key message here to me is that change is a process no one can fully undergo alone. And if we want to change the World for the better, we need to team up, build upon each other's strengths, and get inspiration from proven best practices.

So Kevin sharing two hands full of his volunteering, activist, associative, business-related, or entrepreneurial experiences is like a mini-masterclass and a powerful refuel on inspiration.

I bet that in some minutes, you'll start seeing SDGs differently, starting with all the ones that are not number 6. And if I further zoom out, you may look at water with a different eye.

But without further teasing, I'll let you dive into my conversation with Kevin right after reminding you that if you like what you hear, please - and I can't stress that enough - share it around you. Grab your friends' phones, and subscribe them to the podcast. Recommend your favorite episode to a colleague, or tell World with a LinkedIn post! And, of course, if there's anything you don't like about the podcast, come tell me; I'm doing my best to better that content, one episode at a time.

Come on, do it, and I'll meet you on the other side.

The Dear Link Between Water, SDGs and our Everyday Lives

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S7E10 - We Want You! Will You Help Closing the Water Gap and Save Lives?

19 oktober 2022 | 29 min

with 🎙️ George McGraw - CEO & Founder of DigDeep

💧 DigDeep is a human rights nonprofit serving the 2.2 million+ Americans without the sinks, bathtubs, or toilets that the rest of the US takes for granted.

What we covered:

🤯 How 2.2 million Americans don't have access to water and wastewater services at home and how these places affected by the Water Gap could be at a 10-minute drive of your home

🍀 How investing in water offers an insane return on investment of five dollars for one!

😊 How access to water solves a wide array of problems, starting with undervalued ones like type two diabetes

🌱 How DigDeep came to existence, what it aims to solve and how it intends to have an impact on these million lives

🚰 How closing the gap doesn't stop at the people that desperately miss WASH services but also involves guaranteeing better tap water quality to 44 million Americans

🤝 How we will need to think a bit laterally and change our approach to closing the water gap - as traditional approaches have failed for decades

💸 How closing the water gap is before all a wrong pocket problem, what it involves, and how we can tackle this

🥛 How looking at the water challenge, you can see whether a half-full or a half-empty glass (pun unintended)

🏫 When DigDeep envisions achieving its mission and why seeing them disappear would be awesome news for all the right reasons

🚱 How solving up to the nitty gritty details will build a better world, one plumbing line at a time

✈️ The limits of central governments, finding the right catchphrase, getting inspired by the Airline Industry, One Water, Joining the movement, leveraging federal investment... and much more!

🔥 … and of course, we concluded with the 𝙧𝙖𝙥𝙞𝙙 𝙛𝙞𝙧𝙚 𝙦𝙪𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨 🔥

➡️ Send your warm regards to George on LinkedIn. Or follow DigDeep on Twitter.

➡️ Check DigDeep's website

➡️ Check out the full story on how to close the water gap on the (don't) Waste Water website!

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[Extract] How a Karen Changed DigDeep's Destiny! - George McGraw - DigDeep

19 oktober 2022 | 1 min

George McGraw is the CEO and Founder of DigDeep. DigDeep is a human rights nonprofit serving the 2.2 million+ Americans without the sinks, bathtubs, or toilets that the rest of the developed World takes for granted.

I hope that the 2.2 million figure shocked you so much when I first mentioned it on that microphone a couple weeks ago in my introduction to my conversation with Colin Goddard from Source that you couldn't forget it. Cause I couldn't, honestly!

If the richest country in the World struggles to bring tap water and sewage services to its entire population, doesn't it mean that we're somewhat doomed everywhere around the World?

Actually, sitting down with George is exactly the kind of experience that makes you think: yes, there's a big problem. Probably even bigger than we all think it is. But at the same time, it's absolutely solvable. Or to quote him: humanity has solved much more complex issues than this one!

So why do we still repeatedly fail at closing the water gap? Why, despite the brilliant minds and charismatic leaders from Bill Gates to Mina Gulli through Matt Damon and, of course George McGraw, that devote themselves to solving that riddle, why do we keep failing?

Well, it might all boil down to one single issue. The wrong pocket's symptom. Those who've been in sales know the power of the right incentive! That is exactly where we're failing today. We heavily rely on utilities to manage water, and utilities are disincentivized to invest in helping these struggling communities because they would never be the ones reaping the benefits of this right move.

But if there's one thing you'll be convinced of once you've listened to George, it's that we're not doomed at all. It takes half-full type of persons like him to bring us back on track, and I'm sure you'll exit this conversation freshly energized to go out and reap the five-to-one investment opportunity there is in doing what's right and good for everyone.

So, if I'm right and George's message hits home with you, don't keep it secret. Take that podcast wherever you're listening from, hit the "share" button, and pass it over to one person over WhatsApp, LinkedIn, or TikTok for all that matters! Wanna distribute it further? Of course, please do so! But even just one person more that gets the message is one step closer to the goal of closing the water gap.

Come on, do it, and I'll meet you on the other side.

Will you help Closing the Water Gap and Save Lives?

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S7E9 - How to Make Water more Attractive than the Apple and Samsungs of this World

17 oktober 2022 | 19 min

with 🎙️ Errick Simmons - Mayor of Greenville, Mississippi, and co-chair of the Mississippi River Cities and Towns Initiative.

💧 The Mississippi River Cities and Towns Initiative works to improve the river's water quality, restore its habitat, coordinate the state's efforts, create sustainable economies around the basin, and celebrate the river's culture and history.

What we covered:

🧠 How to rethink water we need to rethink the World - what Errick has been contributing to at the last COP 26

🍀 How managing a river basin involves the entire Social, Environmental, and Governance spectrum of activities

👦🏽 How finding a way to attract and involve youth is a decisive factor in guaranteeing our water systems' resilience in the coming decades

👴🏽 How the retiring workforce also leaves with a treasure of knowledge that needs to be transferred and safeguarded, and how it may require thinking laterally

🌊 How large-scale natural events and catastrophes impact a river basin and what can be done to preserve communities and perform pre-disaster mitigation

🤝 How the recent events in Jacksonville, Mississippi, highlight the need to reinforce solidarity and collaboration between neighbors and co-citizens of watersheds.

💪 How private and public forces should join their efforts to benefit from the best of two worlds - especially in presence of high social challenges

💻 How solutions from the past won't be solutions for the future, what needs to change, and what role digitization will play in this

🏫 How solving the water riddle probably starts with water education and which role universities, scholarships, and grants will play in this

🧑🏾‍🤝‍🧑🏾 How diversity is an everyday battle, and how it is the best way to ensure we tap into our community's full potential

💚 Partnerships, water becoming the "cool kid on the block," water management as an integral part of environmental protection... and much more!

🔥 … and of course, we concluded with the 𝙧𝙖𝙥𝙞𝙙 𝙛𝙞𝙧𝙚 𝙦𝙪𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨 🔥

➡️ Send your warm regards to Errick on Twitter

➡️ Check the Mississippi River Cities & Towns Initiative's website

➡️ Check out the full story on how to overcome the silver wave by turning water sexy on the (don't) Waste Water website!

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[Extract] "We have to see the problems coming, before they come!" - Errick Simmons - Mayor of Greenville Mississippi

17 oktober 2022 | 1 min

Errick Simmons is the Mayor of Greenville, Mississippi, and the co-chair of the Mississippi River Cities and Towns Initiative. The Mississippi River Cities and Towns Initiative works to improve the river's water quality, restore its habitat, coordinate the state's efforts, create sustainable economies around the basin, and celebrate the river's culture and history.

About one year ago, I was working on my session as a moderator at the UN Innovate for Cities conference. What you've maybe noticed from that work are the three interviews that were featured on that podcast around nature-based solutions. But what I haven't shared here are my next steps into the rabbit hole.

Having explored how the city of Glasgow was preparing for COP 26 and had adopted nature-based solutions some years before, I had a curious eye over the part of COP 26 that revolved around these innovative ways to administer and manage a river's watershed. And I had noticed how a dynamic Mayor, part of the American governor's delegation, was brilliantly bridging the social topic, the economic one, through aquaculture and nature-based solutions at the river basin level.

You would have guessed that Mayor was Errick Simmons.

About one year down the line, I got to sit down with him on this microphone at the Rethinking Water conference in New York, thanks to Sciens Water's invitation.

Time was short, but I hope you'll get a glimpse of that other American story, where one has to be clever in government and bring together private and public funds while securing grants to guarantee the long-term sustainability of river basins and the cities they host.

Social topics interlinked with Water. Intertwined with climate change and extreme weather events that regularly impact the region. And a water sector that needs to find a fix to overcome the silver wave.

I'll leave the floor to Errick so that he shares the solutions and initiatives he contributes to roll out and the proposition he makes to bring Water to the place it should be in the public space: right in the center. Remember, if you like what you hear, please share this episode around you with your friends, colleagues, or LinkedIn Network.

And as always, if there's anything you don't like about this episode, pleach reach out to me and tell me what I should be doing better or differently. Come on, do it, and I'll meet you on the other side!

How to Make Water more attractive than the Apple and Samsungs of this World

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S7E8 - How to Make a Lonely Water Professional's Mentor, Friend, and Caring Colleague

12 oktober 2022 | 56 min

with 🎙️ Trace Blackmore - Owner of Blackmore Enterprises and Host of the “Scaling Up! H2O” podcast

💧 The "Scaling Up! H2O" podcast intends to prove to you every week why working in Industrial Water Treatment is the best job in the world.

What we covered:

📈 How there are 1.3 million water professionals in the US alone

🪐 How the scattered nature of the Water Industry brings most of these professionals to almost work alone and how much of a burden this can sometimes be

🏃‍♀️ How the state of the art always evolves in Water and how risky it can be to struggle to access to new knowledge streams

😔 How unfair it can be to work in the Water Sector: you will surely get blamed for your mistakes but hardly noticed for your successes

🎙️ How a water podcast can help connect the dots, how Trace first launched his, and what his thesis was by then (and still is)

🙌 How the "Scaling Up! H2O" grew into the "Scaling Up Nation" and how important it was to gather a community around the content stream

🤝 How Trace extends his impact into teaching and masterminds - and how much that has to do with a famous JFK quote

👔 How Trace started his entrepreneurial journey and why

📈 How being true to his voice and style was the decisive kick to setting the path to success

🔁 Trace's bullet-proof process to produce quality podcast content that you should steal and copy

4️⃣ Four "DOs" and Two "DON'Ts" to help you start out a successful show

⏲️ Trace's crazy schedule when it comes to interviewing people

💥 Creating a spark, building a community, being a catalyst, developing a business model, starting from square six, being a Friends fan... and so much more!

🔥 … and of course, we concluded with the 𝙧𝙖𝙥𝙞𝙙 𝙛𝙞𝙧𝙚 𝙦𝙪𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨 🔥

➡️ Send your warm regards to Trace on LinkedIn

➡️ Check the Scaling Up! H2O's website

➡️ Check out the full story (and an infographic) on how the Scaling Up! H2O assembles Water Professionals in a Water Nation!

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[Extract] "What's a podcast? I had no Idea!" - Trace Blackmore - Scaling Up! H2O - Blackmore Enterprises

12 oktober 2022 | 1 min

Trace Blackmore is the Owner of Blackmore Enterprises and the Host of the "Scaling Up! H2O" podcast. The "Scaling Up! H2O" podcast intends to prove to you every week why working in Industrial Water Treatment is the best job in the World.

If you're listening from the UK, Singapore, or maybe Denmark, you'll be surprised by the rest of this introduction. But actually, for the majority of water professionals, this water job is quite lonely. Think of it, there are over ten thousand water utilities in Germany or more than seven hundred wastewater treatment plants in Switzerland. And, of course, the record goes to the US with over 90 thousand water and wastewater utilities.

As a consequence, when you're working for one of these scattered utilities, you have few colleagues. For instance, 85% of US utilities have three or less than three employees.

The same is true when you're in industrial water treatment. Sure, many people work on an industrial site. But how many deal with Water? In most cases, at most, a hand full.

So yes, Water is everywhere, and so are water professionals. Everywhere, and often alone. What's wrong with that? Nothing, except that it turns personal and professional development into a challenge. When you don't have colleagues to challenge you, bring you some industry news, or share best practices, you can only rely on yourself to improve.

Unless there's another way! Because you might be commuting to work. Or having a run in the evening. Or getting bored while you mow the lawn. That's where podcasts have your back. I know, right now, this may sound like inception because I'm advocating for podcasts on a podcast. But my message here is that you may well right now be enjoying the best water podcast ever produced by a french guy - to my knowledge, I'm the only one, so I'm quite confident about that assumption.

Yet, there are other great shows out there, like "Water we talking about" with Adam Tank and Jim Lauria, Abdelhakim el Fadil's excellent "Smart Water Solutions," Paul O'Callaghan's BlueNotes by BlueTech, or Dave McGimpsey's grandaddy of all shows with the Waver Values Podcast, which is the only one in this list that never appeared on that microphone, hey Dave, we should talk, and inevitably the famous Nation with Trace Blackmore's Scaling Up H2O podcast

I thought you might enjoy going a bit behind the scenes of the podcast production today if you already know Trace and the Scaling Up H2O podcast. Or you may appreciate getting to know a great new podcast in the unlikely event you never heard of Trace before, in which case you'll be delighted to discover you can listen to someone talking about water without my annoying french accent.

So without further due, I'll let you enjoy my conversation with Trace; just remember that, if you like what you hear, please tell your friends, colleagues, or LinkedIn network what they should take home from the nuggets Trace shares today, and if you don't like what you hear, please reach out to me and tell me what I should be doing differently or better. Come on, do it, and I'll meet you on the other side.

How to Make a Lonely Water Professional's Mentor, Friend, and Caring Colleague

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S7E7 - How to take Mid-Market Green Tech Companies to the Next Level?

10 oktober 2022 | 21 min

[Extract] "Should we think a little Laterally?" - James Rees - Botanical Water Technologies

10 oktober 2022 | 1 min

James Rees is Chief Impact Officer at Botanical Water Technologies and Board Advisor at Bluerloop, Droople , and Noverram. Botanical Water Technologies strives to positively impact water scarcity by providing a new source of drinkable, sustainable, plant-based Water for social and environmental projects.

Let me bring you a bit behind the scenes to start with today. I've been recently invited to give my first-ever TED Talk, which will happen end of November in Shaftesbury, UK. So now I'm binge-watching the most successful ones to extract best practices. And the link to today's topic is twofold.

First, one of the most watched TED Talks ever, and maybe my favorite one, is Simon Sinek's one advising all of us to start with Why.

Let's follow that advice! Why should we adopt new technologies in Water? Well, because we're facing new challenges. Why does the roll-out of these technologies take a while? Well, because Water is a highly political and sensible field with low rewards and harsh punishments.

And why does it matter so much that new technologies get to roll out faster, succeed and bloom? Well, because that's how they will maximize their impact.

Now, remember, I said the link was two-fold; here's the second one. Binge-watching TEDs to identify patterns takes a while, but it's doable. But is there a similar directory of instructions as to how to succeed as an early or mid-market water technology company? Of course not.

There are incredible pieces of ecosystems: think of the accelerator programs, like Imagine H2O or Elemental, which we addressed on that microphone. Think of the incubation or pilot programs like the Xylem Innovation Labs or Isle Utilities' Trial Reservoir, which we addressed on that microphone. There are market data and analyst companies like BlueTech Research or Global Water Intelligence, which we addressed on that microphone. And, of course, there are associations, conferences, and brilliant podcasts outside of this one, and there is that very microphone.

But who's connecting the dots? People, humans. You'll hear with James in a minute how we're just scratching the surface of the importance of connecting those dots and how one can actually do that. And if we start with why, the reason why we shall connect the dots is that it takes a village to solve today's water challenges. Many players still speak many different languages, and someone needs to translate.

So I'll leave the floor to James after reminding you that if you like what you hear, please share it around. Tell your friends, colleagues, or LinkedIn network what you found interesting or inspirational, and if you don't like what you hear, please reach out to me and tell me what I should be doing differently or better. Come on, do it, and I'll meet you on the other side.

How to take Mid-Market Green Tech Companies to the Next Level?

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S7E6 - Pre-Disaster Mitigation Needs to Quickly Ramp Up in the US. Will it?

7 oktober 2022 | 19 min

[Extract] "We come in on a Disaster's Survivor's Worst Day!" - Nick Shufro - FIMA

7 oktober 2022 | 1 min

Nick Shufrois Deputy Assistant Administrator at the Federal Insurance & Mitigation Administration. The Federal Insurance and Mitigation Administration (FIMA) manages the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) and a range of programs designed to mitigate against future losses from all hazards, including floods, earthquakes, tornadoes, and other natural disasters.

If you recall my conversation with John Robinson some weeks ago, we discussed how we often feel the impact of Climate Change through water. And yes, water scarcity will be a major challenge in the coming decades - it already is a challenge. But the other end of the spectrum probably doesn't get all the attention it deserves.

Too little water is a problem. But too much water is probably even more of a risk! As I'm recording this introduction in early October 2022, the World still has the very pregnant images of one-third of Pakistan being underwater. And hurricane Ian still threatens Florida and many other places in the region.

But as the European example showed, we humans have a strong capacity to forget about those crises and be surprised again when they return. Summer 2021 was all about floods, Summer 2022 was all about water scarcity, and we sometimes get lost.

But what can we do about it? Actually, quite a lot. Pre-disaster mitigation is a vast toolbox with many options to reduce the impact of events we can't avoid or prevent from happening. Yet, pre-disaster mitigation is also often doomed. We wish we would have done more when it's too late.

So, the message of administrations like the one Nick represents today is one to be heard, especially when there's no flood on the horizon, and we're all deeply convinced it will never happen to us.

I'll leave the floor to Nick to quickly take us through the topic in just a second; the time for me to remind you that if you like what you hear, you can help me tremendously by sharing that episode around you.

Please tell your friends, colleagues, or LinkedIn network what they should take home from the nuggets Nick shares today, and if you don't like what you hear, please reach out to me and tell me what I should be doing differently or better. Come on, do it, and I'll meet you on the other side.

Pre-Disaster Mitigation Needs to Quickly Ramp Up in the US. Will it?

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S7E5 - The Underestimated Hidden Threat of Biomethane Production. Time to Act?

5 oktober 2022 | 41 min

[Extract] "If we just fix the Super-Emitters we directly reduce Biogas Emissions by 62%!" - Semra Bakkaloglu - Imperial College London

5 oktober 2022 | 1 min

Semra Bakkaloglu is a Research Associate at the Imperial College of London. She recently showed in her research how the methane emissions along the biosolids supply chain were vastly underestimated and proposed straightforward actions to correct it swiftly.

Sure, wastewater treatment plants gobble a lot of energy. But if you equip them with sludge digesters, they also produce a good chunk of power in the form of biogas.

So, when you do the exercise of a mass carbon balance over the sewage treatment chain, you don't get to zero yet. Still, you're not that far - even more so if you go for advanced biogas production approaches, such as the ones we've covered on that microphone with Cambi, EMG, or anytime soon, Anaergia, and yes, that's a spoiler.

Yet, there may well still be a silent killer in your plant. Because there's as much carbon in one molecule of carbon dioxide as in one molecule of methane. But releasing methane into the atmosphere has 27.2 times higher global warming potential!

And as Semra demonstrated in her research, the total global biogas and biomethane emissions to the atmosphere today are about twice as high as previously estimated!

But where's that gas leaking from? Well, here again, Semra and her team looked into a full range of emitters to identify the culprits along the supply chain. And then again, they identified a subgroup of super-emitters responsible for 62% of the emissions.

Do you have one or several wastewater treatment plants within your area of responsibility? Then you'll want to double-check if you're not one of the bad pupils. And if you're a technology provider - be it in sensors or along the biosolids supply chain - it looks like the challenge you're solving just got twice more pressing.

I'll leave the floor to Semra for you to get the entire story and the plentiful insights about the underlooked biosolids and biomass treatment chain in a second. Just allow me to remind you that, if you like what you hear, you can help me tremendously by sharing that content around you.

Please tell your friends, colleagues, or LinkedIn network what surprised you in what Semra reveals today, and if you don't like what you hear, please reach out to me and tell me what I should be doing differently or better. Come on, do it, and I'll meet you on the other side.

The Underestimated Hidden Threat of Biomethane Production. Time to Act?

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S7E4 - How to Actually Fight Big Water with Pioneering Bottled Rainwater?

1 oktober 2022 | 15 min

[Extract] "Big Water is one of the Worst Polluters!" - Taylor O'Neil - Richard's Rainwater

1 oktober 2022 | 1 min

S7E3 - Seth Siegel: 50'000+ US Water Utilities, 500 Water Talks, 5 Decisive Truths?

28 september 2022 | 29 min

with 🎙️ Seth Siegel - writer, lawyer, activist, serial entrepreneur, and an acclaimed public speaker.

💧 You might have read his "Troubled Water" book - and if you haven't, you should - or his international best-seller "Let there be Water," translated into 20+ languages.

What we covered:

📉 How water tariffs are desperately too low and how this has consequences on the entire utility sector

😱 How we're operating municipal water exactly how we did it 75 or 100 years ago.

👴 How when it comes to agriculture and irrigation, we're lagging even further behind, as we operate as it was done... 5000 years ago!

📘 Why Seth Siegel got interested in water in the first place, and what his creative process was for his two first books, Let There be Water and Troubled Water.

🪶 How the success of the books changed Seth's life and got him to speak in the who's who of the prestigious and impactful scenes

😊 How Seth Siegel's approach to writing is not only to highlight problems but also to pair them with solutions

🏗️ Why consolidation is needed in the Water Utility sector and how it shall be done

❌ What the actual problem with the scattered US utilities is, and how is it the worst of two worlds

🤒 Why federal policies don't react to the right stimuli today - and how that shall change in the future

🥀 Why water can't be free, and what happens when you still try the gratis experiment

🔮 Where water shall be treated in the future, why it will not be central anymore, and how the actual treatment may look like

⚒️ How technology shall support the roll-out of the new distributed approach

🍾 Being a special member of a 1.3 million work group, putting ambitious projects on the ice during CoVid times, aborted new book research, new business endeavors... and much more!

🔥 ... and of course, we concluded with two 𝙧𝙖𝙥𝙞𝙙 𝙛𝙞𝙧𝙚 𝙦𝙪𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨 🔥

➡️ Send your warm regards to Seth on LinkedIn; he's more of a Twitter guy though!

➡️ Visit Seth Siegel's Website

➡️ Check out the full story (and a video) on Seth Siegel's vision of the Water World.

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[Extract] "The only time the Federal Bureaucracy is gonna move is when there's a huge hue and cry!" - Seth Siegel

28 september 2022 | 1 min

S7E2 - Expensive, Heavy but Desperately Needed: is Source the Future of Drinking Water?

21 september 2022 | 43 min

with 🎙️ Colin Goddard - Director at Source Global

💧 Source aims to market the world's first renewable drinking water system. Clean, safe, made entirely off-grid, and available almost anywhere in the world.

What we covered:

😨 How more than 2 million Americans live without basic access to safe drinking water and sanitation.

😱 How over 44 million more US-Citizen are served by water systems that recently had health-based Safe-Drinking Water Act violations.

💪 How besides trucked and bottled water, Source intends to build a third path that might be much more sustainable

☀️ How Source actually produces water from ambient air by using the sun as the only source of energy

🪶 How the former Zero Mass Water has helped suffering communities like the Navajo Nation

💰 How much it costs to produce one liter of water using Source's Hydropanels (all inclusive), and how it compares to alternative water sources (pun non-intended)

💥 How Source may well produce water at 30 times the US utility tariff average, yet the comparison doesn't really hold water (pun intended, this time)

📈 How the Hydropanels aren't perfect yet, and Source's vision to one day produce the best and cheapest water on earth

🌱 How Source's intentions are written up to the company's bylaws, and how that leads them to be a certified B-Corp

❤️‍🩹 How centralized water solutions and technologies have failed to serve the edges of the grid

❌ How Source doesn’t identify as an atmospheric water generation technology and why

⚒️ How the Hydropanels work, how they’re monitored, how much they cost, and over how long

🏄‍♀️ How Source’s technology fits two different main purposes and hence can even be a suitable solution for California

🍾 Source’s business model, their own bottled water production, how a future decentralized water ecosystem would look like, water fit for purpose… and much more!

🔥 … and of course, we concluded with the 𝙧𝙖𝙥𝙞𝙙 𝙛𝙞𝙧𝙚 𝙦𝙪𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨 🔥

➡️ Send your warm regards to Colin on LinkedIn

➡️ Visit Source's Website

➡️ Check out the full story (and an infographic) on how Source's revisit of Atmospheric Water Generation could disrupt drinking water on the edges of the grid

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[Extract] "an Egregious Waste of Money?! No, a Beautiful Use of Resources!" - Colin Goddard - Source Global

21 september 2022 | 1 min

Colin Goddard is Director at Source Global. Source aims to market the world's first renewable drinking water system.

Clean, safe, made entirely off-grid, and available almost anywhere in the world.

44 million. That's the unbelievable number I dug out and triple-checked after discussing with Colin. In the United States, 44 million people are served by water systems that recently had health-based Safe-Drinking Water Act violations, as the Dig Deep non-profit reveals.

On top of these almost 15% of Americans that may have trust issues with their tap water, more than 2 million US-Citizens live without basic access to safe drinking water and sanitation.

So what's the way forward? There's, of course, more than just one option. When the Biden administration introduces a $111 billion investment to revamp the country's water infrastructure, that should concur to solve the problem.

But realistically, as strong as the reinforced tree trunk may become, it will remain tricky and almost impossible to fully reach the tip of every branch. So alternatives will come into play. The conventional alternatives are well-known, such as trucked water and bottled water, which alone will surpass utility water in investment worldwide by 2034, this year in the US, and already did, for instance, in Mexico.

And then, there might also be new types of alternatives, such as Source and its water produced from ambient moisture, but that Colin insists I don't call atmospheric water generation - he'll explain why in a minute.

Created by Cody Friesen in 2015 and backed by no less than Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, or Jack Ma, Source usually doesn't leave anyone indifferent in the water industry.

Some are very vocal about how much they doubt this approach, while others regularly endorse the company's accomplishments! Which side will you be on? I'll let you decide after you hear Colin out.

But for sure, if you have a strong opinion to share on that topic, my direct messages are widely open, or you can reach out at antoine at dww dot show. I'm really curious about it!

Then, regardless of your thoughts on the matter, let me remind you that if you like what you hear, you can help me tremendously by sharing that content around you.

Please tell your friends, colleagues, or LinkedIn network what you found inspiring in what Colin shares today, and if you don't like what you hear, please reach out to me and tell me what I should be doing differently or better. Come on, do it, and I'll meet you on the other side.

Expensive, Heavy but Desperately Needed: is Source the Drinking Water of Tomorrow?

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S7E1 - How will the Trial Reservoir Change Piloting Forever and For Good?

14 september 2022 | 65 min

[Extract] "This is either Incredibly Brave or Fantastically Stupid!" - Piers Clark - Isle Utilities - Trial Reservoir

14 september 2022 | 1 min

Piers Clark is the Chairman and Founder of Isle Utilities. Isle aims to bring new technologies to life by connecting expertise, investment, and inspired ideas across the globe.

I remember my first pilot as a young water professional. We were trying to enhance biogas production in a midsized wastewater treatment plant. To this date, I can't say if we failed. Because we indeed increased production, but yet probably not enough for the technology to be adopted. And, in fact, it wasn't.

In the next years of my career, I have again been involved in many pilots. Some of them were successful enough to take me abroad to conferences and present the results, but again, I must be really bad or doomed, but none of them ever became a full scale.

And I honestly never took a step back to figure out what was wrong with piloting. I can just tell it's hard by experience, but also because so many of the about one hundred guests that appeared on that microphone shared similar stories.

So, when I asked Sivan Zamir, by Season 5 Episode 15, what was the most exciting project she ever got involved in, and she answered that:

I had to think, gosh, that's so brilliant, simple, and desperately needed in this industry; I must find out more. And trust me, not only will we all find out more together with Piers in just a minute, but I promise you will also have a good time listening to how he colorfully deploys the story!

Are you ready to turn piloting on its head? Well, while you buckle up, let me remind you that if you like what you hear, you can help me up tremendously by sharing that content around you.

Please tell your friends, colleagues, or LinkedIn network what you found inspiring in what Piers shares today, and if you don't like what you hear, please reach out to me and tell me what I should be doing differently or better. Come on, do it, and I'll meet you on the other side.

How will the Trial Reservoir Change Piloting Forever and For Good?

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S5E20 - My 5 Most Funded Guests / SUEZ & VEOLIA News / Episode 100

7 september 2022 | 12 min

I know, it's the back-to-school period; you've got a lot of things on your plate, I get that, so don't worry.

I won't make that special episode too long, and you'll get a fast-track update on many of the guests and companies that appeared on that microphone.

Today, this podcast turns two! Two years, 222 episodes released, of which 97 were feature interviews, for a total of 105 hours on air. That's a lot of water industry, water sector, water and beyond, whatever we call it, and hopefully a lot of inspiration shots for all of us.

Two years is not much on the scale of the entire sector. Yet, a lot happened for many of my former guests since they appeared on my microphone.

Today you'll learn who raised the most money since the release of our common discussion, I'll share some milestones and recent projects for some of them, and I'll update you on our background drama: the story of the merger of SUEZ and Veolia.

I'll also address you with a big thank you!

We crossed the 50'000 downloads mark somewhen in August, for the podcast alone, and that month was also kind of historic; as for the first time, the podcast in all its shapes surpassed the 200'000 views milestone over all the platforms for August alone.

So let's keep pushing all together: as always, if you like what you hear, tell it to your friends, colleagues, teachers, students, customers, suppliers, and all the ones I forget: that's how I can justify to my wife, my kids and myself, all the time I spend preparing these contents for all of us. Which I, of course, love doing as well!

Season seven of the podcast starts next week with an incredible interview with Piers Clark, the founder and Chairman of Isle Utilities; I have many more inspiring conversations coming up, which I'm excited to share with you, I'll also be at the upcoming international water association's World Congress in Copenhagen next week, and then I'm heading to New York to join Sciens Water's Rethinking Water conference, where I'm looking forward meeting you!

And even though I'm sometimes slow in answering, and I apologize for that, please keep sending me your feedback, suggestions, and recommendations, yes, I'm slow, but I'm always reading and answering!

Again, thank you, and I'll see you next time!

➡️ Here you go to find all the (don't) Waste Water episodes

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S6E32 - Two Bit da Vinci is Wrong

1 september 2022 | 1 min

S6E31 - Let's not Forget that there's a "S" to "SDGs"!

31 augusti 2022 | 1 min

S6E30 - Why do we Obsess Over These 0.1%?

30 augusti 2022 | 1 min

S6E29 - The Problem with Water's Coping Costs

29 augusti 2022 | 1 min

S6E28 - Water Subsidies: a False Good Idea

28 augusti 2022 | 1 min

S6E27 - A Hidden Treasure in our Pee?

27 augusti 2022 | 1 min

S6E26 - Breaking the Rules Saves Lives!

26 augusti 2022 | 1 min

S6E25 - How to x20 in 3 Years?

25 augusti 2022 | 1 min

S6E24 - How to Manufacture Water

24 augusti 2022 | 1 min

S6E23 - Did they Finally Solve Piloting?

23 augusti 2022 | 1 min

S6E22 - How to Detect a Zombie Outbreak (Early on!)

22 augusti 2022 | 1 min

S6E21 - The Truth About Green Algae

21 augusti 2022 | 1 min

S6E20 - The Problem with PFAS

20 augusti 2022 | 1 min

S6E19 - Will You Run Blue?

19 augusti 2022 | 1 min

S6E18 - A Cheat Code for California?

18 augusti 2022 | 1 min

S6E17 - This is Super Critical!

17 augusti 2022 | 1 min

S6E16 - 320 Nuclear Power Reactors in our Sewers

16 augusti 2022 | 1 min

S6E15 - Is Turquoise Greener than Green?

15 augusti 2022 | 1 min

S6E14 - One Olympic Swimming Pool every 10 Minutes. Really?

14 augusti 2022 | 1 min

S6E13 - Your Poop has Superpowers!

13 augusti 2022 | 1 min

S6E12 - The Problem with Quack Doctors

12 augusti 2022 | 1 min

S6E11 - Did we Hold our 1977 Promise?

11 augusti 2022 | 1 min

S6E10 - Are Ceramic Membranes the Future?

10 augusti 2022 | 1 min

S6E9 - Are your Wastewater Bacteria on Twitter?

9 augusti 2022 | 1 min

S6E8 - Deep Ocean can Desalinate Water!

8 augusti 2022 | 1 min

S6E7 - Why would you Burn Wastewater?

7 augusti 2022 | 1 min

S6E6 - The Six Thousand Billion Dollars Challenge

6 augusti 2022 | 1 min

S6E5 - The Epic 3-Step Process that Boosts Activated Sludge

5 augusti 2022 | 1 min

S6E4 - Can this Solve the World's Thirst?

4 augusti 2022 | 1 min

S6E3 - The Problem with Water Networks

3 augusti 2022 | 1 min

S6E2 - 20 Years in the Desert (to then become a Millionaire!)

2 augusti 2022 | 1 min

S6E1 - The Problem with Lithium

1 augusti 2022 | 1 min

S6E0 - Don't Waste Summer!

1 augusti 2022 | 1 min

S5E19 - What if your Microbial Fuel Cells could Reach Out on Twitter?

27 juli 2022 | 62 min

with 🎙️ Carol Maxwell - CEO & Director of MICROrganic Technologies and a Founding Member of ENYA Funds 1, 2, &3

with 🎙️ Brent Solina - CTO of MICROrganic Technologies

💧 MICROrganic Technologies builds a Microbial Fuel Cell platform that aims to change the way the world deals with wastewater

What we covered:

📅 How Microbial Fuel Cells open a new paradigm in plant operation - the era of bacteria that can communicate and interact with your Google Calendar

🧑‍🔬 How limited we are today, with our chemical tests and lab analysis

🤔 How we don't know much about the root cause of most of the upsets a wastewater treatment system encounters

⚒️ How Microbial Fuel Cells work and how their core characteristics trigger the operation opportunity we just described

⚡ How wastewater treatment blowers represent 3-5% of the US's energy use and how microbial fuel cells could enable turning them down

📉 How microbial fuel cells could represent an overall decrease of 85-90% in energy use

📈 How beyond today's benefits of microbial fuel cells, there's even more to come tomorrow with for instance microbial desalination cells

🌱 How MICROrganic Technologies' VIVA modular series could be the fundamental brick for those future applications

0️⃣ How it all boils down to a fundamental feature of Microbial Fuel Cells: they set the path for a decarbonized wastewater treatment

🚀 How MICROrganic interacts with companies and acceleration programs the like of Xylem's Innovation Labs

💪 How anybody can take off a start-up, assuming you’re creative enough and push hard enough.

🤝 How you can learn sales and marketing the hard way, and how that’s beneficial to aspiring entrepreneurs.

🏭 How the bottleneck to turn MFCs into a large-scale solution lies on the cathode’s hardware - and how MICROrganic strives to solve it.

🔋 How building an MFC is very close to making a battery - just with additional constraints, using wastewater as a fuel

🔼🔽 How large and small plants have different challenges and how that reflects in their KPIs.

🪜 How MICROrganic’s product works yet isn’t fully ready for commercialization - and what the next steps are.

💩 Wastewater being liquid composting, wastewater containing 7x the energy needed to treat it, VIVA being the size of a refrigerator, MFCs powering predictive maintenance and potentially decentralized systems, VIVA being a kind of biosensor... and much more!

🔥 … and of course, we concluded with the 𝙧𝙖𝙥𝙞𝙙 𝙛𝙞𝙧𝙚 𝙦𝙪𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨 🔥

➡️ Send your warm regards to Carol on LinkedIn

➡️ Make sure to also reach out to Brent over there

➡️ Check out the full story (and an infographic) on how Microbial Fuel Cells can turn plant operation on its head!

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[Extract] "We reduce energy use by 85 to 90%" - Carol Maxwell - Brent Solina - MICROrganic Technologies

27 juli 2022 | 1 min

Hallo, bonjour, and welcome to the Don't waste water podcast! I am your host, Antoine Walter, and in today's episode, I am delighted to welcome Carol Maxwell and Brent Solina as my guests! Carol and Brent are, respectively, CEO and CTO of MICROrganic Technologies. MICROrganic builds a Microbial Fuel Cell platform that aims to change the way the world deals with wastewater.

Wastewater is a fascinating substance! If you're a regular listener of that podcast, you've heard me telling how it theoretically contains about seven-time the energy needed to treat it. Now, the way we deal with it today is the total opposite: we're spending huge amounts of energy to destroy that chemical potential of sewage.

How huge, you ask? Well, as Brent will share in a minute, we're talking of about 4% of the US's energy use that's employed in the blowers that turn biological basins into the brown jacuzzis we all know.

Does it work? Yes. Is it energetically optimized? Of course not! But if we're honest, it's still the best way to deal with wastewater that we have at hand today.

The good news is that this could soon be history. Brilliant minds and entrepreneurs are at work to correct the incongruity of spending carbon-intensive energy to destroy energy. Microbial Fuel Cells, for instance, could decrease the energy needs of wastewater treatment plants by 85 to 90%!

And that's maybe still not the most promising of their features. Yes, they produce a clean DC electrical output. Yes, they're modular and adapted to basically any kind of wastewater. But even better, they could drastically ease up the operation of plants.

I won't spoil you the full explanation because Carol and Brent will do that much better than me in a minute, but let me tease you with that. Whenever your bacteria are upset because of sudden condition changes or a piece of dysfunctional equipment, they can put a reminder on your calendar. Think of that: no forensics anymore to understand what could be wrong with that complex treatment system, or even worse, what was punctually wrong and disappeared now that you're physically back on the plant. Bacteria can talk. How cool is that?

By now, you're probably as hyped as me, so I'll stop talking and let you dive into the fascinating world of microbial fuel cells with Carol and Brent. Right before, let me remind you that if you like what you hear, you can help me out tremendously by sharing that content around you.

Please tell your friends, colleagues, or LinkedIn network what you learned of found inspiring in what Brent and Carol share today, and if you don't like what you hear, please reach out to me and tell me what I should be doing differently or better. Come on, do it, and I'll meet you on the other side.

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S5E18 - How to Admit, Value, and actually Overcome the Economic Risk of Water

20 juli 2022 | 60 min

with 🎙️ Nicola Lei Ravello - Author and Founder of White Stag Investing

💧 White Stag Investing is a research platform for responsible investments, focusing on sustainability as a source of value and stability in the long term.

What we covered:

🌎 How the interaction between Water and the World as we know it relies on a fragile equilibrium

🚰 How our whole economy builds upon a steady supply of water and how it could turn into an economic risk if it was to get disrupted

🌊 How with Climate Change unfortunately here to stay, events of too little or too much water will multiply and what it involves

⏰ How the acknowledgment of the economic risk of water is still embryonic and how stakeholders and decision makers may click too late

💸 How mitigating the economic risk of water is fully doable, yet can be quite expensive

📊 Why market forces can play their role to better value water and how

📈 How we rely on probabilities and data to engineer our infrastructure as well as our financial portfolios and how the new unknowns create a new wave of risks

🌱 How the world's economic risk is also a business opportunity for the Water Industry - and what we shall do to leverage it

5️⃣ How there are five shades of investing in sustainability and what they are

🔁 How ESG approaches change the way many finance players do their job

🔥 How humanity has built its wealth around water in all its forms and how that may soon backfire

🤖 How new technologies can have an effect at a planetary scale and what it involves in our approaches to it

🛥️ How there's a relationship between building a ship and crossing the Atlantic as a Viking and modern investment approaches

⚠️ Industries that are the most exposed to water risks, the available tools to measure it, the finance scene rapidly evolving, water wars and manufacturing peace, water from an indigenous perspective, making balanced investment decisions in an uncertain world, writing, educating… and much more!

🔥 … and of course, we concluded with the 𝙧𝙖𝙥𝙞𝙙 𝙛𝙞𝙧𝙚 𝙦𝙪𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨 🔥

➡️ Come say hi to Nicola on LinkedIn

➡️ Check out the full story (and an infographic) on How the right investment strategy can help mitigate water's economic risk !

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[Extract] "You can invest in Peace by investing in Water Infrastructure!" - Nicola Lei Ravello - White Stag Investing

20 juli 2022 | 1 min

S5E17 - How to Build the World Leading Water Innovation Accelerator: Imagine H2O

13 juli 2022 | 53 min

with 🎙️ Scott Bryan - President of Imagine H2O

💧 Imagine H2O is the world leading Water Innovation Accelerator with $800+M raised in early-stage funding and 1.1 billion people (and counting) served.

What we covered:

🌎 How Imagine H2O's Alumni network now extends to 168 portfolio companies in 20 countries

🚀 How Imagine H2O launched in 2008, creating the water innovation accelerator concept from scratch

💡 How the organization's concept first was a Business Model contest, how it pivoted from there, and why

🛣️ How Imagine H2O swiftly realized that to accelerate water technologies they had to work on water technology adoption

💸 How only 1% of climate tech venture investments flow to water today and why it is problematic

🪣 How Imagine H2O's non-profit business model works, and who the organization partners with to maximize its impact

🤝 How market competitors can incredibly work together to take new solutions off the ground

🌱 How entrepreneurs entering from other sectors bring a breath of fresh air and how fun it is to work with them

😵 How sometimes, entrepreneurs hang around a little longer than they should in the Water Industry

🤑 How some valuations we currently see in the Water Sector can be detrimental to both the founder and the investor

💥 How the booming accelerator playground offers incredible resources for entrepreneurs while also reaching some boundaries

🎯 Focus being the name of the game, the criterion to work with Imagine H2O, the most important thing to look at as a water entrepreneur, water as a global opportunity and a local market, scaling up, building for the long-term… and much more!

🔥 … and of course, we concluded with the 𝙧𝙖𝙥𝙞𝙙 𝙛𝙞𝙧𝙚 𝙦𝙪𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨 🔥

➡️ Come say hi to Scott on LinkedIn

➡️ Check out the full story (and an infographic) on How Imagine H2O became the World's leading water innovation accelerator

➡️ Check the stories of Imagine H2O's alumni we shared on this microphone:

🎙️ Aquacycl (S1E20)

🎙️ StormHarvester (S2E11)

🎙️ 120Water (S3E1)

🎙️ Puraffinity (S4E1)

🎙️ Epic Cleantec (S4E3)

🎙️ Typhon Treatment (S4E9)

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[Extract] "You're not gonna be able to entre three markets at once!" - Scott Bryan - Imagine H2O

13 juli 2022 | 1 min

Scott Bryan is the President and First employee of Imagine H2O. Imagine H2O is the leading water innovation accelerator and ecosystem for water, empowering people to develop and deploy innovation to solve water challenges globally.

There are some common traits among the about one hundred guests that appeared on that microphone. I could name their grit, their passion for water, or their generosity when it comes to sharing their wisdom.

But beyond all of that, there's a common agreement that in the light of the challenges our World has to face, we need innovation and new technologies to support our Water projects.

The problem is that usually, the next sentence, once you've said innovation is needed, is to remind everyone of how difficult it is to promote a new tech in the Water Industry - not to say barely impossible.

This is why we need exceptional support for that technology to strive in a hopefully near future. Nowadays, that support can come in many shapes, and we just explored one of those last week with John Robinson and his Mazarine Ventures impact investing approach.

Yet so far, I had somehow missed the elephant in the room in that podcast series: the historical and first player on that stage, which is, you would have guessed, Imagine H2O.

In a minute, Scott will reveal how Imagine H2O came to life, how it pivoted over time, how it further developed with its additional paths, and what's in it for the future while reviewing its not-for-profit approach - quite unique for a Water Innovation Accelerator .

Yet, the fascinating element here, in my humble opinion, is how an entire industry forgets for a minute who's competing with whom to dedicate to growing the new wonder kids.

Some of the Imagine H2O's alumni may sound familiar to the most loyal listeners, like Typhon Treatment , Puraffinity , StormHarvester , Aquacycl , 120Water , or Epic CleanTec , and if you missed one of these stories, I'll link them in the show notes.

Are you ready to hear about a different future for Water? Well, while you buckle up, let me remind you that if you like what you hear, you can help me up tremendously by sharing that content around you.

Please tell your friends, colleagues, or LinkedIn network what you found inspiring in what Scott shares today, and if you don't like what you hear, please reach out to me and tell me what I should be doing differently or better. Come on, do it, and I'll meet you on the other side.

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S5E16 - How to Mitigate 4 Shades of Water Risk Through Impact Investing

6 juli 2022 | 57 min

with 🎙️ John Robinson - Partner & Co-Founder at Mazarine Ventures

💧 Mazarine is an impact investor backing young technology companies with innovations that address some aspects of water risk, including quality and quantity.

What we covered:

🌊 How Quality and Quantity of Water represent increased risks across the industrial and municipal value chains

🧮 How the Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) framework is a potent way to rank and evaluate a company's impact

🤝 How Mazarine Ventures builds upon four lanes: Labs, Fund I, Fund II and Bluehouse

💰 How Funding mechanisms evolve from one Lane to another and why

🌍 How exiting from an investment is not only a financial milestone but also an opportunity to have an impact

🧑‍🤝‍🧑 How there are four types of capital: human, social, intellectual, and financial, and what the most important is in the early stages of a water company

👨‍🚀 How Mazarine Ventures looks for start-up founders that have been to the future and came back

📈 How the real challenge for companies Mazarine backs is not to create a product but to get it to the market

🟢 What an evergreen fund is, how it works and why it was the right fit for Fund I companies

💪 How all parameters play in Mazarine’s decision to invest, but the quality of the founder’s insight trumps it all

🧩 How the chemistry between the impact investor and the early-stage company is key to assembling the puzzle pieces

🌱 How Fund II and Labs were built out of frustration to not fitting promising concepts into Fund I

☑️ How many investors just check the “water box” and move on - and what consequences it has

🚀 Capital-light innovations, IoT, the biggest risks as an early-stage impact investor, passing of the baton as a start-up founder, having a convincing grasp of the customer... and much more!

🔥 … and of course, we concluded with the 𝙧𝙖𝙥𝙞𝙙 𝙛𝙞𝙧𝙚 𝙦𝙪𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨 🔥

➡️ Come say hi to John on LinkedIn

➡️ Check out the full story (and an infographic) on How Impact Investment can Mitigate Water Risk

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[Extract] "The future is already there, it's just not equally distributed" - John Robinson - Mazarine Ventures

6 juli 2022 | 1 min

John is a Partner and Co-Founder of Mazarine Ventures. Mazarine is an impact investor backing young technology companies with innovations that address some aspects of water risk, including quality and quantity.

When you're working in the Water Industry, it is tempting to go for broad quotes like "Water is Life." Sure, that's true. But it might be a bit too general of a statement to be translated into concrete business.

That's why John and his founding team at Mazarine have been clear from Day Zero when they wrote their investment thesis: in the Age of Climate Change and its extreme events, galloping urbanization, or increased water scarcity, water is a risk.

New technologies can help our World mitigate that risk, and this, in all the dimensions of the ESG framework. Hence, speeding up the time-to-market of these emerging solutions induces an impact, turning Mazarine Ventures into an Impact Investor.

In my conversation with John, we'll explore how that twist in the definition of water-related challenges and opportunities translates into concrete steps and how Mazarine articulates its actions from its Labs to its Fund I, Fund II, and Bluehouse investment funds.

You'll get to understand why the exit is fully part of the impact process, which type of capital is the most important at which stage of a company's development, and how Mazarine ambitions to find entrepreneurs that have been to the future and came back.

There's much more to unpack in this week's conversation with John, so we'll swiftly take off. But while you buckle up, if you like what you hear, please remember to share that episode with a colleague, a friend, or an entrepreneur you know that shall definitely reach out to Mazarine! Steal their phone, subscribe them to the podcast, and come tell me on LinkedIn what you liked or didn't like about it! Come on do it, and I'll meet you on the other side.

Find out how Mazarine Ventures sees Impact Investing as a tool to mitigate the Water Risk!

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S5E15 - Passing the Baton: How to Bring Innovation to Market Faster & More Reliably

29 juni 2022 | 52 min

with 🎙️ Sivan Zamir - VP Xylem Innovation Labs

💧 Xylem is one of the largest water and wastewater technology company globally and follows the simple motto: "Let's solve water"

What we covered:

🔬 How Xylem invests in its R&D to stay on top of the Water Technological Game

💡 How approaches to innovation are evolving, and how that led to the inception of the Xylem Innovation Labs

🤝 What the various tracks of XIL actually are, and how do they bridge the best of Xylem's internal world and of the water entrepreneurship ecosystem

🛣️ How the name of the game is to improve the market access for new Water Technologies

🍫 How it doesn't depend on one specific stakeholder group to make innovation happen: it is all about "passing the baton" that happens to be the entrepreneur

🪦 How to avoid "death by pilot" and which frameworks to deploy for that

🇺🇸 How making technology work in California is a good proxy for the United States and, ultimately, the World

🧑‍🤝‍🧑 How innovation always comes down to people

🚀 How Sivan intends to feed the Xylem Innovation Labs with her startup spirit and acumen

6️⃣ The six areas of interest Xylem intends to focus on - and Sivan’s favorite child

🧠 How mindsets evolve and how people become more interested in new technology adoption

🏭 How many of the water innovations to come might already be deployed in other industries

🚀 Investments and partnerships with Burnt Island Ventures, the Westly Group, and Isle Utilities, moving the needle in a conservative industry, building a sit for everyone at the table...

🔁 Evolving innovation timelines, business model innovation, silver bullets not existing, Xylem as a bridge between diverse worlds, learning from others’ trials, finding a cultural fit between small and large companies, innovation as a service... and so much more!

🔥 … and of course, we concluded with the 𝙧𝙖𝙥𝙞𝙙 𝙛𝙞𝙧𝙚 𝙦𝙪𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨 🔥

➡️ Come say hi to Sivan on LinkedIn

➡️ Check out the full story (and an infographic) on How to Bring Innovation to Market

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[Extract] "Technology impacts through people!" - Sivan Zamir - Xylem Innovation Labs

29 juni 2022 | 1 min

S5E14 - How to Save over 1 Million Tons of CO2 Every Year with Thermal Hydrolysis

22 juni 2022 | 37 min

[Extract] "Essentially, it is a Giant Pressure Cooker!" - Eirik Fadnes - Cambi

22 juni 2022 | 1 min

S5E13 - Radical Collaboration: 12 Staggering Ideas to Regenerate the Water World

15 juni 2022 | 53 min

BlueTech Forum 2022's Theme was straightforward: Radical Collaboration for Regeneration.

For two packed days, the Vancouver convention center hosted the hottest and most insightful discussions on the fate of our Water World. Keynote speakers, start-up founders, end-users, industry experts, investors, and civil society gathered under the flag of "Radical Collaboration"

I was blessed with a spot next to the conference hall, which allowed me to welcome some industry legends on my microphone:

🎙️ Menno Holterman (President & CEO @ Nijhuis Saur Industries)

🎙️ Snehal Desai (EVP & Chief Growth and Sustainability Officer @ Evoqua Water Technologies)

🎙️ Ralph Exton (Chief Marketing & Chief Digital Officer @ SUEZ - Water Technologies & Solutions)

🎙️ Kimberly Kupiecki (Director & Global Leader Sustainability ESG, Advocacy, Communications @ DuPont)

🎙️ Jon LIberzon (VP & Head of Business Development @ Tomorrow Water)

🎙️ Kamakshi Sharma (Director of Marketing and Strategy @ Aquatech International)

We discussed:

🖐️ Radical Collaboration for Regeneration - What's in it for you? (00:51)

🚶‍♂️ How does Radical Collaboration translate into a company's actions? (05:59)

💰 Is M&A a way to collaborate? (11:16)

💬 Tomorrow Water & Aquatech's Elevator Pitches (17:24)

👼 Was collaboration the key to Evoqua's rebirth? (19:39)

🚀 How does SUEZ interact with the water start-up ecosystem? (22:26)

🌱 Walking the Sustainability Talk (23:41)

💽 Leveraging synergies between datacenters and wastewater treatment plants (26:31)

🎬 Reality check: where do we start from? (28:10)

🌆 How do we better integrate water infrastructure with urban design? (30:12)

💪 How does success look like in the future? (34:04)

🤝 How is it to be back to live interactions? (42:56)

🔥 Rapid Fire Questions: 🔥

😅 Can you name one thing that you've learned the hard way? (46:27)

⌚ What is the very very very latest thing you've learned? (48:32)

We mentioned:

The History of US Filter

The Veolia/SUEZ merger

The book "Flourish"

The (slow) rise of Reuse

Special thanks to Paul O'Callaghan, Aoife Kelleher, and Annyse Balkwill for the invite and support during this amazing Forum!

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S5E12 - How to be Alone, Early, Crazy but Actually Right: The History of Zenon

8 juni 2022 | 50 min

with 🎙️ Andrew Benedek, Executive Chairman of Anaergia, founder of Zenon and CEO for 26 years, a former member of the IWA board, and the inaugural recipient of the Lee Kwan Yew Prize.

💧 Anaergia aims to convert waste into useful resources, protect the environment, and sustain life for generations to come. Where some see waste, they see resources.

What we covered:

💰 How Zenon created the $4Bn/year membrane bioreactor market from scratch

💸 How no investor would have dared to put a penny in Andrew's vision

⏰ How wastewater reuse would become mandatory and how only a few people had realized it in the early 1980s

🌐 How you can't change the World with academic research and how that led Andrew to become a water entrepreneur

🤷 How for almost two decades there were no positive signs for wastewater treatment membranes on the market

🧰 How technology development wasn't a peacefully boring straight road either

🌐 How with Zenon membranes now in the middle of the market a merger or an acquisition became inevitable

🦸 How Andrew tempted an audacious move that - here again - would have been two decades ahead of times

🛋️ How with several million in his pocket and a beautiful house on the US west coast, 63-year old Andrew Benedek still wasn't done with business

🌊 How teaching and researching at the Scripps institute became an eye opener on the advancement rate of climate change

🪃 How Andrew plunged back into the shark tank by turning a bankrupt german company on its head - leading it to its IPO

💪 How over time, Andrew developed a 4-step recipe for changing the World

🏭 The one single business book you need to read, being an idealist, dealing with market players that copy you, failing and learning from failure, using gatekeepers to enter the mass market, believing in yourself, building for the future, becoming more ambitious every day... and much more!

🔥 ... and of course, we concluded with the 𝙧𝙖𝙥𝙞𝙙 𝙛𝙞𝙧𝙚 𝙦𝙪𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨 🔥

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[Extract] "This is a story that no-one knows - I'll tell it to you because you're french" - Andrew Benedek - Anaergia - Z

8 juni 2022 | 1 min

🎙️ Andrew Benedek is the Executive Chairman of Anaergia after having founded and led Zenon for 26 years. He's a former member of the IWA board and the inaugural recipient of the Lee Kwan Yew Prize.

There's a fine line between genius and madness. Between visionary and crazy. Between confidence and vanity.

So when we look back at Andrew Benedek's path, I can say he is a genius that was confident enough in his vision to stay true to it for two decades long while everyone told him he was mad. I mean, you can try to ignore the noise and the voices around you.

But I'm often told on that microphone that the market never lies! And in fact, for 16 years, Zenon had no competition - which by extension, may mean Zenon had no market.

Now put yourself in the shoes of a younger Andrew, in the late eighties, promoting membranes in wastewater treatment when almost no-one even believed, that this technology could make a dent in drinking water applications. Would you pivot? Would you give up? Or would you double down?

Of course, 40 years later, with MBR now a dominant wastewater treatment technology, it's hard to put the survivor bias aside. And we're probably all thankful to Andrew for not giving up.

But can we rationalize why Zenon succeeded against all the odds?

If you're familiar with Paul O'Callaghan's concept of Crisis-Driven innovation, things suddenly start to make more sense. Indeed, as Andrew will explain in a jiffy, water scarcity was a crisis in the making, and this already in the 80s. And while only a hand full of visionaries had realized it, and aligned themselves to water reuse becoming mandatory, the setup existed.

Luck is not the decisive factor here. It's a skill, and you'll realize in a minute that this skill has not vanished and still fires up the now 78 Andrew Benedek.

Wanna listen to the full episode? Just type "S5E12 - How to be Alone, Early, Crazy but Actually Right: The History of Zenon"

You can also find here the full episode materials on the history of Zenon

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S5E11 - Can Lithium Mining Astoundingly solve the Brine Riddle with Benefits?

1 juni 2022 | 38 min

with 🎙️ Benjamin Sparrow - CEO and Co-Founder at Saltworks Technologies

💧 Saltworks provides innovative products and solutions for industrial wastewater treatment and desalination.

What we covered:

🤔 How we will need a lot more lithium to cover the World’s needs over the next decade – and how conventional sources might not be sufficient

💰 How a lot of money and investments flow to the battery production industry, and surprisingly much less to the lithium mining sector

💪 How industrial wastewater could actually be an incredible source of lithium – and how to mine it

🦸‍♂️ What DLE and CRC stand for – and why Direct Lithium Extraction and Concentrating, Refining, and Converting are a key to the future of Lithium-Ion batteries

🚀 How Saltworks’ technology was first used by… NASA!

♻️ How Saltworks’ approach to Lithium Mining is an incredible example of circular economy done right

🛠️ How Saltworks’ adventure started in a garage – and how they may well be back in it for a stealth project

🔁 How the company pivoted its original approach and what milestones they would have to reach before returning to it

🧑‍🔬 How their technology can be summarized as a way to split columns in the periodic table of the elements

📈 How much of a hot Wall Street’s prospect Direct Lithium Extraction is right now (and what to think about it)

⛪ How the church of England may well be the most influential and surprising impact investor out there

🤝 Striving out of the box, water and its compounds being on the industrial’s critical path, fostering the right team spirit, crossing the valley of death, caring and aiming for turbocharged solutions… and much more!

🔥 … and of course, we concluded with the 𝙧𝙖𝙥𝙞𝙙 𝙛𝙞𝙧𝙚 𝙦𝙪𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨 🔥

➡️ Come say hi to Benjamin on LinkedIn

➡️ Check out the full story (and an infographic) on Lithium Mining

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[Extract] "This Technology is Literally from Outer Space!" - Benjamin Sparrow - Saltworks Technologies

1 juni 2022 | 1 min

How can the Water Industry's Supply Chain Join Forces to reach Net Zero?

25 maj 2022 | 14 min

S5E10 - Why is One Water the Best Way to Manage our Vulnerable Water Cycle?

18 maj 2022 | 35 min

[Extract] "They became energy positive and they gave back to the community" - Susan Moisio - Jacobs

18 maj 2022 | 1 min

🎙️ Susan Moisio is the Global Water Director at Jacobs, where she leads a team of 9,000 water professionals across all regions. Susan names them a one water team, which you'll discover to be a key concept in today's discussion!

Back in Season 3, I had a discussion on that microphone with the authors of the Sustainability Puzzle , Claudia Winkler and Alice Schmidt. And I couldn't help but think of one of the book's key advice when listening to Susan today: Zoom out before you zoom in.

If you're a water professional, chances are that you define yourself as specialized in a section of the Water Cycle. You might be treating wastewater, managing a water network, preventing a sewer overflow, or producing your community's drinking water.

Now, if you zoom out, you'll swiftly come to realize that you're dealing with the one water I shortly alluded to. But is that the end of the zoom out? Not really. There are many surroundings to the water cycle. Like the energy we consume or produce, the impact we have on adjacent industries, and our role in both mitigating and sometimes causing climate change.

Solving the riddle needs to be bigger than water. Would you expect thought leaders like Jacobs to think outside of the water box? Probably. Did they? Of course - and Susan will take us through that landscape in just a minute.

You'll swiftly get to understand why, Global Water Intelligence named her one of the 40 most influential people in the Water Industry. And you'll see that there are very interesting bridges between what she shared and what the other experts in this mini-series on water positive, zero Carbon explained to us.

We'll have five feature interviews on that podcast, and I'll have the same five speakers on stage with me for the Global Water Summit in Madrid. If you want a complete overview, check my full series on net zero water , and of course if you don't want to miss any of these interviews, make sure to subscribe to the podcast. It's free, and it's even better if you share it with your friends or colleagues.

I'll let you share it, and I'll meet you on the other side!

Wanna listen to the full episode? Just type "S5E10 - Why is One Water the Best Way t manage our Vulnerable Water Cycle?"

You can also find the full episode materials on the (don't) Waste Water website

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S5E9 - How Water UK intends to Reach a Good Net Zero, Two Decades Early!

16 maj 2022 | 51 min

[Extract] "Net Zero is not the next new thing, it's an operating environment!" - Maria Manidaki - Mott MacDonald

16 maj 2022 | 1 min

🎙️ Maria Manidaki is Net Zero Technical Lead and Principal Water Investment Planning Advisor at Mott MacDonald. Mott MacDonald is a global engineering, management, and development consultancy, that places social outcomes at the center of all it does.

You know the saying: smoke is a good proxy to determine if there's a fire. Well, it turns out that the same applies to greenhouse gases. Studies demonstrated how carbon emissions are, in fact, a good proxy for resource efficiency.

So, if you want to optimize your resources and build a sustainable approach, you'd better monitor, control, and limit your greenhouse gas emissions.

Long story short: down the line, Water UK just equipped itself with a 2030 routemap that aims for net zero in the Water Sector. It's not alone in this endeavor, as 81 utilities in the World and at the time I'm recording this in may 2022 have taken that pledge, but I'd say it's the most structured approach I've seen so far.

Maria will guide us through all of that in a minute, and explain the role that Mott MacDonald plays in Water UK's routemap, in further working groups such as PAS 2080 and beyond, and if you're like me, you'll also get to discover a new notion: the concept of a GOOD net zero.

We'll have five feature interviews on that podcast, and I'll have the same five speakers on stage with me for the Global Water Summit in Madrid. If you want a complete overview, check my full series on net zero water , and of course if you don't want to miss any of these interviews, make sure to subscribe to the podcast. It's free, and it's even better if you share it with your friends or colleagues.

I'll let you share it, and I'll meet you on the other side!

Wanna listen to the full episode? Just type "S5E9 - How Water UK intends to Reach a Good Net Zero, Two Decades Early!"

You can also find the full episode materials on the (don't) Waste Water website

Hosted by Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

S5E8 - How to ensure Energy and Carbon Resilient projects with a Simple Screening Tool

15 maj 2022 | 38 min

[Extract] "You must consider the future operation and plan for the next 10-15 Years!" - Stephane Bessadi - Asian Development Bank

15 maj 2022 | 1 min

🎙️ Stephane Bessadi is Senior Procurement Specialist for the Asian Development Bank. ADB - its short name you'll hear quite a lot in the next minutes - commits to a prosperous, inclusive, resilient, and sustainable Asia and Pacific Region.

Urbanization ticks at a high pace in the Asia Pacific region, with 65% of the population that's expected to live in cities. Water and Wastewater infrastructures will have to adapt, and this has consequences.

Without even considering water, the region will soon represent 40% of the World's greenhouse gas emissions, a number that's still to increase if we factor in the future energy needs of the newly created water infrastructures.

Hence, the Asian Development Bank is at the same time a big contributor to that transition, as it invests about one billion dollars every year in water supply and wastewater management projects and is a front row observer with a wealth of data to leverage.

This is how, as Stephane will explain, they've developed a screening tool for the energy evaluation of projects that ensures that the best decisions are taken today to build a sustainable infrastructure for the decades to come. If you want to review the tool while listening to Stéphane's explanations, check the show notes - I've placed the link there to both the publication and the Excel tool .

We'll have five feature interviews on that podcast, and I'll have the same five speakers on stage with me for the Global Water Summit in Madrid. If you want a complete overview, check my full series on net zero water , and of course if you don't want to miss any of these interviews, make sure to subscribe to the podcast. It's free, and it's even better if you share it with your friends or colleagues.

I'll let you share it, and I'll meet you on the other side!

Wanna listen to the full episode? Just type "S5E8 - How to ensure Energy and Carbon Resilient projects with a Simple Screening Tool"

You can also find the full episode materials on the (don't) Waste Water website

Hosted by Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

S5E7 - How to cut Wastewater's Energy Related Carbon Emissions in Two at No Cost?

14 maj 2022 | 47 min

[Extract] "If you want to be a preferred supplier of Xylem, we want you to do this" - Austin Alexander - Xylem

14 maj 2022 | 1 min

🎙️ Austin Alexander is Vice President, Sustainability and Social Impact at Xylem, a leading water technology company with the famous "solving water" motto.

What if solving water actually involved solving Carbon and leading the race to net zero? As Austin will explain in a minute, Xylem believes that if we don't tackle Carbon in the Water Sector, it will make all our other challenges much more complex and tricky.

Great, but if solving Carbon wasn't complex and tricky itself, we would have done it for a while, right? Well, by COP 26 last year, Xylem published a white paper looking at ways to reduce our greenhouse gas impacts in the wastewater sector.

And it turns out, as they demonstrate, that a 50% reduction could be easily achieved with today's technologies and, in 95% of the cases, at no additional or even negative cost!

So what are we waiting? Actually, Xylem isn't waiting at all, and they're currently rolling out their 2025 strategy to reduce their CO2 handprint by over 2.8 million metric tons.

What's a handprint? How do they achieve that? Where do they stand? What can we all steal and apply as a sector? How does it impact the entire value chain?

Don't worry; Austin will answer all of that - and more - in a minute. If you're intrigued by the topic of Carbon in the water sector and want to join the race to zero, make sure to follow my various stops this week on that road.

We'll have five feature interviews on that podcast, and I'll have the same five speakers on stage with me for the Global Water Summit in Madrid. If you want a complete overview, check my full series on net zero water , and of course if you don't want to miss any of these interviews, make sure to subscribe to the podcast. It's free, and it's even better if you share it with your friends or colleagues.

I'll let you share it, and I'll meet you on the other side!

Wanna listen to the full episode? Just type "S5E7 - How to cut Wastewater's Energy Related Carbon Emissions in Two at No Cost?"

You can also find the full episode materials on the (don't) Waste Water website

Hosted by Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

S5E6 - Who will become the US's first Water Reuse Champion Ever?

11 maj 2022 | 48 min

with 🎙️Jon Freedman - Senior Vice President - Global Government Affairs at SUEZ WTS

💧 SUEZ WTS provides industry-leading water technology and process expertise to solve the toughest water, wastewater, and process challenges

What we covered:

🇺🇸 How the US federal government just put out a National Water Reuse Action Plan (WRAP)

👑 How among the 55 action items, Jon holds one that's especially interesting

🧠 How there are four levers from a policy standpoint to promote greater water reuse (and what they are)

🦸‍♂️ How a fifth approach might well trump them all, by incentivizing water reuse

💪 How we might have to 5x water reuse in the coming decade

🤝🏿 How private sector, multilateral organization, development agencies and governments will have to work hand in hand to develop water reuse

💰 How the US infrastructure bill will apply to the water sector, and what the $55 billion there will be allocated to

❇️ How the scattered nature of the water utility scene in the US can prevent rapid actions from being taken

🍏 How decentralized water reuse might be a powerful solution, and how the 50L Home coalition promotes this direction

🍏 How Los Angeles intends to reuse 100% of its wastewater by 2035 and what it deploys to meet that goal

🌱 How piloting reuse solutions goes beyond a pure technological assessment

🍎 How water tariffs and their absence when it comes to river and groundwater are crucial influencers for the adoption of reuse

🦈 Teaching at the university and the Wharton School, Creating an “H2O Shark Tank,” Membrane Bioreactors as a fundamental technological brick, the water usage mix, PFAS treatment, having aspirational goals... and much more!

🔥 ... and of course, we concluded with the 𝙧𝙖𝙥𝙞𝙙 𝙛𝙞𝙧𝙚 𝙦𝙪𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨 🔥

➡️ Come say hi to Jon on LinkedIn

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[Extract] "We'll take our wastewater, treat it, and give it to you to drink" - Jon Freedman - SUEZ WTS

11 maj 2022 | 1 min

S5E5 - 3 Crazy Simple Tips to take the Bore out of Business Meetings or Water Conferences

4 maj 2022 | 69 min

with 🎙️ Annyse Balkwill - Founder of the LuminUS Group and Program Director for the upcoming BlueTech Forum

💧 The LuminUS Group crafts an events formula that has participants engaging, again and again, sharing with their colleagues and offering this feedback. Wanna see it applied? Make sure to attend the upcoming BlueTech Forum!

What we covered:

🔺 How the company's pyramidal shape is disappearing, and what it involves

♻️ How organizations have to evolve to strive in this new paradigm

🧠 How businesses will have to leverage collective intelligence and wisdom to grow

🦸‍♂️ How you'll have to adapt design, practices, and frameworks as a leader - and how that will empower your teams

💪 How in a scattered water industry, all these phenomena not only exist but are set on steroids

📛 How hence, water conferences need to adapt, and how BlueTech Forum is redesigned accordingly

❓ How challenging it is as a water conference organizer to plan the unplanned, and give up control over events

3️⃣ The three pieces of advice you can implement today and change your business meetings forever

💥 How when done right, business meetings, and water conferences can generate sparks!

🤙 How physical conferences used to be a habit, and how they must reinvent themselves in the
“new normal.”

🤔 How there are tons of good business reasons to attend a water conference, how that’s still not the decisive factor to show up, and what it is

😴 How you shall avoid visiting the BlueTech Forum if you just expect a passive top-down delivery
of content

🤝 How the conference design taps into human connections to go past any “pedigree” considerations

🔁 How Annyse first experienced and built her methodology, and how you can replicate these best practices

⛔ How you don’t have to run crappy business meetings just because that’s how you were taught to run them

🌱 How we can leverage the full human potential as an industry, regardless of gender or background

👌 Radical collaboration, talking about what means most for you, planting seeds, crafting a truly unique event... and much more!

🔥 ... and of course, we concluded with the 𝙧𝙖𝙥𝙞𝙙 𝙛𝙞𝙧𝙚 𝙦𝙪𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨 🔥

➡️ Come say hi to Annyse on LinkedIn

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[Extract] "We go to crappy meetings, get promoted, and then run crappy meetings" - Annyse Balkwill - The LuminUS Group

4 maj 2022 | 1 min

S5E4 - How to Save Time, Money, and Water thanks to 92% Accurate Leak Detection

27 april 2022 | 55 min

with 🎙️ Victoria Edwards - CEO & Co-Founder of FIDO Tech

💧 FIDO AI is a data-as-a-service (DaaS) end-to-end leak detection solution that identifies leaks, sizes them, and tells you where to dig to repair them

What we covered:

🎵 How water networks sing, and how you can leverage this for leak detection

💧 How non-revenue water is a threat in a world of rising water scarcity and why we shall fight it

🔥 How no other industry would actually allow losing 40% of its production without reacting

🤖 How artificial intelligence can turn leak detection around by drastically increasing accuracy and reducing false positives

🖥️ How monitoring a leak's evolution is almost as important as detecting it, and why you'd probably not want to repair all of them straight away

🧰 How despite its power, AI won't replace humans and hence never is a threat but rather another tool in the water toolbox

🌐 How FIDO ambitions to save the planet one megaliter at a time by taking a disruptive sensor agnostic and AI approach to
non-revenue water

🎹 How Victoria’s musical background is an asset in that endeavor, even if she no longer plays Rachmaninov

🆕 How you need your innovation first to help and solve a challenge, then be transformational, for it to make a dent in the utility world.

🤙 How being sensor agnostic and adopting an open approach is the best approach.

🪃 How it all started for FIDO and what step they already underwent

🤑 How FIDO removes adoption barriers with its CAPEX Free / Data as a Service
business model

🏭 Training on some of the World’s most complex networks, striving even with little knowledge of the network, fixing leaks as an alternative to increasing production capacity, building hardware, pivoting the original concept... and much more!

🔥 ... and of course, we concluded with the 𝙧𝙖𝙥𝙞𝙙 𝙛𝙞𝙧𝙚 𝙦𝙪𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨 🔥

➡️ Come say hi to Victoria on LinkedIn

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[Extract] "Can you imagine burning 40 BMW Supercars?" - Victoria Edwards - FIDO

27 april 2022 | 2 min

S5E3 - Part 2 - How to Reshape Water Markets (and Beyond) Using Blockchain Technologies

22 april 2022 | 48 min

S5E3 - What would it Empower, if Water Actually Became a Non Fungible Token?

20 april 2022 | 50 min

[Extract] "How could we provide mechanisms of Transparency?" - Katrina Donaghy - Civic Ledger

20 april 2022 | 2 min

S5E2 - How to Systemically drive Money into Water and escape Global Water Stupidity

13 april 2022 | 59 min

with 🎙️ Christopher Gasson - Owner of Global Water Intelligence and authority on water finance and markets

💧 Global Water Intelligence is the leading publisher and events organizer serving the international water industry.

What we covered:

💰 How there are two international things in water: money and technology.

👬 How taking off Global Water Intelligence involved focusing on those two ends of the market

🤑 How still, it is quite controversial to associate water and money (and why it is not a positive sign)

🤪 How people associate a list of terrible mental models to that very water-finance link

💧 How water is capital intensive, and how much you'll have to invest to get $1 of revenue

☠️ How this water industry feature leads to innovation inhibition and major hurdles for water entrepreneurs

🤯 What drives utilities in their infrastructure investment approach

😕 Why SDG 6 targets are stranded for exactly this same missing link between water and finance

🤝 How we shall tell the World about water's profitability (and try to shine the right light on sanitation to make it look the same)

🍏 How the ESG investment wave can be a blessing, assuming we create the opportunities for ESG money to finance the right projects

🧱 The challenges utilities have to overcome, so finance trust them and bets on their future development plans

💧 How it is about time to connect the dots in the scattered water industry to power a triple win

🍎 How a whole load of people talks about saving the world while skipping the thing which really matters: the money to save it

🍎 How climate change brings a third international compound in water

⭕ How describing water consumers as stakeholders is wrong (and why)

💸 How the link between money and water can be proven by the absurd, whenever you deprive the latter of the former

📗 How GWI was a 162-subscriber struggling magazine 20 years ago, how it evolved into today's world reference, and what that changes and enables

👏 Predicting the future and how it's impossible, being catastrophically wrong, needing the sound of two hands clapping to be successful, the SUEZ-Veolia drama, desalination... and much more!

🔥 ... and of course, we concluded with the 𝙧𝙖𝙥𝙞𝙙 𝙛𝙞𝙧𝙚 𝙦𝙪𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨 🔥