Comprehensive water management

Water and the lack thereof have been cited by water experts to be at least as big a problem as climate change in the twenty first century. About 2 billion people around the world either lack access to sufficient quantities of water or are supplied with water unfit for drinking and this shortage is going to worsen in the near future due to the rise of the world’s population and to the redistribution of water recourses due to global warming.

According to UBS underinvestment in water infrastructure has resulted in great inefficiencies and cities like London and Shanghai are wasting more than 60% of their water supply due to something as simple to fix as leaky pipes.

Globally, UN reports put the loss of drinking water before it reaches the consumer at 33%. The total cost of ‘non revenue water’ is conservatively estimated at $14,6bn per year. One of the first companies geared to comprehensively address this is Israeli company Miya.

Miya is the first global player to offer a comprehensive water efficiency solution and a one stop shop for water loss projects. Their mission is to help the cities of the world benefit from the huge opportunity presented by water loss reduction and effective management of urban water. Their products and services include pressure management, leak detection, filters, pumps and measurement tools.

The benefits of their solutions for Water Loss Management are:
• Produce /purchase less water
• Energy savings due to improved efficiency of the system
• Reducing the amount of chemicals used to treat the water
• Saving or postponing investments in increasing water capacity or developing alternative water sources
• Extending the lifespan of existing infrastructures
• Reducing maintenance cost
• Increase revenues by reducing commercial losses caused by lack of metering and/or poor metering and billing policies.
• Lower contamination risks to the water supply from bursts and antiquated pipes

For more information, read here…

Waste material becomes very efficient insulation

Your next refrigerator might be sheathed in renewable rice, if a team of students from the University of Michigan have anything to do with it. With just 12.5mm of rice husk ash they reckon they can achieve the equivalent of over 100mm of conventional petroleum-based insulation.

With claims that the 11 million fridges sold annually in the US could be made 50% more efficient, the judges of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Clean Energy Prize obviously saw the potential in such technology. Such that they awarded the students first prize, which came with a cheque for $200,000. That will now no doubt help them as they launch a start-up company, Husk Insulation, to commercialise their product.

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Real-Life ‘Wall-E’ Recycling Robot Takes to the Streets of Italy

It may not be as tiny or nimble as Wall-E, but this real-life DustCart robot traversing the streets of Peccioli, Italy is just as cute. The robot, part of the $3.9 million DustBot research program, collects trash and measures atmospheric pollutants like sulphur oxide, benzene, ozone, and nitrogen oxide with its on-board sensors. The robot can even be summoned with a cell phone and can go door to door, identify residents with a personal ID number, and sort their trash into organic, recyclable, or waste!

Nimble enough to navigate where conventional gas-guzzling garbage trucks cannot, the electric DustCart robot aims to clean up a dirty industry. Once garbage has been classified, the DustCart whisks it away into its belly and takes it to a waste management site. The DustCart avoids obstacles during its travels with pre-loaded maps and sensors.
The pear-shaped robot is still in the prototype stages since its response time is still too slow for it to work on crowded streets and robots aren’t legally allowed to roam around without human guidance in Peccioli. But who knows — someday soon you may see a friendly green robot zipping down your street to save the day.

Original article: Ariel Schwartz. July 9, 2009. Inhabitat. Read more…

BoP Learning Lab – Waste Management

The Fourth 2009 Lunch-hour workshop will take place on Thursday, 25 June 2009.

TIME: 12:30 – 14:00 (coffee/tea & sandwiches supplied)
VENUE: Open Innovation Studio, 27 Buitenkant Street, Cape Town

Waste management: a business opportunity at the BoP?

The City of Cape Town, with its huge wealth gap, geographical constraints and human diversity, is faced with some of the world’s most interesting challenges with regards to urban planning, spatial organisation, public transport and the environment, to name but a few. Mr Barry Coetzee, Head of Integrated Waste Management Policy, will talk to us about the City of Cape Town’s approach to serving the needs of lower income communities in terms of waste management, tackling the dual challenge of providing urban waste management solutions in poor, high-density urban environments while at the same time creating employment opportunities and encouraging entrepreneurship at the base of the pyramid.

A vast majority of Southern Africa’s more than 240m people live below the poverty line. Even in South Africa, by far the region’s strongest and most modern economy, 75% of the population earn less than R1800* per month.

It is the mission of this generation, our generation of Southern Africans, to reduce this gap, and allow us to build a better society. Brick by brick, the work of each contributes to the progress of all. In this battle for a common ideal, businesses are vehicles of social transformation. Their ability to engage at the base of the economic pyramid (BoP) is crucial to our development and prosperity.

Businesses are emerging as an engine of positive social change as well as economic upliftment. But the challenges are huge. Identifying the right business models, learning from each other’s experience, exchanging intelligence and keeping pace with new developments is crucial in order to have a meaningful impact on the lives of people at the BoP.

The BoP Learning Lab is meant to provide sources of inspiration, to be the toolbox with which the Southern African corporate fabric can maximise its social impact at the bottom of the pyramid.

* World Resource Institute, 2008

More info on www.bop.org.za.

To confirm your attendance, please phone Norma Saayman on 021-918-4238 or e-mail to ns5@usb.sun.ac.za.

From waste to high-tech logistics solution

EnviroServ is a leading South African waste management company. One of their recycling initiatives involves the recycling of Tetra Pak cartons – the containers in which you buy long-life milk, juice and similar products. These cartons are composites, made of three layers (paper, aluminium and polyethylene), so they would previously have required peeling and separation into three different recycling bins. But, the company developed a way to recycle Tetra Pak cartons lock, stock and barrel into pallets to transport more Tetra Pak cartons. It is an elegant solution.

Wood has been the traditional material for pallet manufacture in South Africa and 95% of all pallets for materials handling and storage are still manufactured from wood. But wood is getting scarcer and more expensive. Composite pallets solve a lot of problems. They are made of plentiful waste-stream materials, are more durable, easier to clean and are more UV-resistant. Composite pallets don’t harbour microbes, as wooden pallets potentially do, so they do not need to be heat-treated for the export market. Heat treatment makes the pallets brittle.

Unfortunately, the price gap between timber and plastic pallets is still huge. Wooden pallets average from $9 to $16; plastic pallets cost from $40 to $80. So EnviroServ came up with a smart plan: rather than selling the Bid Pallets, it rents them out. During the development and roll-out of the pallet model, it became apparent that a logistics partner would be needed to manage, track and transport the pallets. An associated company, Rennies Distribution Services, now has a rental pool of Bid Pallets and carries the costs associated with their maintenance, repair, cleaning, storage and circulation, plus the associated risks.

One of the major risks of renting out the pallets is keeping track of their movement. The solution was to microchip them. So now they have green pallets, made of rubbish, yet carrying high-tech radio frequency identification devices.

EnviroServ Polymer Solutions aims to increase production and market demand to 30,000 new pallets a month. This will save 680 tonnes of Tetra Pak a month, or the equivalent of 2,4-million beverage cartons, that would otherwise go into the landfill.

Waste = Input for CleanBoard

The mantra of reduce, reuse and recycle are been taken to a next level by some innovative companies that utilise the waste of others as the inputs in their manufacturing. Not only are their products good for the environment they also employ innovative business strategies to maximise the value they deliver.

One such company is CleanBoard from California. Drywall manufacture is one of the top three building materials in terms of greenhouse gas emissions. It accounts for one percent of all primary industrial energy used in the USA and annual production emits more greenhouse gasses than 6,2 million cars. The gypsum used to manufacture regular drywall is a non-renewable resource that is open-pit mined with significant environmental consequences.

CleanBoard is drywall manufactured from 100% recycled gypsum using power from the sun. The result is a sustainable drywall product with zero carbon footprint. By manufacturing CleanBoard from recycled gypsum that would otherwise be sent to landfills, they help reduce the impact on the environment.

They have also developed ways of eliminating the greenhouse gas emissions by using alternative clean energy sources and are building a drywall factory that is powered entirely by solar energy. In order to deliver on their zero carbon footprint commitment from day-one, they purchase voluntary carbon offsets to cancel out any remaining emissions from the manufacture and transportation of products.

The company works with building contractors to collect all drywall cut-offs thus also saving contractors on waste collection. But, the majority of their board will be made using calcium-sulfate that comes from scrubbing coal-fired power plants. While U.S. power plants are already required to scrub emissions, CleanBoard can offer a financial incentive to plants in China and other developing countries to install scrubbers.

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