#233 - Golden Toilet awards, World Central Kitchen, Cyberattacks, Mussels & River Deacidification
Water Water Everywhere...
Hey Readers,
As we do every week, we pull together innovations and news from the world of water and bring them to you (somewhat) curated. If there are other things you would want to learn more about or see in these weekly missives, let us know either in the comments or via email. Thanks!
Innovations Roundup
A Canadian startup has been working on ways to reduce the acid buildup in our rivers, and mitigate the increasing occurrences of acid rain. Apart from the carbon offsets which make this startup appealing to mining companies and other polluters, the thing that caught our attention was the actual tech and the implications it has for cleaning up water bodies. This low tech, scalable solution mean that it can actually be deployed at scale across the world. More on that below.
Their solution is elegant in its working principle - They crush up limestone and dose it out into the water basis the pH of the water body. The limestone absorbs the CO2 that contributes to the acidification to form a harmless bicarbonate which then flows into larger water bodies like the seas and oceans where it will be stored on the ocean floor. This action alone will help remedy the ecosystem balance and help restore flora and fauna in the waters.
A team of researchers across Poland and Germany looked at how the cellular membranes of a mussel separates out contaminants from food and nutrients in the working system of the shellfish. This ultra thin membrane has such fine small holes, it is able to separate every type of contaminant. So with a lot of hard work and trial and error, they build a membrane just 20 nanometres – i.e. 20 millionths of a millimeter - thick that can efficiently separate different types of ions or even a mixture of dyes. They even built this membrane out of a similar substance to the mussel - Polydopamine. These nanomembranes, in lab testing show the ability to separate out a variety of contaminants but now comes the harder task of identifying cost-effective real-world applications such as highly efficient ion separation and ionic energy conversion.
News Gathered
The Walton Family Foundation and Gallup released a new report today examining Gen Z's experiences with climate change through the lens of water. The new research reveals that 31% of Gen Z believes their generation will definitely or probably not have enough clean water in the future. We’ll just leave that here.
It seems like every week there’s another cyberattack on water utilities. This time it was in Arkansas. When will the federal government get ahead of protecting this critical resource?
On to better news - Not satisfied with getting food to Gaza and other hard hit places across the world, the absolute legends at World Central Kitchen (WCK) on hearing that communities in Ukraine needed clean water, jumped straight in. They didn’t just provide the water though, they created a supply route and a bottling solution and set it up so it will be an affordable source of water for the residents going forward. Jose Andres and his people are rockstars in our eyes.
This last week marked the season finale for the Community Water Quality Testing (CWQT) program. If you’re in the NYC area, you can see Week 20 results here. Also if you want to know more about these local champions, join us for our annual 2024 end of season CWQT celebration and Golden Toilet Award ceremony on Wednesday, October 23, 2024 from 6:30PM to 8:30PM at Hudson River Park's Pier 40 Wetlab. RSVP here!
That is it for this Friday, until next week,
Peace!