Drought, floods, pollution. The climate crisis is changing our relationship with water, which is becoming increasingly hard to access. Here are 8 innovative solutions.
Drinking water plays a fundamental role in food production, human health and the conservation of the natural world. Safe access to it is an essential and universal human right, yet it is increasingly threatened by the climate crisis and rising global demand. This is why it is necessary to find new adaptation measures and more efficient practices for managing the limited water resources available. From this perspective, there are numerous innovative companies and startups around the world that have developed promising solutions capable of improving the management of freshwater and increasing its availability.
The right to water cannot exist without sanitation structures and treatment processes capable of making access to it safe. According to the World water assessment programme, globally around 80 per cent of all industrial and municipal wastewater is released into the environment without any prior treatment, with harmful effects on human health and ecosystems. This proportion is far higher in less developed countries, where sanitation infrastructure is often non-existent. Each year, an estimated 829,000 people die from diarrhoea due to unsafe water and inadequate sanitation services.
Climate change is disrupting weather patterns, triggering extreme events that make water management unpredictable and complex. A striking example, which may seem paradoxical, is the wave of torrential rain that swept through California (United States) during the first weeks of 2023. It was not enough to put an end to the dramatic drought that has persisted for several years. Because billions of litres of water flowing into the ocean could not be captured, around 46 per cent of California is still classified as being in "severe drought" to this day.
When they strike, devastating floods often risk destroying wastewater management facilities and contaminating entire water reserves. In the most vulnerable countries, this coincides with a rise in the spread of diseases such as cholera and typhoid.
Not only does global warming intensify weather events, but it is directly interconnected with the water supply of billions of people. Since ice is often one of the only sources of freshwater in high-altitude regions, several studies show how the melting of the Himalayan and Karakoram glaciers is having catastrophic impacts on the drinking water supplies of more than a billion people across Nepal, India, Pakistan and China.
As global freshwater use continues to grow annually at a rate of 1 per cent since the 1980s, there is a need for new ideas and technologies to make the supply system more resilient. From better water resource management with the help of artificial intelligence to moisture-capture systems that produce drinking water in parts of the world where infrastructure is lacking. Here are 8 companies and startups that have developed interesting water resource management systems.
bNovate Technologies is a Swiss company based in Lausanne that develops cutting-edge technologies for rapidly monitoring the microbiological quality of water. Its goal is to develop reliable, easy-to-use tools that can function outside a laboratory setting. In 2017, bNovate launched BactoSense, the first fully automated bacterial analyser, capable of detecting and quantifying the total number of bacteria present in water in just 20 minutes, replacing the traditional heterotrophic plate count method, whose results are only available several days after the water has been distributed and consumed. This real-time monitoring makes it easier to guarantee water safety.
"If you have air, you can have drinking water" — this is the motto of Majik Water Technologies, a Kenyan startup that captures moisture from the air and transforms it into drinking water for areas particularly hard hit by water emergencies and drought. The technology comprises 4 steps: capturing moisture from the air using industrial fans, condensing it into water using refrigerant gas, filtration to prevent the proliferation of any bacteria and, finally, mineralisation of the water to provide all the essential nutrients. The Majik Water Technologies systems currently produce more than 200,000 litres of water for more than 1,900 people.
Desalination of seawater is a technology that can mitigate the impact on countries vulnerable to prolonged droughts or in a state of ongoing water emergency. Canadian company Oneka Technologies has developed a process that transforms seawater into drinking water using renewable energy generated by wave motion. The Wave-Powered Watermaker device resembles a raft that can be easily assembled and installed in most ocean conditions. It has the potential to produce up to 7,000 litres of clean water per week.
Epic Cleantec is an American water technology company specialising in water reuse in residential buildings. Originally launched as a startup thanks to funding from the Reinvent the Toilet Challenge by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (a programme launched in 2012 to find new wastewater treatment solutions), Epic Cleantec has developed the OneWater system, which is capable of safely recycling up to 95 per cent of a building's wastewater.
The recycled water can be reused directly on-site for non-potable applications such as cooling towers, toilet flushing, urinals, irrigation or clothes washing. From an energy standpoint too, the system offers the advantage of recovering energy from the heat of wastewater, which can be used for home heating.
Kilimo uses big data and machine learning to monitor and optimise water consumption in agriculture. The company aims to help farmers optimise irrigation and then reward them by giving them the opportunity to sell their water savings to companies seeking to achieve climate neutrality. "We have direct experience of water stress in our country — said Tatiana Malvasio, co-founder of Kilimo —. So we decided to create a technology that could help farmers reduce their water consumption and be more efficient in their irrigation practices."
Water anywhere and in any condition, precisely when water resources are becoming an increasingly scarce and contested commodity. This is the goal of Aquaseek, an Italian startup born from an initiative by the research group at the Politecnico di Torino, which has developed and patented a technology capable of generating distilled water from atmospheric vapour in conditions of severe aridity.
The idea of extracting water from air is not new, but Aquaseek's technology makes it possible to do so with significantly lower energy consumption than currently available technologies, thanks to a thermodynamic process that can be activated even when relative humidity in the air is very low, as in the desert. In addition, the company holds a patent on a biopolymer, developed in collaboration with Princeton University — an innovative water vapour absorption and release material that further enhances efficiency.
Agricultural activities consume more fresh water than any other industry. To limit their consumption, startups active in agritech are developing smarter irrigation solutions. A virtuous example comes from Bulgarian startup Ondo, which has developed a drip irrigation system. The technology includes a weather station, soil temperature and humidity sensors, and a module for managing more than one hundred irrigation zones simultaneously. It uses long-range sensors to control valves wirelessly, allowing plants to receive the right amount of water. With remote monitoring and automatic updates, the startup saves money on resources and increases crop yield.
Wastewater contains many polluting elements: from heavy metals to ammonium and anions such as sulphates, phosphates and nitrates. These are currently removed in multiple stages using solutions that deplete water of oxygen. SIEve is a young innovative startup whose goal is to develop a filter capable of removing anionic and cationic species, drastically reducing the microbiological load, and degrading certain classes of pharmaceuticals from wastewater. The treatment is designed to be circular, as it will use a synthesised material derived from red mud — a waste product generated by the industrial production of aluminium that is currently stored in open-air deposits. SIEve, founded by brothers Yuri and Jess Serra, developed a prototype filter capable of removing ammonium in just under a year of research.
