Secure your sourcing of vital bio-based products and of unavoidable production inputs as follows:
- locally and at cheaper costs than classical alternatives;
- with the possibility to get solvent sales of your products or services embedding the outputs of the bio-refineries via our Back2You rewards;
- and enjoy the option to exchange or settle your orders with your bio-wastes and/or wastewater thanks to our Back2You rewarding scheme.
Please find hereafter our list of products and complete our form for your orders or supplies:
About 97,25% of the water on our planet is the form of oceans and seas (source PricewaterhouseCoopers, 2012).
Clean water demand will exceed fresh water resource availability by 2030 according to the Word Economic Forum.
Water, H2O is implicitly the most traded good as water footprint or unavoidable input of products or services. About 70% of the water used at global level is for agriculture and 15% for energy. The Water Footprint (see ISO 14046) measures the consumption and contamination of freshwater resources.
Water is essential to the existence of human beings, the flora and fauna. Water is therefore not just an economic good: it is also a social and environmental good. Treating and reusing wastewater avoids polluting the environment and decreases conflicts and pressures on that limited resource.
In a world that can no longer take ample, secured and unpolluted water supplies for granted, we help our clients to manage their water costs, exposures and not miss any wastewater reuse opportunity.
Reclaimed water available through our platform is Super Pure Blü drinkable water is free of bacteria, virus and/or micro-plastics and is filtered at 8 nano meter level (to compare: the smallest known viruses, MS2 measures about 27 nanometers and the diameter of the Corona virus ranges from 50 nm to 140 nm).
Wastewater and bio-wastes carbon-negative bio-refineries can generate more energy than needed for up-cycling wastes.
Waste-to-energy have many interconnected environmental benefits, such as reducing the emissions and pollution.
Decarbonised Biogas and Bio-electricity can be available on
- PPA Power Purchase Agreements and other types of contracts
- Biomethane certificates (or Biomethane Guarantees of Origin, Renewable Gas Guarantee of Origin, Green Gas Certificates) issued for each MWh of biomethane or Renewable Natural Gas injected into the grid
- Storable energy in batteries, biofuels (e.g. from algae grown on wastewater) and/or in hydrogen.
Gold, silver or other metals can be recovered from wastewater (see: www.eawag.ch).
For example, chromium used in metal-plating industries or leather tanning can be recovered in wastewater thanks to specific filters and technology. Chromium-6 (hexavalent chromium) bath can be re-used/re-cycled for several cycles of plating or dyes by filtering iron and other contents. This also enhances the quality of plating. The sludge that comes out after filtration can then be recycled safely into clean water and/or biogas and/or other outputs.
Every year, drains and sewers carry more than 16 million tons of dissolved nitrogen and about 3 million tons of phosphorus at global level. Four-fifths of the first element and half of the second are supplied by human urine: excess of nutrients increases oxygen demand in the water bodies and cause algae bloom/eutrophication, restraining aquatic life.
Wastewater is typically enriched with nutrients from human, manure and food waste. These resources can be recovered and should not be wasted.
Recovering nutrients from wastewater is key to get healthy food security and sustainability.
Examples of recovered resources:
- nitrogen
- phosphorus is used as fertilisers, animal feed additive, fire extinguishers, etc.
- many laundry detergents use sodium salts as fillers, adding significant sodium to the wastewater. Sodium conducts heat and electricity easily and is used for batteries.
- ammonia in wastewater is a contaminant and hazardous to the environment. Ammonia in a fuel cell is energy dense and comparable to hydrogen in performance.
Biochar can be produced from bio-wastes and wastewater sludge pyrolysis (treatment in high temperature in a zero- or low-oxygen environment).
Biochar can be used as a soil amendment for carbon sequestration, retaining water and improving crops and as an absorbent to remove toxic metals, organic pollutants, and pathogens.
CO2 credits are possible through biochar as carbon remover
Polymers can be recovered from oily wastewater and/or generated from wastewater.
Organic material can be recycled as polymers for bio-plastics. For example, algae grown in wastewater from livestock farms, municipalities, distilleries, etc. can be transformed into biofuels or biopolymers.
Commodities can drive wastewater based epidemiology, pollution reduction and employment at competitive prices!
Commodity traders and/or insurers and/or financial institutions can ask their suppliers, transporter and storage partners can source inputs from bio-refineries such as bio-fertilizers, clean water or renewable energy for competitive differentiation. This simultaneously secures markets by making sure that populations are living more safely and can get some basic needs covered by the value of their wastewater and/or of their bio-wastes.
It is therefore possible to correlate trade finance with waste transformation finance to reduce costs and risks.
EXAMPLE 1:
Be proud to wear a T-shirt that has reduced pandemic and climate risks & get it with the raw materials you generate every day!
Source of the T-shirt image: Hoekstra & Chapagain
A cotton T-shirt has an average water footprint of 2’700 litres (www.waterfootprint.organd according to ISO standard 14046). About 8 million tons of fertilisers and 200'000 tons of pesticides are used every year for cotton crops.
Prioritising inputs from bio-refineries (e.g. fertilisers, clean water and bio-electricity) for clothes with organic cotton drives
- improved access to sanitation with routine virus detection in wastewater for early warnings, monitoring and tracking;
- reduced carbon emissions;
- protected soils and biodiversity.
Note: Methylene blue dye can be recovered from textile or tannery wastewater and reused e.g. to store and to produce energy.
EXAMPLE 2 Integrating externalities with competitive advantages.
The international coffee trade involves about 80 billion m3 implicit water exports; this is about 6% of the international virtual water flows in the world.
The commodity exchange ICE [NYBOT] is trading coffee about 3 years ahead of deliveries: part of the water footprint for coffee could be allocated from wastewater and/or biodegradable wastes transformed in decentralised bio-refineries. In addition to the released pressure on fresh water resources, this can generate energy e.g. for green mobility or transport.
Some risks can be consulted on Water Risk Atlas
EXAMPLE 3
1kg of refined cane sugar has an average water footprint of about 1'400 litres (see www.waterfootprint.org and ISO standard 14046). The Buyer of treated wastewater for irrigation as per ISO 16075 or bio-fertilisers might be the farmer or its client buying sugar. If, for example, only 1% of water used to produce sugar comes from treated wastewater, a cargo of 20'000 tons of sugar can cover sanitation infrastructure for 13'698 people living near the sugar plant (1,5 m3/ton water footprint per 20'000 tons / 100 for only 1% of water used from treated water = 300'000m3 = 60 litres/day wastewater of that population during 365 days).
We can link this to a program of housing equipped to harvest rain and floods water and become providers of wastewater with quality enabling efficient circular economy and virus detection to prevent virus outbreaks. In case of necessary lock down in the wastewater collection area, the rewards are allocated to secure basic needs for isolation, sugar could be potentially supplied in that context (e.g. via State's public procurements for food security).
Our solution has been designed to enable cities and estates to become more resilient and sustainable with impacts on:
- our health: by empowering citizens and/or corporates and/or municipalities for early warnings, monitoring and tracking through wastewater based epidemiology detecting the emergence of contagious diseases,
- our economy: Back2You rewards reversing supply chains from waste to production and consumption. Green mobility and/or transport recharged with bio-electricity from bio-refineries solves simultaneously wastes, economic and health issues and reduces by about 3/4 the costs/km.
- our environment: greenhouse gas emissions, domino effects of drought/pollution/floods, blackout risks and/or other risks are cut through wastewater transformation with zero wastes. The local use of fertilizers and/or other biorefinery by-products are easier, greener and cheaper than if packaged and transported over long distances.
Public procurements through our services enable to turn interdependent risks into reduced:
- public expenses,
- pollution, resources scarcity and health risks,
- unemployment.
Public procurement is a key enabler of circularity and can also drive national surveillance of virus outbreaks through routine detection in wastewater to benefit massive leverage effects and taxes thanks to boosted purchase power through transformed and rewarded wastewater and bio-wastes because outputs from bio-refineries are indeed cheaper than classic alternatives.
Our Back2You rewards are also available for municipalities to get funds and/or outputs of bio-refineries.
States can also get a base for minimum revenues/person thanks to our rewards.