🌊 Join us in this special year-end appeal as we delve into the transformative impact of Trial Reservoirs, presented by Water without Borders. Discover the history and significance of the Trial Reservoir Process and gain insights from key industry leaders on their successful trials and the future of water management.
🎤 Featured Interviews:
Matt Gibson (Business Management Director, Orege) and Richard Glossop (Sludge Manager, Yorkshire Water) discuss their successful trial and its implications.
Sarah McMath (Chief Executive, MOSL) and Glenn Oliver (CEO, H2Bid) share why investing in the Trial Reservoir is crucial, even without direct benefits.
Elma Kapa (Senior Program Manager, Xylem) and Sahil Chaini (Customer Success Leader, Transcend) provide insights into their completed trial experiences.
Jason Mingo (Manager of Livable Communities, Water Services Association of Australia) and Linda Heitzmann (Co-Founder, Bertzmann Social Ventures) talk about the value Trial Reservoirs bring to their domains.
Jose Porro (Founder and CEO, Cobalt Water) and Erika Varga (Project Manager, PureControl) discuss their ongoing trials and their impact.
🚀 Technological Advancements:
Witness presentations on cutting-edge technologies – Arumloo’s innovation by Isle’s Jonny Harris (CEO) and NextGen Water Solutions’ technology by Yossi Zaga. Explore how these technologies will shape future trials.
🔮 Future Collaborations:
Natalia Laguyas (Senior Specialist for Institutional Engagement Unit, IDB Lab) and Sivan Zamir (Vice President, Xylem Innovations Labs) shed light on the upcoming plans for collaboration with Isle and the Trial Reservoir in the next year.
🌍 Be a part of the journey toward sustainable water solutions. Watch exclusive discussions, presentations, and insights from industry experts. Don’t miss out on the exciting developments that will shape the future of water management.
Subscribe now for more updates! 💙
#watermanagement #TrialReservoirs #WaterInnovation #Sustainability #YearEndAppeal
It’s Thursday 15th of December 2022 and welcome to the Water Action Platform. This month is a special edition all about the Trial Reservoir, which has just turned one year old. We will hear from some of the participants and sponsors. We’ll
look at some trials that have finished, one underway and one that’s yet to begin. Before we get into the main broadcast, please let me remind you of our year-end appeal for this charity: Operators Without Borders. Piers talked about them previously, especially the
work they’re doing in Ukraine to support local water authorities. If you want to make a donation, please use the link here. Isle will match all donations up to a total of 10,000 pounds sterling. As always we remind you that the Trial Reservoir and the
Water Action Platform are only possible thanks to our sponsors, these wonderful organizations shown here. You’ll be hearing from some of them later today. But what is the Trial Reservoir? Why are we celebrating its anniversary? The Reservoir Blends a loan financing instrument with a technology accelerator for innovators, with a
technology assessment service for end users, with introductions to potential investors. We put the sponsors’ money into a pot (the Reservoir) along with a quarter of our own profits and we use that pot to give loans to technology developers to carry out trials in collaboration with the end users.
Designing and validating technology trials is routine work in the consulting side of Isle. Within the Reservoir, we do it on a nonprofit basis. There are three conditions a trial must satisfy in order to come into the Reservoir. First there must be a climate change mitigation benefit.
Second there must be a trial and purchase agreement in place between the technology developer and the end user and this commits the end user to deploy the technology; to procure something… …IF the trial is a success. Thirdly, there must be key measurable key performance
indicators in place before the trial begins. These are things that the end user and the tech developer decide between them and we help them design and agree on those KPIs. Then we support the trial with our technical expertise. If the trial is a success then the KPIs are
met, the end user implements the technology and the tech developer repays the loan using that revenue. If however despite everyone’s best efforts the trial fails, then the end user is not obliged to procure anything and the technology developer doesn’t have to
pay back the loan. We write it off. So we take on the financial risk. In a few minutes, we’ll hear from some folks who’ve been through this whole process. But before we get to that, let’s look back at how all this began.
I asked Piers Clark our chairman, the man who had the idea in the first place, to explain. Well, it was the summer of 2021. I was actually on holiday, I was on holiday with my brother in a beautiful part of the UK called the
Yorkshire Moors and we were, we were walking the Yorkshire Moors with our family. Now, my brother is a very senior person working in in the wind farm industry and it was on the day when the first IPCC report came out that basically said the world’s
on fire, unless we do things – unless we act now – and there’s been three subsequent reports and the world really still hasn’t paid enough attention to them. But this was the day when the first IPCC report came out and my
brother and I were walking, we were talking about about the impact of this report and we’re both in I think senior environmental roles and struggling with well what can we do? And that became the tone of the whole day and that evening we were all in
a big Italian restaurant in a lovely village in Yorkshire. And now I’m I’m just for the record, I’m a two beers man, I’ll have two beers, I’m in a sort of happy place, but that night for some reason I had three.
Um, perhaps because I had three beers at the end of the meal, I had a coffee. I never drink coffee, but at the end of the meal I said yeah I’ll have coffee. So what that meant was that night as I lay in my AirBnb next to
my beautiful wife um I had a little bit more alcohol and a LOT more caffeine coursing through my veins and at three in the morning, I swear to you the Trial Reservoir concept came to me. It came to me as a ‘this is what’s needed’
this – this could change how we adopt new technology. This could be the way to speed up getting climate addressing technologies into the water sector faster so that those issues that have been flagged by the IPCC report could be addressed better. I was
so excited, I shook my wife and woke her up and said “I just had this amazing idea” To this day Stella doesn’t show quite the level of excitement about the Trial Reservoir I think it deserves but that aside I I then had to of course persuade my
shareholders that investing in the Trial Reservoir that this this opportunity to do something different was was something that was so important that actually you know, what you needed was someone to put some money into a pot just kick it off and
I was so proud that my shareholders which is XPV Water Partners a private equity firm in Canada, they agreed to give us the the cornerstone of investment that then enabled the Trial Reservoir to become what it is today. And what it is today it is
worth saying that whilst it’s very gracious of you Jo to say Piers, you know, you’re the man who had the idea to start with actually other people have turned that slightly mad idea that happened on the Yorkshire… happened in a slightly drunk
and caffeine induced night in Yorkshire a couple of years ago – you’ve turned it into something so much better so much more wonderful than I could ever have dreamed and I, I am so thankful to you and to our sponsors and to everyone who has
stepped up: utilities, tech companies, investors, sponsors, people within Isle – everyone who’s taken that gem of a slightly mad idea and turned it into something truly, truly wonderful. Thank you, Piers. It’s certainly been an exciting year. Over 100 technology companies are
engaged with the Trial Reservoir. It’s a slow process innovation always is and the journey from the top of the funnel to the bottom has been taking anything from four months to 12. Five trials have come to an end so far. For
one it was clear that the equipment wasn’t suited to the end users working conditions. So under the philosophy of the Reservoir the user’s commitment to purchase fell away and the technology company’s loan was written off. However, for the first time today, you’re going to hear about some trials
which have emerged triumphant at the foot of the funnel. We begin with Orege and Yorkshire water. We featured this technology at the launch of the trial in May 2022. The technology’s a sludge conditioner that can be integrated with existing thickening and dewatering equipment.
Here’s my Isle colleague Tom Jacks talking with Matt Gibson from Orege and Richard Glossop from Yorkshire Water to hear their perspectives, now that their trial is complete. Matthew, can you introduce us briefly? Yeah, Orege have a patented SLG or solid-liquid-gas technology and the
effect is to create an emulsion which enables improved thickening of sludge in this instance municipal sewage sludge this improvement. It’s it’s achieved in several stages: the injection of their into the sludge and then a sequence of compression-depression, then the injection of stabilizing polymer and
this allows for the free and chemically and mechanically bound water to be removed very quickly in a relatively small footprint machine or flowsep. Yep, that’s a great thing. Actually when it comes from Yorkshire Water’s side as well. As we are now
with Yorkshire Water we import sludges out of about 700 sewage treatment works so there are a number of sites which are particularly suitable for this kind of technology and what that does for us is it means instead of exporting say, for one of
our trial sites, 15,000 tonnes of sludge per year it allows us to almost halve the movements of volume out of those sites, which means that we’re not moving things, so we’re not emissions and were also saving money on the transport as
well. So how does this help with Yorkshire Water’s carbon reduction targets? The impact of this trial is something that is quite a considerable impact to our emissions. So, driving around Yorkshire moving sludge is something that does have, you know an emissions impact on the environment and
through just this trial site without including further improvements it’s the equivalent of removing 40,000 kilograms of CO2 per year from our business as usual operation. So when that is scaled to different sites and more sites, it’s something that will increase as well on scale by that.
Matthew again, can you tell us, give us some details about the trial. The time scale really, with the with the trial there was an introduction to the Yorkshire Water bioresources team back in June 2021 and we did a technology presentation there, and discussions on the Isle Trial
Reservoir funding which ran into sort of quarter three, then we did some potential site identification and visits and put together a proposal and trial planning and then the trial commenced earlier this year and completed in summer, summer 2022 within
the trial that were clearly defined KPIs and process objectives. So both ourselves and Yorkshire Water were absolutely clear on what we were trying to achieve whilst on site. Yeah, it was something that worked really well for us. So one of the issues
historically we have in the water industry is a reluctance and a slow drive to actually embrace new technology. So the framework that was allowed for us for this piece of kit meant that we had a low-risk opportunity to trial and demonstrate the value of a technology
but also linking it to the guaranteed purchase if that trial is successful. So we agreed all those KPIs and those targets of what would work and what would be successful for us and it was a success through the summer so in terms
of turning things around within the water industry and committing to the purchase of one of these assets it was a great turn around and a great success for the site as well. Richard from Yorkshire Water’s perspective as the customer, what
why do this? There’s a lot of technologies that offer improvements within the business the benefit of this one was it gave is a clear and defined route from trialing the technology to actually implementing it so having that defined route for us to travel down
following a successful trial was something that allowed us to implement this technology into our core operating procedure on some sites and it also unlocked the possibility for further installments on the sites. So whilst we are contractually bound now to install in our
trial site, we have got other sites that are suitable for this technology that we’re actively pursuing so that does mean that the cost of our operation for business as usual sludge transport is, on some of these sites, potentially halved which
in the current climate is something that’s more important than ever really. Final comments to wrap up, and back to Matthew. We’re a relatively young company & our technology and the innovation that we wanted to bring to the UK water industry,
it can be a very complex and pretty slow route to market. There’s quite a few hurdles to overcome to try and establish… no water company wants to be number one whilst no water company wants to be the last one. So to try to get the technology in quickly
this was a super opportunity to work with Yorkshire Water to demonstrate the technology and then as Richard has said so to try and look at other implementations on different sites afterwards. Thanks, and final comment from you, Richard? The one thing
that’s been particularly beneficial through this trial process and through the you know the contracting and all the way through to the successful, you know, our commitment to purchase the unit is that we’ve worked quite well, so the methodology of trial
and delivering this asset has been something that’s been to where conversation we’ve worked it together and it’s been very collaborative which is particularly useful because it’s collaboration that has a defined outcome as well, which is fantastic. So the delivery of something that we you know,
we have faith in, that we have trust in; it’s demonstrated its value for us the delivery of something and actually getting the results not just for a trial but for the future for the Yorkshire Water area as well is something that is
A particular highlight what we’ve been doing this past year. Well, Matthew Gibson, Richard Glossop, thank you very much. Thank you. Gentlemen, thank you. All of the technology developers and users have clearly invested stacks of effort into their trials. and it’s clear what the benefits are for the tech developers and we’ve
heard what the drivers and benefits are for the users. For the Trial Reservoir sponsors and supporters however it’s a little different as they don’t benefit directly. We asked two of the reservoirs supporting organizations why they think it’s worthwhile. Investment in collaborative solutions and the ability to enact
change at pace both remain challenges in the water industry and as we face urgent threats to our water security, I believe that the Trial Reservoir provides a vital opportunity for companies to develop solutions within a safe environment and trial new
technologies to tackle our national as well as our global environmental challenges. The Trial Reservoir is addressing two very important areas in the water utility industry. One: that is the constant challenge that is faced by new technologies trying to get adoption in
the water utility industry. So historically the water utility industry has been an industry that where there has been slow adoption and any effort to improve that would in order to the benefit of everyone. The second issue that we’re really excited about
that the trial Reservoir addresses is climate change, which is the biggest challenge facing humankind in our lifetime and we’re glad to be a part of a major effort to try to address this issue within an industry that we work in. So for those reasons, we are really
excited and hopefully we’ll be a long-term supporter of the Trial Reservoir. Thank you, Sarah and Glenn. I love the alignment with your own organizations. Now another continental shift takes us to another finished trial, this time in Africa. Isle’s own Tsitso Mocumi explains.
Hello everyone. Thank you for the opportunity to talk about the eWATERservices trial update. The trial took place in Wellingaraba and Ndemban village in Gambia in West Africa. so Access to piped water at household level remains a challenge and very often the
burden of fetching it and purifying it so that it’s safe for all to use falls disproportionately on women and children, especially young girls. eWATER Pay is a drinking water treatment and distribution technology developed by eWATER Services. The system collects and treats borehole water
using solar energy and the taps are pressurized by gravity. The local technical staff are employed and trained to build and maintain and repair the system which reduces Opex costs. the eWALLET billing and metering system provides consumers with potable water 24/7. Prepayments Smart Tags enable the Smart Taps
to dispense water and deduct credit. The prepaid meters can be recharged in one of the following ways: Firstly through the app. Smartphone uses can buy credit through the eWATER Pay app and top up Tags directly. Secondly, through mobile money end users can
pay by text using a regular phone and pick up credit by touching the Tag on the water dispenser. Thirdly through a remote payment system where the credit can be sent or received through a digital payment system such as PayPal, mPesa, or Mobile Money. This way people can buy
water for clinics and schools and lastly by cash where community members can pay by cash to an approved vendor or water seller who transfers credit directly to a registered Tag. The trial has supplied approximately 1,500 people with water. On average each Smart
Tap has dispensed between 1,500 and 1,700 litres of water daily. The trial has also reduced greenhouse gas emissions by an equivalent of 375 tonnes of carbon dioxide. What we’ve also seen with this trial is the importance of involving the community in the project for instance employing and
transferring skills to the local community members may enhance a sense of responsibility for maintaining services provided through the project which may also improve the sustainability of the project. And so we also spoke to the local staff from eWATERservices to hear what they felt were the
successes of the trial and this is what they had to say about the trial. Hello, my name is Jainaba. I am the accountant of eWATER Gambia and then we are in the village of Ndemban. And then this one is part of our trial taps in Ndemban.
Okay, we have been um visiting we have visited the village today, Ndemban so we were going round having an interview with various people in the community. At first we met with the alkalo (village chief) and then we asked about like the benefits that they are getting from
these taps, that’s the eWATER taps. Yeah, and then he was like with eWATER they are so happy because like the water shortage before eWATER is now removed. They’re now having water 24/7 and any time their taps have problems
it’s like they have 100% assurance that the taps will be fixed within three days. We also spoke to some of the community members to understand how they have been impacted by the trial and this is what they had to say. We have
a lot of peace of mind because of these taps. Since we got it – for now – there are so benefits that we have here. There are no difficulties. Whenever we are around we get our water. …. ….
Whenever we have technical issues with the taps, whenever we call eWATER people they will just send someone to come and fix it. … Um, she said the fact that they have these taps on their compound they are really happy about that because before they go up a long
distance to get water. So it’s clear to see that the Smart Taps are having a profound impact on the well-being of the community and the environment and although the trial has come to an end eWATERServices intends to scale up the project
and just like all the excited community members we look forward to the next phase of the project and we will definitely be keeping a close eye on the project. Thank you. Jo, back to you. Thank you Tsitso. Now we move again but this time to a virtual location
where the technology being piloted is software. I talked to the technology developer and the tech user together to ask each of them about their own perspectives now looking back on the trial that they did together. Hello everyone. I’ll give a quick intro of Transcend and
what we do. We are a generative design software that automates the conceptual engineering and proposal processes. And the goal is to be able to automate early-stage conceptual design and and evaluate a variety of different alternatives. The goal being to be
able to have the best outcomes for the water utilities serving all of us around the world. We aim to put together all the different engineering disciplines from process engineering, mechanical, civil, mechanical, and be able to have an end-to-end product that allows you
all and companies like Xylem to be able to make decisions. The pilot with Xylem was focused on their SBR technology and how we can automate the proposal generation stage. It was a very time-taking process because the team was doing end-to-end from all the way from the beginning
of influent to the effluent and we wanted to see how we can reduce that time so they can have more proposals go out the door and save time for their engineers. Elma over to you, what were the aims for this particular trial from your perspective, the end user’s perspective?
Sure. Hi. Hi everyone. So we at Xylem Innovation Labs explore and assess continuously the external ecosystem to bring new breakthrough technologies on the market quicker and we are also trying to forge those creative alliances across the sector. Transcend’s software is a smart solution that
can play an important role in how Xylem approaches the market and its customers. And although there are many similar solutions that we can find on the market, what captured our attention and why we have at the end decided to start this trial with Transcend’s software is that they
bring very unique and fast approach to the wastewater treatment designs. And while we were working on this trial and we have uncovered many other long-term value propositions to bring innovative, fast and customer-oriented solutions to Xylem globally. So what were the results from the trial? Sahil, over to
you. What are the key takeaways? Absolutely, I would say the biggest one has been the time savings and the standardization. So we were able to reduce the amount of time. It takes to about half the amount of time for the engineers at Xylem and now
they can really spend time on more detailed design and customizing it for the customers rather than spending time doing the copy-pasting and the very complex process calculations and so the really the goal would be to become more customer-oriented as
much as possible. The second part is standardization as Elma mentioned we have you know, they have a very global perspective at Xylem and to be able to have a standard approach in each region is really helpful. So taking all the knowledge from
Xylem and putting it into a software helps them do that. Thank you, Sahil. And as you already mentioned, when we started this pilot together, there was one problem in particular that we were trying to address which is the response time and the way we approach our customers’
requests. To design valid treatment solutions, it requires a lot of engineering time and some of those customized analysis will always be there as every customer has its own specific needs but some of those are standardized activities that we definitely can make automated and
that is where Transcend brings value, offering these automated and well-thought software-based designs that we have proven to be saving a lot of engineering time – almost cut in half. And this is a great success in how we can better serve our
customers and provide timely answers and support. But as I mentioned earlier during this trial and knowing better how Transcend works and what potential other opportunities the software can bring to Xylem, we’re exploring and assessing those such as the ability to run designs for multiple
Xylem technologies offering wider solutions, or even the possibility to integrate the software into other Xylem applications, which of course would also enhance our digital transformation. For us next steps would be to find the best partnership solutions with Transcend around how their
software can play an important role within Xylem platform and how it would be best leveraged across the company’s different regional approaches to water treatment solutions. But we shouldn’t stop here. We should bring Transcend through their own secure platform to external partners and customers and leverage this
Community approach, to create connections among all in the network. Thank you. My thanks to Elma and Sahil who spoke to me jointly, but from completely different parts of the world. This is very fitting for the type of technology that they’re working with.
This global reach of the Reservoir is important and thus so is the diversity of supporters both in terms of geographies and organizations. Here’s what a professional association in Australia and New Zealand and an investment and consulting company in the USA had
to say when I asked them the question: what value does the Trial Reservoir bring to your organization? Well for us at WSAA we’re always excited about the new opportunities on offer through the work of the Trial Reservoir. The process is one which helps to galvanize action and
sets our sights on what is possible. Through new opportunities and different models which benefit the industry as a whole. Learning from others combined with learning by doing are two powerful aspects of driving innovation for the industry. We look forward for what’s to come through
working with the Trial Reservoir. Thank you. My husband and I started Bertzman four years ago as an impact investment fund to invest in emerging enterprises in the water and sanitation space around the world. Last year, we partnered with the Trial Reservoir to
help us evaluate opportunities that come our way and to evaluate the deal flow that comes from the Trial Reservoir in search of investments to have the most impact in water and sanitation around the world. We look forward to an ongoing relationship with Isle
Utilities and the Trial Reservoir. Thank you, Jason. And thank you Linda. Bertzman Social Ventures are one of our most prized sponsors. Now we turn to trials that are ongoing and brand new. Cobalt Water developed the N2O Risk Decision Support System or DSS, which is an artificial intelligence
and machine learning platform for accounting for, reducing, and monitoring N2O emissions from wastewater treatment works. The N2O Risk DSS combines expert knowledge on n2o and machine learning to quantify emissions, optimize the treatment process, and eliminate N2O our emissions. By focusing on an actually reducing N2O
emissions water utilities can effectively lower their greenhouse gas emissions. The N2O Risk DSS also improves process efficiency and stability, which saves utilities money. The technology user in this case – Purecontrol – is an automation company for water management and energy optimization.
This trial is taking place in Rennes Metropole, in France. The goal of this trial is to demonstrate repeatable and scalable results at multiple facilities. First, a historical data analysis is conducted. After that mitigation activities are defined, measurements are initiated, mitigation actions are undertaken, and
the greenhouse gas reduction is measured. If the trial at the first site in Rennes is successful, then Purecontrol will take a multi-site subscription with Cobalt Water. Last week I was able to speak to the people involved in this project at both companies.
I asked them what they’ll be doing for this particular trial and what they hope the immediate and longer-term outcomes of it will be. For this particular trial we’ll be implementing the platform for predicting N2O emissions risk, and recommended dissolved oxygen concentrations, but implemented through Purecontrol’s advanced control
solution platform. And Purecontrol will be incorporating our AI machine learning insights into their platform to control the process and balance water quality, energy, and N2O emissions. Purecontrol intends to implement this in their platform for multiple sites for Rennes Metropole water utility in France.
What we’re trying to achieve through this trial is what we already know we can achieve based on experience, which is reducing N2O emissions by 80 to 90% Therefore we expect significant N2O reduction via Purecontrol’s solution. The reason why the Trial Reservoir makes sense
For this application is because reducing N2O is a new problem and our technology is a new technology. So for water utilities, this is extra risk because it is two things that they have no experience with, however by offering risk-free trials through the Trial Reservoir, the risk is eliminated
Which allows adoption of the innovation and scaling the climate impact that we need for the planet. Here at Purecontrol we developed a real-time control solution based on artificial intelligence to optimize different processes. This has been implemented in hundreds of wastewater treatment plants across
France and primarily targets the optimization of aeration. Our results show stable and compliant efferent quality and significantly reduced energy demand with the reduction of the related greenhouse gas emissions. These are indirect emissions and now we are targeting the direct emissions, starting with the
nitrous oxide which has been shown to account for the majority of carbon footprint of the wastewater treatment plants. With this collaboration with Cobalt Water we are planning to integrate their expertise on N2O modelling. Cobalt Water is developing a decision support system regarding the optimal design oxygen concentration
in the aeration tank to minimize the N2O emissions. So in our current project, we are aiming to integrate this decision support system into our control solution. We started this pilot project in the Trial Reservoir with the largest facility of Rennes Metropole in western France, which is a 350,000 population
equivalent facility, and we plan to extend it to further plants as well. As in the upcoming years the monitoring and the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and increasing energy efficiency is expected in the European Union according to a new proposal of the urban wastewater
treatment directive. Jose and Erika, thank you so much for your perspectives. I’m really looking forward to seeing the results from this trial and finding out what the impact is going to be when it’s scaled out across multiple sites.
We’ll come back to you for a feature next year when the trial has finished. For the last trial showcase today I hand over now to my Isle colleague Denim Southgate and he’s going to introduce the newest trial to join the Reservoir. Thanks Jo. Yes. I’m excited to
tell everyone about a new trial taking place in the African country of Botswana in which the South African tech company Arumloo, developers of the ultra-low flush toilet, and tech user NextGen Waterfree Solutions, have teamed up to begin the initial trial installation of 120 toilets
at an international school in Gaborone. Should the trial be successful, the school will be the first of a network of 70 schools across Botswana intended to have Arumloos installed by 2025. The biomimicry design of Arumloo enables it to flush with less than 2 litres of water as
opposed to the school’s existing conventional flush toilets using between 9 and 12 litres of water. Current water demand will be validated through the installation of a smart meter on the school supply line, followed by submetering installed on a portion
of the new Arumloo toilets to measure total water demand from the toilets themselves. Additionally flush counters will be installed in the toilets to calculate the average flush volume per flush. Through the installation of a total of 600 toilets, with an estimate of 30 users per toilet
each flushing once per day, the Arumloo tech aims to achieve a daily water saving of 126 kilolitres, translating to an annual water saving of 26,460 kilolitres. That’s not all. Taking into account the energy demand of 0.5 kilowatts an hour per kilolitre
of potable water produced and the 0.8 kilograms of CO2 produced per kilowatt hour in Botswana, a whopping 10,584 kilograms of total carbon saving can be achieved per year. I’ll now hand over to Jonny Harris, CEO of Arumloo,
who will tell you a little bit more about this innovative technology and how it’s able to achieve such a significant reduction in water use per flush. Now the design of the Arumloo is very different from conventional toilets, which is why we’ve been
able to save more water and use less per flush without compromising performance. And the challenge with that has been that we’ve had to also work closely with manufacturers to challenge the way that they manufacture in their processes for their design. The low
flush toilet takes its name from the arum lily. This beautiful flower’s got a natural vortex shape, and it’s that vortex shape that we’ve brought both into the form and the function of the Arumloo. The vortex shape of the arum lily is repeated in
nature, whether it’s tornadoes, whether it’s water flowing down a plug hole, and we’ve taken that circular flow path – the path of least resistance – and we’ve brought that shape into the bowl of the toilet for a more effective clearing of waste and we’ve also adopted those circular
flow paths right through the trap, so understanding how nature flows, how water flows naturally, um we’ve got a much more efficient toilet without compromising any performance. Thanks for the insight Jonny. I also had a chance to chat to Louis Mapoka, the founder and
Managing Director of NextGen Water Solutions. Here’s what he had to say about the trial thus far. So far plans are underway to start implementation of the trial period with an identified client, a local primary school, which has experienced alarming water consumption levels. For us we are fairly young
business. And having to undertake the trial through the provision of the Trial Reservoir means that we can get access to a credit facility that will enable us to do the project. We expect the project to kick off during the month of December 2022. We are happy
to have identified the Arumloo toilets, or we are happy to have identified the need for the low flush toilets of Arumloo as a central part of the product offering for water efficiency devices. Thank you so much. Definitely a space worth keeping an eye on as these
water wise innovations begin flushing the more conventional water intensive practices down the drain. Back to you Jo. Thank you, Denim. I’m also looking forward to seeing the results in 2023. But 2022 has been a good year. Since the launch of the Reservoir in late 2021 it’s
been nominated for some water industry awards, and it’s won some, like the Innovation in Decarbonizing category at the WEX Global Awards. By invitation from the World Economic Forum, Piers presented the Reservoir at their summit in Davos in May, and the Reservoir was also presented to, and endorsed by,
the G20 countries’ Finance Ministers in August. It’s been in the news plenty of times throughout the year. But what about 2023 and beyond? Well, hopefully next year will bring us more of the same, but that’s not all we’re aiming for. Whole new Reservoirs are opening up working in parallel
with this one using the same philosophy, but tackling a more diverse range of topics and geographies. Just like this Trial Reservoir it’s going to take a team of great people and organisations to pull them off. The problem with having a visionary, disruptive programme
is that it doesn’t fit very easily into institutional boxes. But here are two absolute champions who are bravely stepping into the new year along with us. We are proud to share that Isle and IDB Lab have joined forces to launch Trial Reservoir in
Brazil. IDB Lab is the innovation laboratory of the Inter-American Development Bank. The purpose of IDB Lab is to drive innovation for inclusion in Latin America and the Caribbean. Why are we launching Trial Reservoir in Brazil? Well, significant limitation persists in the quality, reliability and access of Brazilians
to water and sanitation services. Increasingly intense and frequent extreme climate events add greater uncertainty about the availability of water resources and quality, impeding to close gaps of services. These problems disproportionately affect the poor and vulnerable population who have worse access
to services in terms of quality and cost. The incorporation of new technologies in water and sanitation services will mitigate or solve many of these problems. So what we are specifically proposing in Brazil, the project objective is to accelerate the adoption
and scale of novel tech-based solutions from the region which can help the the water and sanitation sector achieve efficiency and cut their emissions. The technologies to be implemented will have significant effects also on climate change adaptation, reducing water consumption as well
on its mitigation reducing CO2 emissions. The results will continue to expand after the project finalization with the adoption at scale of the solutions by the Brazilian utilities. Stay tuned to hear more about our calls for utilities and startups in the region. Thank you.
Hi, my name is Sivan Zamir. I’m a civil engineer and water entrepreneur based in Los Angeles, California. I also lead Xylem’s corporate innovation team, Xylem Innovation Labs. Our group partners with universities, with startups and technology companies all over the world to help fast track
and scale breakthrough technologies to market. I think we’re all too familiar with the pain point of technology adoption in the water sector being fairly slow. And there’s a lot of reasons for that certainly including water being a very fragmented regulatory-driven market, financial constraints, coupled with an often conservative
customer base and the difficulty to overcome the oftentimes term “piloting value of death” where new technologies get piloted over and over and over again without being adopted at full scale. Wanting to break that cycle is really what drew my team
to participate as a founding sponsor of the Isle Utilities Trial Reservoir, a private revolving loan fund that addresses this particular pain point by acting as a neutral intermediary that will fund pilot projects only as long as the customer agrees that
should certain metrics be met, they’ll adopt it at commercial scale. We’re now a year into working with the Trial Reservoir team and have had a wonderful experience. With this year’s initial focus on decarbonization solutions, we get insight into the breadth of technologies in the ecosystem, regular
easily digestible reports on the ongoing funnel of pilot projects, and in fact we’ve tested a couple of the technologies ourselves and are working on adopting them. The team has been easy to work with, insightful, responsive, and really felt like an extension of our team providing
technical insights and due diligence along with top notch project management. At the beginning we thought well, this is a new funding model that hasn’t been tried; should we participate? And we decided you know what, we ARE an innovation team and
trying new things is exactly what we’re supposed to be doing. So – we’re so bullish in fact on the model that Trial Reservoir has introduced that we’re actually working to start up a new Trial Reservoir that focuses on another area of technology, specifically around advanced industrial treatment.
We’d like other water companies to participate, so that we can try out the mounting number of solutions in that space. We think of partnering on fast-tracking new technologies to market as a rising of the tide that really raises all ships and hope you join us. And with that
thank you so much, and I’ll turn it back over. Thank you, Natalia. And thank you Sivan for your ongoing financial and active support. With friends like these the future looks fantastically exciting. On that note we come to the end of this last Action Platform for the year 2022.
Once again, I thank all of these contributors, our sponsors and partners. Without you, none of this would be possible. For the audience – wherever you are and whatever you’re celebrating over the year end, I hope that you too will have
a chance to reflect and hopefully be satisfied with the year gone by. We’ll be back again right here on the 26th of January. Piers will be back in the driving seat, and we have a brilliant program to start the new year. We’ll hear about some game-changing work on innovative and
transformative participation approaches in rural Zambia, we’ll update you on new trials and whole new Reservoirs and we’re bringing you some surprising new technologies. But until then keep asking questions, keep sharing, and keep safe.