Aug 4, 2020
2 min read
An Epic Raise for Wastewater Management
Epic CleanTec, a startup decentralizing wastewater treatment, just raised a $2.6M seed round. Epic CleanTec helps buildings reduce water demand by up to 90%, saving building owners hundreds of thousands of dollars annually on their water and sewer bills.
Why does this matter?
- Population growth, urbanization, and economic development are contributors to an increase in wastewater generation. By 2050, 70% of the world’s population expected to live in cities and water shortages could affect 5B people. An increase in water demand will require new approaches to wastewater collection and management.
- 80% of wastewater flows back into the ecosystem without being treated or reused, resulting in 1.8B people drinking contaminated water. Additionally, billions of people are affected by a lack of clean water.
- Current centralized wastewater management systems can not keep up with growing cities — they are deteriorating and rely on expensive, energy-intensive processes. On top of that, they don’t do much to recover nutrients and organics they collect.
What’s next?
- It was announced that: “Epic’s systems have already been included in the designs for several planned high-rise development projects throughout the West Coast, with the first coming online at the end of 2020.”
- Deploying Epic CleanTec’s technology will save buildings money, conserve water, and create more sustainable, resilient cities.
- Epic CleanTec sees this as an opportunity to “shift the industry towards a more distributed, circular approach in which our wastewater resources — water, nutrients, energy, and carbon — are recovered and reused.”
- Buildings that use Epic CleanTec for wastewater management will divert wastewater and sewage through city-level systems. If enough buildings shift towards decentralized solutions, cities can avoid costs to renovate or replace infrastructure.
- By integrating a circular economy, both water and organics will be recycled. Turning organic waste into nutrient-rich soil will lower greenhouse emissions, as it will no longer be going to landfill.
This story has been featured in The Impact, an email newsletter that covers the latest news in the renewables and cleantech space. Check it out and subscribe here.
