Improving water quality sustainably

By aligning innovation and development initiatives with the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Calix is driven to make an impactful and meaningful contribution to solving global challenges.

We often take access to clean water for granted but the same isn’t necessarily true all over the world. As industrial emissions continue to increase, global warming contributes to worsening drought conditions, and urbanisation proceeds at a rapid pace, maintaining the quality of available water is quickly becoming a significant global challenge.

The United Nations has included clean water and sanitation among its SDGs, indicating its importance on a global scale. According to the UN, millions of people including children die every year from diseases associated with inadequate water supply, sanitation, and hygiene. More than two billion people are living with the risk of reduced access to freshwater resources and, by 2050, at least one in four people will live in a country affected by chronic or recurring shortages of fresh water.

Australia already experiences severe drought on a regular basis in some parts of the country, while other parts have plenty of water. Per person, Australia uses more water than all other countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) except for New Zealand, Canada and the United States.

Without effective and sustainable management of water and wastewater, Australia’s agriculture, mining, and manufacturing industries could suffer.

In helping improve the sustainability of wastewater treatment, Calix can help these industries minimise their environmental impact, protect valuable water sources, and reduce operating costs.

The impact of poor wastewater management is often highly publicised. For example, dying fish in the Darling River showed what happens when high-nutrient run-off from farms creates an environment where blue-green algal blooms form, depleting oxygen and releasing toxins into the water.

Using a solution such as ACTI-Mag can help remediate water and wastewater, reducing or eliminating smells, reducing bluegreen algae, reducing the amount of sludge in the water, and changing the composition of the sludge from anoxic to aerobic.

Prevention includes treating wastewater from industries and farms. This allows the treated water to be recycled which can help cut down fresh water use, with the waste load from the wastewater also convertible into biogas that can be used to produce electricity or heat.Using an anaerobic digestion process, the organic matter in wastewater can be converted into biogas, which is then combusted to produce energy. Businesses can use this energy to offset their own energy costs and feed any excess back into the grid. This saves money and potentially unlocks a new revenue stream.

Managing wastewater is also an increasingly critical challenge for water authorities. As Australia’s sewer system ages and expands, the number of odour complaints and potential health and safety hazards also keep ramping up. As this infrastructure copes with increasing amounts of wastewater, water authorities are looking for safe, cost-effective and environmentally friendly ways to minimise its impact. Like industrial businesses and farms, water authorities can address this challenge while also turning wastewater into energy.

Using ACTI-Mag, water authorities can eliminate odour issues from wastewater, more effectively break down low-density, large-chain fatty acids (which can then be digested by the bacteria in the wastewater), and improve the quality and quantity of biogas created by anaerobic systems.

With cost-effective, environmentally-friendly, and non-toxic solutions available today for industry, farms, and water authorities, it is possible to dramatically improve the way we look at wastewater treatment, because there is only one Earth… Mars is for quitters.