Turning the tide on water pollution: How 'Aquapreneurs' are leading the way

Innovative and impactful solutions are needed to tackle the variety of water pollution every country faces. Image: Amarinthu Sikdar/Unsplash
- 80% of wastewater is untreated globally, leading to 485,000 annual deaths and $260 billion in economic losses, with severe public health risks in every region from PFAS and microplastic contamination.
- Investing in water innovation will be at the forefront of positive change towards more productive and less polluted freshwater systems.
- These 10 pioneering Uplink 'Aquapreneurs' are ready to scale technology solutions and join a rapidly growing innovation ecosystem.
Despite freshwater's critical role in the global economy, 80% of the world's untreated wastewater is released into rivers, lakes, and oceans. This results in approximately 485,000 premature deaths annually and costs the global economy $260 billion every year.
The global challenge of water pollution is well-known. On average, 78% of respondents to a series of Pew Research Center polls across multiple countries view it as a big problem. Yet, contrary to what is commonly assumed, water pollution does not follow the Environmental Kuznets Curve, which witnesses an initial rise and then a fall in environmental degradation as GDP per capita increases. Instead, as GDP per capita increases, water pollution continues to rise, with chemical contamination of freshwater sources being especially prominent across industrialised economies.
How UpLink is powering water innovation
The pervasiveness of microparticle contamination of freshwater across advanced economies poses a significant long-term public health concern. In the United States, the CDC estimates that 98% of the country’s population has detectable levels of per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), commonly referred to as ‘forever chemicals’, in their bloodstream from contaminated drinking water. Additionally, across Europe, nearly 23,000 sites are contaminated by PFAS.
PFAS are a group of synthetic chemicals used in many household products and industrial processes that are very difficult to break down. They have been linked to an increased risk of cancers, weakened immune systems and endocrine disruption. In the European Economic Area (EEA), this adds an estimated cost of €52-€84 billion to healthcare systems.
Similarly concerning data has been collected on microplastic contamination of freshwater sources, including in regions associated with dependable water infrastructure. A 2017 study found that 72% of tap water collected from samples in Europe was contaminated with synthetic polymers. Once ingested, microplastics have been linked with inflammatory responses and neurological problems.
Key stakeholders across global society must drive positive solutions to tackle water pollution to reduce avoidable deaths and address growing public health risks. Additionally, every $1 invested in wastewater infrastructure offers an estimated economic gain of $4.3. Increasing the deployment of innovations to address water pollution challenges offers co-benefits to improve public health while spurring economic growth and increased labour demand.
The UpLink Tackling Water Pollution Challenge
In the intelligent age, as converging technologies reshape global society, innovation will be at the forefront of positive change towards more productive and less polluted freshwater systems.
Through a five-year collaboration, UpLink and HCL Group's Aquapreneur Innovation Initiative, with support from the World Economic Forum's Centre for Nature and Climate's water initiatives, is unlocking the potential of early-stage innovation by creating an ecosystem to empower 'Aquapreneurs' to scale breakthrough technologies that can transform water management. By enabling partnerships, driving investment, enabling regulations and supporting these solutions, stakeholders can not only mitigate risks but also capitalize on water's value as a motor of climate resilience, sustainable development, and economic progress.
As part of this initiative, UpLink ran the Tackling Water Pollution Challenge to raise awareness of the early-stage water innovation ecosystem and elevate the most scalable solutions across the sector. The challenge received 273 submissions globally and identified 10 high-potential start-ups, termed Top Innovators, or Aquapreneurs, selected to join the UpLink Innovation Ecosystem.
The winners of the challenge have developed various solutions to tackle water pollution. To learn more about all 10 challenge winners, visit The UpLink challenge page.
What is the Forum doing to address the global water challenge?
Realtime monitoring of water pollution
Despite the public health concerns about PFAS contamination, traditional approaches to PFAS monitoring rely on expensive, cumbersome technologies that can take weeks to months to deliver results from samples collected. These restrictions inhibit municipalities and industrial water users from testing for PFAS contamination. Without adequate and timely PFAS testing of water sources, populations are often unknowingly exposed to potentially dangerous levels of synthetic chemicals and the associated public health risks.
Top Innovator and challenge winner FREDsense, a start-up based in Calgary, Canada, has developed a technology to address these challenges. FREDsense’s field kit is a portable, real-time solution for measuring PFAS in water. The company has combined a novel polymer with a fluorescence-based output into a single portable unit that can deliver PFAS measurements from multiple samples in the field. This drastically reduces wait time for PFAS measurement from up to 16 weeks in a lab for traditional techniques to a matter of hours, all delivered on-site.
The dramatic reduction in the time it takes to analyse PFAS contamination, combined with the cost-savings and portability of FREDsense’s kits, allows municipalities, industrial water users, and environmental consultants to collect the information they need to test water sources and protect public health more rapidly and expansively.
What's the World Economic Forum doing about the ocean?
Tackling water pollution from industrial sources
Accurately and expansively detecting PFAS is only part of the problem. Composed of strong carbon-fluorine chemical bonds, PFAS are highly resistant to natural degradation - it can take well over 1000 years for certain PFAS to biodegrade. Industrial wastewater from chemical and semiconductor manufacturing facilities, for example, is among the more prominent sources of PFAS contamination.
Top Innovator Aquagga, a start-up from Tacoma, USA, has developed a novel process for PFAS destruction at source. Their proprietary hydrothermal alkaline treatment (HALT) technology can destroy short and long-chain PFAS compounds without producing toxic byproducts. The technology can also treat PFAS-contaminated water through a continuous flow (as opposed to a batch) process. This facilitates its interoperability with existing industrial production processes.
As regulations to prevent PFAS contamination are coming into effect, Aquagga’s HALT technology provides a solution for industrial manufacturers looking to reduce the negative externalities of their production processes on public water sources and reduce population exposure levels to PFAS.
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A household solution to water pollution
Alongside industrial processes, households are also major contributors to water pollution. Of the 1.5 million tons of microplastics that enter the world's oceans annually, 16-35% originate from synthetic textiles. Much of these microplastics are released during household laundry cycles, as the effluent from clothes washing is released into public wastewater systems. Conventional wastewater treatment plants remove 80-95% of microplastics. Once removed, microplastics are included in sludge, which may be used on agricultural land. Doing so releases these microplastics into the environment.
Top Innovator Mimbly, a start-up from Gothenburg, Sweden, has created a simple solution to reduce microplastic pollution during the laundry cycle. Mimbly’s “Mimbox” is an add-on device for washing machines that contains a patented self-cleaning filtering technology. The Mimbox captures microplastics released from clothing while it is being washed, preventing them from entering public wastewater systems. It also offers cost savings for users by reducing washing machine water consumption by up to 70% and decreasing energy consumption by up to 30%.
Alongside reducing microplastic pollution and cost savings, the Mimbox is equipped with sensors that collect diagnostic data to improve washing machine maintenance and increase the longevity of the appliances.
Innovative and impactful solutions are needed to tackle the variety of water pollution every country faces. With the introduction of the 10 Tackling Water Pollution challenge winners, the UpLink water innovation ecosystem now includes 30 pioneering Aquapreneurs.
Join the conversation by exploring UpLink’s initiatives and supporting these groundbreaking solutions here.
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