Geoff Horst has a scientist’s air of geeky restraint. But when the little box arrived at his lab the other day …. Sfx: opening box …he got excited. Inside were vials filled with a stinky paste, like very thick mud…
GH: That’s why they call it sludge.
It’s actually wastewater from a landfill in Ohio.
GH: It literally looks black … like black as Guinness beer. And so we like to tell people that we take it from Guinness to Miller Lite color.
Horst is chief science officer of a start-up developing a new way to treat high strength wastewater. That’s the really concentrated stuff that drains from breweries, ethanol plants, dairies, even meat rendering plants. Traditionally, the tool that’s been used to gobble up the organic material in that wastewater is…
GH: Bacteria. And when we say bacteria, there could be literally thousands of different species of bacteria that do this job.
But Horst says bacteria don’t do as well with nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorous. The kind of nutrients that feed huge algae blooms in Lake Erie and the Gulf of Mexico.
GH: And so the way we were thinking of it is, well if algae can grow really well out in nature on these nutrients coming out, maybe we can control them, and do it in a controlled environment and actually put them to work.
And so Algal Scientific was born. The idea is to treat wastewater with algae that can efficiently do both jobs – break down organic material and tackle extra nutrients. Horst thinks companies that use the system to treat their wastewater on site could pay millions less in fees to large treatment plants.
In general, if you want to hitch your horse to the so-called “clean economy,” waste management is a good place to start. It’s the number one job creator in the sector, according to a new report from the Brookings Institution. Jonathan Rothwell is one of the authors who studied the growth of clean economy jobs from 2003 to 2010. The sector covers a wide swath, from alternative energy to public transportation.
JR: The general trend is that Illinois and Ohio were able to add jobs in the clean economy, whereas Michigan experienced a net loss.
The report found most clean jobs and growth concentrated in large metro areas. Chicago has the third highest number of clean jobs in the nation. And Toledo ranked high in the share of its jobs that belong to the clean economy. But Midwest boosters want the region to capitalize on another finding: More than a quarter of clean economy jobs involve manufacturing … which is much higher than the national average. Jonathan Rothwell says the green economy is largely blue collar.
JR: The industrial Midwest happens to have a lot of these workers and a lot of them are unemployed currently, but they do have a set of skills developed from on the job training.
Sfx: lab processing
Excess manufacturing capacity is just one of the reasons Geoff Horst wants Algal Scientific to grow in Michigan.
GH: We’re in the epicenter of where, you know, some of the world’s largest resources of fresh water are located. And if we can help preserve that natural environment, you know, I’d like my kids to be able to grow up in a pristine environment, and so that’s what I’m trying to do here.
The start-up hopes to add 20 jobs to Michigan’s clean economy in the next three years. But first they’ll have to raise hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of dollars, to survive the so-called “valley of death.” That’s the failure-laden terrain between an innovative demo and full-scale commercialization.
For Changing Gears, I’m Kate Davidson.
