Hi. This is Paul Zellizer, and welcome to the Awarepreneurs podcast. On this show, we dive deep into wisdom from some of the world's leading social entrepreneurs. Our goal is to help increase your positive impact, your profitability, and your quality of life. Before we get into today's topic, I have one request. If you could hit subscribe and do a review on your favorite podcast app, it helps more people learn how to have positive impact through a values based business. Thank you so much. Today, I'm really excited to introduce you to Ben Schultz, and our topic is water innovation rising out of the desert.

Ben Schultz is a dedicated product marketing manager at AquaMembranes, where he combines his background in environmental planning and design with strong relationship building and event planning skills to drive innovative water treatment and provide clear messaging to customers and investors alike. Having started as a production technician, Ben quickly demonstrated his ability to adapt and excel, gaining hands on experience in membrane technology and design that led him to his current role. Today, he collaborates closely with engineers, researchers, and customers to understand their needs and deliver products, meet high standards and expectations, Driven by a commitment to providing clear and sustainable water for all, Ben actively supports Aquamarine's mission to be a leader in the industry. And just a side note, a shout out, wanna say thanks to Christian Slough for suggesting this interview. Ben, welcome to Awapreneurs.

Thanks for having me. I'm excited to to have the conversation and rep the desert well.

Right. We were just chatting before we hit record and said New Mexico is representing as the state with the least surface water in The United States. Thanks to my son for that stat. So no surprise that there's a strong New Mexico connection for aquamarine. So give us a little bit of sense, like, your journey with water and why you think water innovation is so important, Ben.

I think my my journey with with water starts with my childhood. I moved I've lived to West Texas for the early part of my life and then moved to Albuquerque when I was young. And one of the things that sticks out about Albuquerque that everyone talks about is that there's no lawns. All the landscaping is rocks. And I just have always remembered growing up the commercials about water by elephants and when not to water and how we need to conserve water. And that's when my fascination with water started, really. And so as a kid, I was always noticing, you know, drip irrigation. I wanted to know how that worked.

And then it grew and grew until I was in high school and learned more about why we have less water, the how we're getting our water in the city. And then into college, I did tours of both treatment plants and did a lot of work around working with communities on the acequias and became fascinated with how wastewater the water treatment plant here in town works. So and then into my I did not expect to be in this role, for sure, but I think it actually fits you know, sometimes life just puts you in places you need to be, and I think it's one of those.

Yep. Now come on. It's not totally fair. We have more than rocks in our landscaping. We have cactus. Come on, man. We have cactus and rocks. Right? And a lot of dirt.

A lot of dirt.

Yes. A lot of dirt. And don't get me wrong. I have recently discovered how cool dirt is. So sometimes people ask me what I think is I think dirt and rocks dirt, rocks, and water are cool, and people are very dumbfounded

by that sometimes. So just to give us a little bit of a time frame, when did Aqua Membranes start, and when did you join the team?

Aqua Membranes, the idea started twenty plus years ago with our founder. The technology really started to take off probably back in 2018, and I started Aqua Membranes back in 2020. The original conception was in our founder's garage, and when they started trying to build the technology in the reverse osmosis membranes. But in 2017 is whenever we moved into the the facility that we're here in Albuquerque and started doing more larger scale research and kind of the the real work not the real work. I don't wanna say that, but the more recognizable aquamembranes was was developed was put together. And then, yeah, I started in 2020 doing testing very early on, testing different print patterns, testing different membrane sheets, learning about different rates and all that science that goes into our technology.

So all you social entrepreneurs who are listening and you're, like, fiddling with stuff and inventing stuff in your garage or your basement we don't really have basements in New Mexico. But some of you have basements, right, or your attic or, you know, the science lab that you have access to after hours, we see you, and here's a story that might be particularly relevant to you. Yeah.

What I was gonna say with that, the first iterations of our product, our founder, something that is very that he has that I think has just been super beneficial to Aqua Membrane success is the willingness to have an idea and to go go for it. Whenever I was told by some of the early members of the company, they said when they first started, they had an idea of how reverse osmosis elements were rolled, membranes, but there was no formula. They made things themselves. They they they solved problems and just didn't take no for an answer. And that's really inspired me as well. So for the social entrepreneurs, like you said, I think that's a great a great thing to learn.

Such a great story. So we're not at engineering or technical show, but a little bit about how the actual technology works, I think that would help our listeners, Ben. When I think of Yeah. Reverse osmosis, I think I like that's what a lot of people have for treating the water that they drink. Like, it comes out of the faucet, and if you live in the desert, we might, you know, we have very alkaline water in New Mexico, and there's a lot of heavy minerals in it. So there it's like something you do, you run your water through that you're gonna drink, and maybe if you have more money, the rest of your house, but most cases not. It's like one little place in your house goes through reverse osmosis. But you all are doing this at a scale that most people aren't used to.

What is reverse osmosis? And what's the innovation that AquaMembranes is doing with reverse osmosis that you can't buy at Home Depot?

Yeah. Our innovation, most people know about reverse osmosis, and they hear, like you said, is the home unit, which we certainly can do, but that's not our our our focus. Or they hear about desalinating seawater. That's another big one that most people know. What we do is seawater is certainly somewhere we could go and large scale. But our technology, what it is is reverse osmosis, the piece that does the separating of the salts from the water, has largely been unchanged in the element that we change in it. So enter the each one of those, there's a piece of membrane. There's a piece of permeate carrier or clean water carrier that takes it out, and there's a spacer to keep the membrane sheets apart.

That spacer is the only aspect of that construction that's never really been changed. It's always been this mesh that you would get, like, when you have a bag of oranges. And that mesh is what separates the sheets. What we do is instead of using a mesh that separates the sheets, we put in our we use large scale printers, and we print features directly on the membrane piece that does the separation to keep them separated. What that does is it creates an easier pathway for water to flow through. And by doing that, we can improve the operation of these reverse osmosis membranes to save energy and improve the production and make more water, Make more clean water.

More clean water in the desert. I'm hearing a theme here, Ved. I'm hearing a theme. So hold that thought. We're gonna come back to that in a second, but let's widen back a little bit. And let's just talk about water infrastructure in general, And why is it so important to innovate around water, especially as we're on a warming planet, we're seeing more desertification. Did I say that word right? Desertification. I don't know.

I think yes.

We're not talking ice cream. We're talking like the Sahara getting bigger and trying to stop that. Right? Why is it so important to innovate water right now?

I think right now, more than ever, it goes hand in hand with the issues we're seeing with climate change. As the climate changes, weather patterns are changing. The amount of precipitation places are getting is is affecting the water resources that go into every we do day to day. Not only the water that comes out of your tap, but the water that goes into production of things. We're we're producing more things than ever, and to produce those things, water is needed to make them. Best example of it is the chip industry, semiconductors, AI with data centers, agriculture are all massive users of water as well as people. And, yes, there's there's a lot of water infrastructure that goes into the water that comes out of people's taps, but also the largest users of water are industry. And so industry specific stuff is really the focus on being more responsible, taking water stewardship seriously is very important aspect of almost all manufacturing that we're seeing now.

Yeah. And and one of the questions you encourage me to ask, Ben, like, why should water be considered in almost any business? Like, whether you're making cars, making chips, growing food, or even if it's a manufacturing plant, water's involved somehow, and you had a lot of good thoughts about that. How does that work? Maybe pick an example and explain how water might factor into a business, and why should a business be or why would a business wanna pay attention to their water usage?

It's a responsibility on that we feel as ours that it also is to these businesses to make sure that they are treating their water effectively for the people downstream as well as they're making sure that they are doing well for the communities around them. And for example, the semiconductor industry here in Albuquerque, we do have the Intel plant. In Arizona, they have other semiconductor plants. And it one, the reason our worlds and why we are so able to be so connected is because of these industries' semiconductors. The innovation that we've seen in the last sixty years is due to computing. And so it just takes water to make those things. And we're we in a lot of places like the desert or even in places with lots of water, they're getting their water from groundwater and surface water. And so if they're not being responsible with those things, they are negatively affecting the communities around them.

And those there's been I think those are some of the best in industries for innovation in water too. They're looking one of our investors, Micron Technology, that's why they that's why they came to us is they said, hey. We we are we're taking on new water technologies. And not only are we looking at how much clean water we're producing, but we're looking at the emissions and the energy efficiency of how we're doing that. So they're looking at their carbon emissions as well as can we treat our water better with aquamembranes and be more responsible with that. So I think if if industries and semiconductors, for example, are not taking into account that they can be taking away from the people around them. And also their municipalities are becoming stricter on their regulation around how much water these industries can take. A great example is the automotive industry in Germany.

They Tesla went to put a plant there, and the people in that community said, hey, what's your water plan? That's the first thing. Water is life. Water is industry. Water is everything. So and Tesla had to come to them. Don't know what happened after that. Follow-up in the story, but I knew that or maybe they're still in the talks. But, you know, it's it's water is the, I think, step one to everything.

Absolutely. And I've been in New Mexico since 1993. And when I got here in the, you know, let's say the late nineties or the early two thousands, the Rio Grande, the big river, it's literally the biggest water feature in New Mexico, had water in it all year round. Like, there was never a time there wasn't at least some not never. Very, very rarely was there Yeah. Not water in the Rio Grande. Now it's common to go through long periods of the summer with no water in the Rio Grande, which has a massive impact both on the quality of life. I remember when it used to be hot.

You know? At one point

Oh, yeah.

I used to live in Northern New Mexico on a little farm. And when my son was little and it was hot, you went swimming in the Rio Grande, but you can't swim where there's no water. Right? So there's quality of life issues, but also we're talking about communities having access to water. We're also talking about wildlife. Right? So in so many ways. So there's a quality of life and just a sense of culture and community in New Mexico. The Rio Grande is our biggest water feature, as well as just the cost of water is going through the roof if you tracked what water cost. But I got to New Mexico in 1993, and we're recording this at the end of twenty twenty four, the cost of water has gone up exponentially and is likely to continue on that trajectory.

So if you're a business and you care about what the community thinks of you and you have a very high usage of water, hopefully, that community is gonna give you flack. They should be giving you flack. And if you are a business and you care about your expenses side note, if you're a business and you don't care about your expenses, you're not gonna be a business for very long. You should be paying attention to water. So there's there's both financial reasons, and those financial reasons are accelerating. But there's also your community and the sense of how people in the marketplace conceive of your business. If you're not paying attention to these issues, you're more likely to get caught flat footed or really have a very difficult PR circumstances on your hands if you don't pay attention to water. Is is that fair to say that?

100%. We a lot of our customers, whenever we talk to them, they're working they're they're looking at many different technologies and things to try to improve their water treatment because there is this sense of responsibility from the consumer that is put on them. We're talking with a lot of industrial clients is what we do a lot now, as well as a few municipalities. But the improvement on water technology is coming from the consumer and just a need. If these if these companies aren't continuing to improve their water goals, their water resources, really stick to their plans, they don't have anything to make their products with.

Exactly.

And that's what we when we talk with the people about it, that's one of the things is this isn't just a carbon emissions, energy saving. This is making sure that you have water to be able to continue to make things with and that you're planning for the future. So

Yeah. And

it's just good for community.

Yeah. And and and, you know, we're in the Southwest. There are similar situations, but let's just for a moment say hi to Phoenix, Arizona. Right? We've got this massive growth in the middle of a not even the high desert, but a low desert. Right? And there's an existential water crisis. Like, how does the city of Phoenix get water to that many humans, that much industry with that kind of growth in a warming climate? There are certain people who are trapped. Now now Phoenix has a water officer, a % full time person that's just trying to make sense of this because that's a very complicated picture. And if they can't figure it out, there are some concerns that they're asking the question, can life in Phoenix continue or at least at this population? They're they're growing, but they're not even sure they can maintain the population they have because of water.

And that is in some ways a more, you know, extreme example, but our whole planet is heading in that direction. They just got a front row seat to the complexity.

They definitely did. Yeah. Well, I think it's kind of like that they're seeing the complexity, and I think the world has become I I always think of when especially Phoenix and Albuquerque, the movie Dune.

Yeah. That's a good question. A good reference. Yeah.

Yeah. We we we are turning we partially are turning into the Fremen, where you have these still suits in in Phoenix. No drop of water can go unaccounted for.

Yeah.

Like, whenever you have these even in in household homes, I foresee a future where right now your waste goes to the wastewater treatment plant. So you flush the toilet, it goes to the wastewater treatment plant. The same water from that goes on your shower drain goes to the wastewater treatment plant. I could see a future where the water that comes from your shower and comes from your washing machine and your dishwasher is put into some unit that sits on the outside of your house and then is reused again. And even the water that comes from your sewer, that we're taking all of that and reusing it back in the house to be as, you know, maybe some of it goes to landscaping. Or there's so many ways that people in industry can repurpose water even if it's not for drinking. But I think it's just going to become more of the future.

Do Do you know anybody who makes a membrane that could go in a unit like that?

Maybe.

You might. You might have some conductions. Alright. So let's let's unpack a little bit the AQUAM membrane's journey. So so I think our listeners have a sense of the big picture and why this is important, Ben. So started, like, twenty plus years ago with an idea, but 2018, this started turning into a physical product. Right? So give us an example. Like like, what did it look like in 2018? Like, you start your founders, like, experimenting in the garage and making some early iterations.

Like, what did those early units look like? And what was some of the early funding that allowed the company to start to go from a concept to a real startup?

So, yeah, the the in the early stages, whenever Craig Beckman, our CEO, joined the company, he did a they did an early raise, and it was with a some clean energy companies really focusing on the idea of this product can save energy, last longer, waste less water, all the things we've been talking about. And those early early stages, it was very different than it is now. There was a lot of testing on smaller units, trying to figure out the best way to

smaller. Are we talking, like, a laptop size? Like, what what are we talking?

Yeah. Home unit. Like, the size of a homing bin.

Okay. So, like, something I have I have a water filter that literally sits under my sink, something you know, I don't know. It's probably it's round. Maybe it's, like, 10 inches round and, 18 inches tall, something like that.

Ex exactly. Yeah. Like, we we did something that would go under your sink. A lot of there's testing on that, but also some early prototyping in larger scale. So four inch by 40 inches long is the industry term. So forty forty with partners where they manufactured and tested them in their facilities to kind of get that proof point. And even from the beginning, things were never perfect in the begin they the expectation probably is not that it should be perfect first go.

It's totally perfect now, but it wasn't perfect six years ago. Right?

If if anyone's listening and you get a perfect first shot, great

for you.

You have a you are

333 353 episodes. We haven't found that person yet then, but I'll let you know when we do. Yes.

When you do, let me know because I'm

gonna send them. Yeah.

I'll I'll I wanna talk to them.

So Right? Exactly. What happened there? That's a weird scenario. Right?

Yeah. Exactly. But so the yeah. We did a lot of testing on those early and got some really good promising results. And that's whenever we went That was probably there's a few years of getting that figured out of what print process is working best, getting initial results, going over them as a team. And then once we kind of had something that was as good, we we had some other partners here in the University of New Mexico. We have a case study on our website. Our longest running full scale installation is at their, for the boiler feed water we're treating there.

And we were able to get our kind of I don't wanna say minimum viable product. That was, you know, the first real push out there. And do it locally here in New Mexico, which is really, really awesome.

So you and them are one of your early customers. And, like, those early years, like, how many units were selling when you first went to market?

When we first went to market, it was very strategic. Our goal, I was more so finds like UNM. They were cooperative. It was close. We could get good information on questions we had to ask. And from from there with other customers, it was kind of the same thing. Your traditional or a lot of people say it's like, okay. If someone wants to buy it, get it to them.

But which we would kind of do, but we we had a lot of questions. We wanted to make sure that whatever these got put in with the customer, we wanted to make sure that we were learning as much about it in in the market as possible. And so yeah. The sales were more specific. It wasn't we we were going to market, but it was targeted, I would say, to making sure it was the right type of person or partner customer that was also kind of a partner with us to be able to help us develop the technology even further.

Love that. Customer partner. I love that language and just how intentional. Like, a lot of early stage startups are in a rush to sell. And I understand why they're trying to survive, but, also, they miss an opportunity that just that frame, customer slash partner I wrote down, man. I love that frame and how diligent you all were about getting good data. Because if you can get the good data early, then you can get that hockey stick growth in a way that if it's sloppy or you don't have good data, you're, like, setting yourself up for all kinds of friction, like raising future rounds and not having good science to be able to answer questions or help deal with objections. It just sounds like you are really smart in that, and I'm I just wanna highlight that

for our listeners. Yeah. No. Thanks. I and it it's we I read a book called The Lean Startup.

One of my favorite books. Yeah.

And it kinda goes along with, like, one of those principles where the way that in tech maybe you can put a product out and get a lot of information from your customers easily. Our industry, it's a bit different. You know? It's these are people. These are industrial sites, operators. You have to really find that right customer partnership to be able to get the data back from people. So we take a little bit of it and then make sure we understand our customers in our industry. And I think being able to do that is is super we've done that with a number of our customers now just to make sure that and as we're ramping up, we're definitely growth stage now. It's harder to do, but the earliest especially whenever you're trying to get that flywheel moving and get things going, it helps have really good partnerships.

And now they're, you know, great customer use case, and they love our stuff, and they're able to talk to it really well.

Cool. So, listeners, I'll put a link to the lean startup. It is one of the books I top three books I've recommended to clients of all time. So I will put that in the show notes gladly. Let's do this. I wanna hear more about that growth stage, Ben. Everybody wants to get to growth stage. But before we do that, I just wanna take a quick break and hear a word from our sponsor.

Are you passionate about making a difference but feeling stuck on how to take your mission driven business to the next level? You don't need a lengthy coaching program. You need targeted advice from someone who understands the unique challenges that social entrepreneurs face. With my strategy session package, we'll focus on your most pressing decisions, whether it's clarifying your value proposition, optimizing your marketing strategy, launching a new product or service, or adjusting your pricing to align with your mission. These sessions are perfect when you know the direction you wanna go, but you need someone with the experience to help you get there. If you're ready to unlock your potential and amplify your impact, book your strategy session now. The link is in the show notes. Welcome back, everybody. I'm here with Ben Schultz, and we're talking about water innovation rising out of the desert.

And as promised before the break, we were talking about your early start up journey, Ben. But let's talk about what it looks like now. So you were describing, like, 2018, '20 '19, you know, being very intentional going to market, not rushing for scale, but finding customer partners, getting really good data so you could understand what was happening and build a really good story. Now you're in a pretty different phase. Tell us what does Aquaman brains look like now. Like, what's your team size? What does it look like in terms of number of units sold? All that good, you know, data that people want when they're dedicated entrepreneurs.

Yeah. So we're the much different so we just raised our series b.

Congratulations. I was reading that on your website. Congrats.

Yeah. Thanks. Yeah. It's it's a shout out to our CEO, Craig Beckman. It's no it's no easy feat to raise a series b.

Back in 2024, it was not an easy year to raise. Yeah.

Yeah. No. Definitely not. Which shows I mean, he's got a lot of experience. And so, yeah, having some, you know, some of the experience definitely helps. But, yeah, we raised that money and we're doing it to build a new manufacturing facility. The facility in Albuquerque here is still gonna be kind of the headquarters for and do we have a lot of work coming out of Albuquerque that just and that facility now in Tennessee, until Tennessee is going to be our big manufacturing facility. So we're looking to really hockey stick up the manufacturing and start putting units out more at scale.

And how many units are, like, end of twenty twenty four? Give us some sense of the units now. And once that capacity that added capacity with the new factory in Tennessee, what what what do you think we're looking at in terms of yearly units?

So the goal for the Tennessee facility, I'm pretty sure the number is to get up to the next few years, ten thousand membranes a year.

Right. I believe big are the units now? You said before four four by 40. Is it still in that range?

No. So we do some four by 40 sales, certainly. Mostly, it's eight it's $80.40 sales now. $80.40. Okay. So that's eight inches in diameter by 40 inches long. And then for for reference, like, the the system at the University of New Mexico, I think, has, I don't know, thirty, twenty four membranes. I have to go look at the it's been a while since I've looked at that unit, that system.

But most a lot of systems for what's a good industry for, say, your your beverage the a place that's beverage bottling, they all have some kind of membrane filtration in them, and they're gonna have on-site 400, a thousand.

Oh, wow.

In in some cases, even more. Or even at the the semiconductor facilities, they've got thousands of of units per location. So it's definitely I it's kinda like the hidden it's the hidden thing people I bet if you don't know what it is, walk right by it. But and then seawater desalination, there are plants all over the world that are making seawater, and they're doing tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of membranes in single places, making millions of gallons of water a day.

So the the new factor in Tennessee in some ways is still just a drop in a bucket of what's potential the marketplace for aquamembranes. Is that fair to say?

Partially. And I yes. Definitely, on a on a large scale. And the thing is is we are we're not gonna take over the whole desalination market. There are so many huge companies. They're they're they're doing part of that. I think part of what the the facility here is, we're meeting a large part of the market that's gonna be able to see the value and the technology for in the printed spacers that aquamembranes has. But we certainly are not like seawater desalination is not our our target market right now.

We know where our product fits at the moment, and I think that it's really been tempting for us to take go wanna do everything whenever maybe, you know, at some point we'll get there, but right now we're kinda starting to walk before we run a little bit. And the the facility in Knoxville, that's only partial it's a 200,000 square foot facility. Go check it there. I have a great YouTube video on my LinkedIn profile.

I watched it getting ready for this. It's awesome. I will put a link to the YouTube video that gives a little bit of a tour and a sense of scale of that facility. Congratulations.

Yeah. No. Thank you. Yeah. So you can see in the size that there's a lot to fill up, and we definitely we've got some good stuff in the pipeline where we're really excited to grow into that space for sure.

In doing my research, Ben, one of the things I noticed is you all won an award this year. It is a breakthrough technology company award of 2024. What now that you're six or eight years into, like, a viable product that people are using starting at increasing levels of scale and you're winning awards, like, what are those awards for? And how is the product now, however many iterations down the road we're talking about, like, what is it doing now that it didn't used to do, and why is the marketplace saying, pay attention. This is very cool stuff and giving you awards for it.

Yeah. I think so in the that award is done through Global Water Intelligence. It's the name of the company publication that does that. They keep track of a lot of of desalination treatment plants, water treatment plants. They're very in in our industry, very big as far as keeping everybody in the know. They have a conference called Ultrafacility that's now focusing on water and semiconductor specifically because they know how they're they know how important it is, and they're trying to bring people together to be able to find new technologies to improve that. And I the the award for for this, we to get nominated for was you have to have, you know, some kind of new technology that's making a step change to save water. What makes us unique for this and why we, you know, why I think we won is because nobody has there's never been somebody who's attacked the spacer in between those membrane sheets like reverse osmosis.

There's been many, many changes to the actual chemistry of the the membrane piece of paper. Over the time that it started, they've actually made massive improvements to the desalination used to be vastly at any scale, more energy intensive, less productive, and the chemistry has come a long way. But we're the first people to really go away from that interlaced mesh. And just that simple change and it's seen as kind of a what we think, obviously, at AquaMembranes, but from other people as well by getting this award, that we've got something that could really continue to push the the specific technology even further.

And and the two things that keep coming up in the innovation as I was doing my homework and I'm hearing you I'm I'm listening to you talk then. One is the amount of water that you can extract through the process. So, like, let's say, let's use a washing machine or whatever process, beverage you're, you know, doing, well, a lot of recycling glass, for instance, uses quite a bit of water. I know that for a fact. Right? So let's use let's stay with the home scale for our listeners to wrap their brain. Right? So you have a washing machine in your house, and there's that water. It comes out. You it it's like you squeeze more usable water out of the process so that every drop counts.

Give us a and the same thing with energy. Those are the two like, the amount of water that is stays in the loop and the amount of energy you use or the less energy you use. But can you give us some sense? Is it like a 2% difference, or is it 200%? Like, Like, how much of a difference are we talking about in those two buckets? The amount of water that can continue to be used, whether it's irrigation or wash your clothes again, and the amount of energy it takes, give our listeners some sense of, like, what this innovation means in the real world.

Yeah. In the real world so if we take a washing machine, for example, most of the time, you have a the dirty you're you're gonna put water in, it's gonna be dirty. So you have an amount of dirty water that needs to be treated. The difference between reverse osmosis way of cleaning water versus a filter. A regular filter is water is gonna move through it. Whatever's inside of there is going to capture the dirty particles and keep them inside of the filter. Like, even your fridge, whenever you have, you know, your fridge filter. You have to change it every so often because what's that media inside of it gets dirty from all the things passing through it.

But you have one clean stream that comes out, and that's it. It just takes everything out, the whole stream of water. Reverse osmosis has essentially separation. So it separates dirty water into two streams. One clean water stream and then one dirtier, more concentrated water stream. And so the problem there's two big problems with reverse osmosis that a lot of people generally talk about. It's it's highly energy intensive, which we brought up a few times. And then it also has that waste stream that you wanna be able to limit as much as possible.

Because in this in sea in the ocean, there's ways to dispose of it back into the ocean that are responsible, and you can just put it back into the sea. Whenever you're somewhere else, that's either gonna go down the drain, or if you're a manufacturing plant, if it gets above a certain level, you have to make you have to make sure it's clean enough to go to the wastewater treatment or it has to be treated there. So that's a and that normally, they pay for that. And it depends, but a lot in most cases. So what Aqua Membranes innovation really helps do is, one, that first that energy question in another case study with our one of our investors in Micron Technologies. We helps cut their energy by 30% on their recovery RO system. Nice. What they're what the recovery RO is, we're they're taking that dirty stream from the inlet of their plant, and they're taking that dirty water, and they're treating that dirty water again to squeeze as much out.

And in that process, we save their even dirtier water 30% of the energy there.

Nice.

And we saw that the product, the membranes inside, lasted longer than industry standard products.

Very cool. Okay.

And then also on the the sense of what are you gonna do with that dirty water stream, we can help with our technology by being able to fit more of the membrane cleaning inside of each one of our modules. So by doing that, we can make more water essentially from that dirty water stream and suck even more clean and concentrate that dirty water further. There's definitely and we're not doing this right now, but there's definitely improvement. And if you any of you listeners wanna really get into the science of it, there's a thing called zero liquid discharge, which is very hard to get to. It's essentially whenever you concentrate that dirty water stream up so much that instead of being, like, just dirty water, it turns into, like, kind of a slurry, and then they pull all the water out of it. And then it all the bad stuff is dried up and just smoke stuff. That's very hard to do, very expensive. But that's what a lot of people are trying to do because everyone wants to be like the Fremen and pull every last drop out.

Got it. So I know if, as a homeowner, if somebody came to me and said we can help cut your energy bills by 30%, and the thing that we have to do this thing will last longer than the thing that you're currently using. I would not I'd be not I I wouldn't be mad about that, Ben. That that sounds like a pretty good deal. I can imagine why you all have grown so quickly. That's awesome. Yeah. So What Go ahead.

Oh, no. And I wanted to I wanted to say with that benefit, it it goes to show why with our customers it's it's it's very beneficial. And then also, I think it's great to point out that with our customers, they're kinda like risk averse. Like, we're we're we're putting this to them. And it's been very encouraging for me entering in the industry to see people be excited by innovation, and then also very dedicated to making sure everything's perfect. So whenever you say that, it's one of like, all the operators of the plants, they wanna know everything about what we do. They wanna know everything about quality and being able to do what we've done. They've embraced it really well, but just shout out to industry people for really caring.

That's been one of my favorite parts about seeing the water industries. They care a lot.

Having done this quite a bit, again, 350 something episodes, I know that when a social enterprise finds a good relationship with their customer when they're doing it right, if you wanna put right in quotes Mhmm. Their customers become some of their best advocates. They tell, you know, you have an engineer in one water, you know, that that the the people who are doing water at Intel become the marketing brand and tell other chipmakers that you need to talk to Aqua Membranes. That's how you know you're doing it right. Is that fair to say that?

100%. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. No. And and that's that's what it is, you know. Our some of our and it's even started to become the case. There's a we've got a great inter I I've done some great interviews with the people at Micron on our YouTube channel as well as I have another one coming out probably when this podcast is out.

Just talking with our customers and, yeah, like you said, they're they're kind of the best advocates in marketing as well.

That's that's great. So again, we'll put a link to the YouTube channel so you can go check that out, listener. So one of the questions I have for you, Ben, is about ESG. It stands for environmental social governance, and it's something you all take very seriously. It's baked into what you're doing. So first of all, the fur this is a two part question. One, tell us about how ESG like, how AlcoMembranes thinks about ESG. And then the following question is, how much of is that, like, front and center, something you're leading with? And how much of that is something that's a little bit more behind the scenes? You're having conversations among your team, but it's not something you lead that much in the marketplace.

You let the product and the results speak and the ESG is you get the benefits of the ESG, but you're not marketing it so much, if that makes any sense. Mhmm.

No. I definitely so what ESG means to aquamembranes is I think that ESG is partially sustainability, partially recycling, partially and then, you know, environment sustainability governance, I believe, is the ESG acronym. But and so we look at it as kind of like our our product is helping meet a few of those goals in many different ways. And but that we're doing that through innovation, and we're pushing to make things better. And it's definitely something that we talk about often with our customers. We talk about whenever we're deciding which new products to make on, where we can make the biggest impact in those goals because it's something that all these that our customers are looking for and the world needs. So it's definitely at the forefront of what we do. And then also, I think our product, ESG, when I whenever I hear it or many people I talk to hear it, they think of it as just carbon emissions, just climate change, you know, action.

And which that's true, and we do save energy and carbon with our product. But also, it's when I say recycling, I like to think of it in a recycling sense because in not only in Aquamembrane's case, but every industry, every product, there is a waste there's waste put in with what's going into it. And so by our product changing the the lifetime, increasing the the output, we're hoping to extend the lifetime of these so that less of them are being there's a lot of chemicals used in cleaning them. There's less chemicals being used to put down the drain that can affect wastewater streams, plants and animals down, or have to be treated with more energy. There's definitely complications is complicated with that water. So it's really tackling things from not just energy, but also lifetime increases and improvements to the sustainability in the recycling, not having to use as much. We're reducing, you know, reuse, reuse, recycle. We're trying to reduce.

So from this all started to kinda come into the marketplace 2018. You joined the team 2020. It's been a pretty significant rise since then. Help us look a little bit forward as you're talking as a team. Let's say a classic business strategy time horizon. We're talking, like, three to five years. Just dream with us a little bit. What do you think that Aqua Membranes looks like? Like, how many products are you making? How many customers do you have? What is your team size? What's the impact you're having five years from now?

The the dream for us in the next five, ten years is that we want this technology to become part of the industry standard, which is that's a big dream. We and I think there and we want everyone to see the benefit because we believe it can it can make a huge impact worldwide. I think that with Aquaman brings technology, this is our the we're on our one point o pattern. It's what we call it. We call it our Goldilocks pattern. We believe that we can help and continue to iterate this pattern, use different membranes, and have tons of products out there that are going to drastically help water reuse in industry, are going to help clean waters that people couldn't think could be cleaned before, and make the world, you know, be closer to the Fremen. We we wanna help everyone be as water responsible as Fremen. I love the Dune analogy.

If it's when I was watching that movie, I couldn't help myself. But I think and then be able to just have more clean water for all. I think in in The US specifically, we are so used to having water come out of the tap. Like and there are so many places around the world that it's not it's it's something that they think about. You know, every time you turn that faucet, is good clean water to come out? And there are people now who don't have good clean water to come out of it. And we believe we wanna make it more sustainable and affordable to do. Along with the like, with that being said, it's the ESG question feeds into this a little bit. This is the sustainability ESG, some people see it as like an added expense to these companies.

And I was just at a sustainability summit with some of the biggest people in this industry, End users, people who are making beverages, who are making products, and then the water treatment providers. And what people were saying is like, no, there is a sustainability in ESG and being water and caring for water stewardship have a positive return on investment, not only on a monetary sense for business, but also people. And whenever those two things merge together, AquaMemorance technology, what we believe, and companies taking this on, we think that it's gonna help us create clean water for everybody. More of it, more available, and make a better world for everyone. That's the hope. That's the big dream for sure.

I love it. Some water in the river too, please. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Some water in the river too. And, hey, even more. It's a that's

a little

more snowpack. Oh, a little bit. Yeah. All the skiers and snowbirds out there, it it helps you and it helps the river as well.

Absolutely. Ben, I can hang out with you all day. You're doing such great work, and I know you're busy. Our listeners are. If there was something you were hoping we were gonna get to and we haven't covered it yet, or is there something you wanna leave our listeners with as we start to say goodbye, what would that be?

I think the biggest thing is if you have this is not even related to water. If you have something in your life that you think benefits other and you're passionate about it, like, it does not have to be Opera Memory Guides as a company, but take the first step to to help somebody out doing it, whether that's, you know, starting your own local community garden. I can't I'm doing this work, but my planning and community based background, like, yeah, whether it's starting a community garden, I have an idea. I think we just need to do more things to help each other and continue to benefit the world that way. So that's my takeaway. Do do try to do good things.

Great. Beautiful, Van. I I I like that ending. If somebody wants to get a hold of you to find out more, they're interested in potentially becoming a customer, whether they're a, you know, water or an energy start up, and you've said something that really sparks their interest, what would be a good way for somebody to get a hold of you?

One great way is LinkedIn. Just connect me on LinkedIn. Send me a message. And, email me at ben@aquamembranes.com.

Cool. I will put those connection pathways in the show notes, Ben. Thank you so much for the good work you do, and thanks for sharing it on the podcast.

Yeah. It's awesome. Thanks so much for that for the time, Paul. It was awesome to be involved.

So, listeners, let's go do what we do. Go tell your friends about aquamembranes and go tell your friends about water innovation. I want to also remind you that this episode is an example of a listener who said we need to do an episode on water innovation, and here we are. So, please, if you have an idea for an episode, go check out the Aware Purners website. On our contact page, I have three simple guidelines to try to be really transparent about what we're looking for. If you see something that feels like a fit, love to hear your ideas. And finally, I just wanna say thank you so much for listening. Please take really good care in these intense times, and thank you for the positive impact that you're having in our world.