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From setting the stage for life to sustaining it everyday, water is the defining feature of our planet. Covering 97% of the Earth’s surface, it is also our most abundant resource.
But how much of this water can we use in daily life? Turns out - less than a fraction. Only 2.5% of the world’s water is fresh, and a mere 0.5% is accessible to us for drinking, irrigation, and other uses.
Couple this with the fact that by 2030, the global demand for clean water is set to exceed supply by 40% and we have a global challenge that needs urgent attention.
At Undesert, we are tackling this crisis head-on with our patented wastewater purification technology. Today, we’ll dive deeper into our story, why we do what we do, and our bold goals for the future.
Fresh Water is Finite; Our Purification Tech Can Change That
The Undesert story began when co-founders Nicholas Seet and Hill Kemp connected the dots between three crucial environmental challenges of our times:
- Fact #1: With the global population crossing 8 billion, the pressure on the world’s fresh water supply is more pressing than ever before.
- Fact #2: We are generating more industrial and agricultural wastewater than at any other time in history.
- Fact #3: The world’s desertification is growing at an unprecedented rate.
Taken together, this led them to ask: what if we could purify the world’s most polluted wastewater, and use it to reforest desertified lands?
This led to the development of Undesert’s multi-patented Salty Wastewater Purification Technology (SWAP). Not only does SWAP desalinate water with up to 8 times the concentration of seawater (200 PPM), but it can separate water from any chemical or mineral - leaving behind ultra-pure water (5 PPM) and dry salt.
Our Goals: Purify, Reforest & Thrive
Together with a team of engineers and scientists, we are solving our planet’s most pressing environmental issues using innovative and sustainable methods.
We believe that every generation merely borrows the Earth from their children, and that it’s our responsibility to leave it greener and more thriving than we found it. This philosophy has also shaped our three strategic goals:
1 - Purify the Planet’s Most Polluted Water For Agricultural Use
Today, industries ranging from oil extraction to green hydrogen utilize billions of gallons of water for critical activities. The oil and gas extraction industry, in particular, generates 6 barrels of produced water for each barrel of extracted oil. Currently, disposing of this water is difficult and expensive for organizations.
Using our SWAP technology, industries can efficiently and reliably purify their own wastewater 24x7 with no supervision, at a fraction of current costs.
Once the water has been treated, we never route it back for industrial use. Instead, we channel it to reforest the world’s most degraded areas and irrigate farmlands.
2 - Stop the Desertification of Our Planet
According to the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission, 75% of the Earth’s land area is already degraded. A combination of factors such as climate change and unsustainable farming is degrading once-thriving ecosystems into barren, infertile land. This is causing loss of biodiversity and lowering crop yields that cost billions of dollars every year.
By channeling the water purified by SWAP to environmentally-conscious partners around the world, we aim to irrigate degraded ecosystems and reforest 1% of our planet’s desertified land.
3 - Create Sustainable Forest Products
Even though more and more people today are making eco-conscious lifestyle choices, the demand for wood and forest products is increasing. This is why we believe it’s important to find sustainable ways to produce wood-based products.
For this purpose, we are transforming 20 acres of desert shrub-land in New Mexico into thriving pine forests that are especially suited to:
- Be sustainably farmed for lumber and forest products.
- Create a green oasis and combat local desertification.
- Absorb atmospheric carbon dioxide to tackle climate change.
Our initial reforestation efforts on the land has already yielded promising results: our pine trees growing at 7 to 10% per month, tripling their content of absorbed atmospheric carbon dioxide in only 7 months.
It all comes down to this - water is our most precious resource, and it’s scarcer than we realize. We must do all we can to not only conserve fresh water, but create a virtuous cycle where wastewater is purified and used to make our planet greener. If our mission resonate with you, we invite you to sign up for our email list and join our journey.
Citations & Resources:
- Water – at the center of the climate crisis | United Nations
- Water Facts - Worldwide Water Supply | Bureau of Reclamation
- Half the World to Face Severe Water Stress by 2030 unless Water Use is "Decoupled" from Economic Growth, Says International Resource Panel
- Where is Earth's Water? | U.S. Geological Survey
- Land degradation threatens the well-being of people and the planet