This is the last in my blog series spotlighting stuff I learned at the Investment News Women’s Advisor Summit. That’s right, I bullet point the interesting stuff so you don’t have to attend all-day conferences. You are welcome.
Our first speaker of the day was Dr. Julie Gorte, Senior VP for Impact Investing at Impax Asset Management and Pax World Funds. Dr. Gorte had lots of good information on how we are ruining our planet and what the consequences will look like. Not pretty, I’ll tell you.
A big focus was on water.
Over 90% of the fresh water we consume is underground in aquifers. And, no surprise, with out booming global population, need to water cows and crops, and fill the Kardashian’s swimming pools, we are depleting that at a fast clip.
According to Dr. Grote, technology can help offset a lot of the damage we do, but inventions cannot keep up with our damage. One thing technology can help with is making use of not-so-easy sources of water. Already Israel is ahead of most countries in using desalinization processes to create safe drinking water from sea water. Why? Because they have to be. And soon, so will we all.
Another source for clean drinking water will more and more be our own wastewater. Ewwww, you say. Did anybody but me see the movie Waterworld with Kevin Costner? Not many – it was a huge box office flop. In one scene Kevin, on his boat with no land in sight for days, because it’s Waterworld, pees into some contraption and 5 minutes later, drinks the purified water that comes out the other end.
That’s actually happening today both in nature and in our wastewater plants. Nature seems more appealing. Here is a review of the water cycle from 5th grade science class.
Keep in mind a much of the water from land that is going into aquifers or the lake or evaporating into fluffy clouds is waste water that came from animals or humans (oh yeah, we are animals).
So, before you get grossed out by future water technology, remember reclaimed water is better than none at all!
Check out my video for more thoughts on investing in clean water technology.
