Tapping into untapped water sources - 1st December 2023

The prolonged drought experienced in the American West is triggering entrepreneurial ways to increase sustainability and find innovative ways to responsibly utilise their limited water supply. In San Francisco, two enterprises have engineered a technique to upcycle wastewater into beer by recycling grey water from showers, laundry machines and dishwashers in a skyscraper. CEO Aaron Tartakovsky of Epic Cleantec, which spearheads this project, approves of the end product.

Aaron Tartakovsky: "It tastes like a nice, crisp, Kölsch style ale. You'd have no idea the source of the water. It's just nice, pristine drinking water and it's a fantastic beer. And I'm going to drink another sip."

Initially treated using advanced machinery containing filter membranes one thousand times finer than a human hair, the 28,000 litres of wastewater collected daily from the skyscraper is further cleansed by ultraviolet light and chlorine.

For the most part, this treated water's fed back into the building's showering and irrigation systems, but a percentage is channelled into the Devil's Canyon Brewery to be turned into beer. Brewery owner Chris Garrett was somewhat apprehensive when the idea of turning bathwater into beer was first pitched to him.

Chris Garrett: "When Aaron reached out to us at first we were a little set aside, and we were like, well what are people kind of think? And then the more we thought about it, it made a whole lot of sense. And we, we have to make a change today. We're running out of water and we need to find a way to incorporate that into every day and things like beer."

To work around California's laws which prohibit the sale of the beer, both companies have been handing out free samples of the brew in an awareness raising campaign.

Despite reluctant Americans dubbing wastewater recycling 'toilet to tap', with rapidly depleting water sources, California's promoting widespread implementation of this new technology by the year end as a means of tapping into undervalued water resources. Tartakovsky's convinced that the public's warming to the concept of reusing water.

Aaron Tartakovsky: "When I first entered the industry, a lot of people said that the public is just not ready for recycled water, that public perception is too difficult for people to overcome. And I think what our beer project has showed people is that the public is a lot more ready for recycled water than we give them credit for."