![]() While Epic Cleantec’s system isn’t intended to produce water for drinking, regulations currently allow potable reuse of wastewater in many US states, including California and Texas. But frankly, we did not anticipate the tremendous response that we saw.” “It was meant to tell the water reuse story in a new way. “We ended up producing just over 7,000 cans, not as a commercial product, but as an educational effort,” Tartakovsky says, using 2,000 gallons of recycled water. “Scientifically, this water often meets or even exceeds drinking water standards.”Įpic Cleantec started its beer project in late 2022, for attendees of a conference on sustainable building technologies. Why are we still using pristine drinking water from our national parks to flush the toilets of our tech employees in downtown San Francisco?” Tartakovsky asks. In San Francisco, since 2015, all new buildings of more than 100,000 square feet are required to have an on-site water recycling system out of the few dozen currently installed, Epic Cleantec is responsible for five. ![]() However, Tartakovsky says that it pays for itself in just a few years, by lowering utility bills. Epic CleantecĪn installation takes the space of a few parking spots, on average, but it’s expensive - from a few hundred thousand dollars into the millions, depending on the size of the building. “We do for water what solar did for energy, which is moving away from a sole reliance on large, centralized infrastructure.”Įpic Cleantec says the system has other benefits: recovered heat from the wastewater can be used to pre-heat domestic hot water, cutting heating costs, and the organic matter in the wastewater can be used to produce natural soil products, usable in landscaping, gardens or parks.Ī view of Fifteen Fifty, in San Francisco, from a nearby garden where plants are grown using recycled waste from Epic Cleantec's water treatment system. “What we’ve done is just take a lot of existing principles in the wastewater world and design it for single buildings instead,” Tartakovsky said. The system installed in Fifteen Fifty is designed to recycle 7,500 gallons of water per day, or up to 2.75 million gallons per year. It does so by first using biological treatment to remove organic matter, then microfiltration via membranes just 0.04 microns thick (about 0.05% of the thickness of a human hair), and finally disinfection by ultraviolet light and chlorine, which makes the water safe for reuse in non-potable applications like toilet and urinal flushing, irrigation and laundry. The system recycles up to 95% of wastewater, according to the company - either what is known as blackwater, which comes from toilets, or graywater, which comes from sinks, washing machines, bathtubs and showers. At least for now.Įpic Cleantec equips buildings with its water recycling system, eliminating the need to discharge wastewater into a sewer to transport it to a remote treatment facility. But it’s not for sale, as regulations prohibit the use of recycled wastewater in commercial beverages. The beer is a Kölsch-style ale - a crisp, light-bodied drink originating from Germany - and was made with recycled graywater from Fifteen Fifty, a 40-story luxury apartment building in San Francisco. “Almost no buildings reuse that water - that’s what we’re trying to change.” “Buildings globally use 14% of all potable water,” says Aaron Tartakovsky, CEO and co-founder of Epic Cleantec, the San Francisco-based water treatment company that made the beer in collaboration with a local brewery. The beer is safe to drink, thanks to a series of treatments that include microfiltration and ultraviolet light, and it is meant to bring attention to the issue of water scarcity and reuse. You wouldn’t know if you tasted it, but Epic OneWater Brew is a beer with a peculiar ingredient: it’s made with water recycled from the showers, sinks and washing machines of a residential building.
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