The New Traditional: Circular Water Systems

“Circular water economy is really about how to maximize and valorize how water runs through – and maximize every single drop of water.”

When The Water Council decided to include a talk on water circularity at our ReFRESH: Resilience in Freshwater Summit, we knew exactly where to turn. Maile Lono-Batura has been a circular water economy advocate for decades in her roles with Northwest Biosolids, the Water Environment Federation and the California Association of Sanitation Agencies.

Moderator Travis Loop conducted a Q&A with Maile as a preview of her ReFRESH session. Check out her answers below, and make sure to register for our summit happening Oct. 13-14.

What does circularity or a circular economy mean, especially in the water space?

I think one of the ways that I have absorbed it is to first think about traditional economy. Traditional economy is about systems that bolster commerce: goods and services, trades, commodities. How do those work in society? Whereas circularity, and circular water in particular, is centering on societal systems that maximize and valorize everything that water runs through.

From a perspective of the case need for circularity, it’s so evident. We can see that the demand for water outweighs the supply, because there is so much that is needed for all systems. When you take a step back and just look at how water runs through systems, there really are no systems that don’t depend upon water in some way, even ones that you would not think of inherently. You think beverage companies – of course they need water. So do data centers. So do all these other processes that we rely on now as just part of our societal norm.

To me, circular water economy is really about how to maximize and valorize how water runs through, and to maximize every single drop of water that runs through that. There are other definitions that are coming out, which is a good thing, so that people have guideposts of what it means. But I think it’s really giving a new sort of meaning to the idea of a flow chart. We have flow charts in businesses. Water flow through the systems is a whole new flow chart for what we need to understand.

What are some examples of resources being recovered?

My background on resources that you can recover, and that have been recovered for years, is from water resource recovery facilities. That’s the embedded code of these facilities, where they were first pollution control centers focused on ensuring that the water that was going back out into natural systems was clean, later evolving into the recovery, use and value from all potential resources from that system.

But a lot of times those recovered resources were not used to their maximum ability. Biosolids that are recovered have so much potential – in large part because of the renewable nutrient story: the nutrients being harvested, traveling through us, creating this beautiful product, biosolids, that can be used again to bring those nutrients back to the soil that we pulled them from.

These are things that are built into the water resource recovery facility model already. So that’s already a significant kick start for circular water economies. We also have access to recovered energy, heat and water from these systems.

One of the most genius design pieces of these systems isn’t just the resource recovery part of these facilities. It’s how distributed they are. In every community, you have a system that you could tap into and pull off of and maximze those resources, matching those for the right placement of those goods within the communities that they’re in.

Do you see fresh and strong momentum around circular economy, circularity and resource recovery? Why is that happening now?

There has been a focus around this. The Ellen MacArthur Foundation, the World Bank, the Circularity Gap Report have all been talking about circularity. There is recognition of circularity already out there that has been shaping what has become the common foundation for all of circularity. With water, we are also seeing that embedded in those conversations. So it’s been there. It’s just now, I think, more focused attention is coming online in a way that people can see evidently.

In water resource recovery, or in these facilities that a lot of that sector focuses on, they’re seeing that there are increased demands for what they would traditionally be sending out or traditionally receiving, and they have to adapt to all of that. Circularity and the demand for circular water systems is clear. It’s absolutely evident.

It’s now: How do we transform these systems to really adapt to that need and adapt to that model in a way that it’s normalized? It’s going to be normalizing this new mode of operation and how to make it the new traditional. The new traditional economy will be around this idea of circular systems and to not waste anything in those systems.

What will you be presenting and engaging with the audience on at The Water Council’s ReFRESH summit?

I’m really excited about this ReFRESH session, Going in Circles. One of the real takeaways that I hope folks will have from that session is to see that this is happening in real time. We are seeing not just the technology and trends that are leading the way in thinking through these systems a little bit differently, but also the policies and the foundational systems that lining up to make sure that that is something that will be built into the system.

The ReFRESH session is going to highlight those examples, literally bringing people into the conversation. This will not be a “you just listen in.” This will be, “We need you up on stage to talk about what you know,” so that we can have more of that communal sort of brainstorm. This is a brain trust, and we will focus on cracking that open a little bit more, in an engaging and thought-provoking way, to learn from each other in this open space concept.

We’re bringing in specialists that are boots-on-the-ground, doing it, seeing it work, sharing their challenges from the plant to the policy-making portions of the practice. There are challenges in normalizing this. And this is where real-world examples can demonstrate, “Here’s how we did this. Here’s how we got through this.” And, “Hey, crowd, do you have any ideas on how to do this?” We want to make this a truly welcoming space to share those stories and to really elevate what is happening in the world right now with circular water economy.