Via Community News Service, in partnership with Vermont State University Castleton for the Rutland Herald
When it comes to environmental awareness and sustenance, some companies are making great strides toward recycling waste, but one company has discovered the use of our own human waste for sustainability.
“Pee-cycling” is taking efficiency to a new level, converting human waste into liquid fertilizer for “beneficial reuse.”
Brightwater Tools is a company that is introducing technology that company officials say will transform the way we feel about our own waste.
“Brightwater Tools provides innovative tools and technologies to advance the recovery of high strength nutrient streams so that communities can work to transform waste streams for beneficial use on farms,” CEO Kimmerly Nace said.
The company was founded in 2019 by Kimmerly Nace and CTO Abe Noe-Hays.
“Our company is a spin-off of the Rich Earth Institute, which was also Co-founded by (Kim Nace) and Abraham Noe-Hays,” Nace said. “The institute is a nonprofit, conducting academic research, demonstrating urine nutrient recovery and conducting educational outreach programs.”
The concept started with the Rich Earth Institute. The idea took off from there, turning into a company that specializes in clean water distribution for larger scale communities and industries.
“The basic story is that Kim and Abe founded the Rich Earth Institute, first, over a decade ago, which runs the community urine reclamation program,” R&D Engineer of Brightwater Tools Gabriel Kass-Johnson said. “The Institute became successful with Brattleboro.”
Brightwater Tools really took off when the company joined the StartUp Rutland program, where mentor and Director of Venture Capital for StartUp Rutland Mose Cassaro helped promote their business.
“I met them as a mentor through the LaunchVT program,” Cassaro said.
Cassaro chose Brightwater Tools as one of the startups he wanted to work with, as there were other companies also working to promote their businesses.
“I knew it was one of the teams that I wanted to be a part of,” he claimed. “My overall goal was to get three local teams and two teams from outside. We had one from Singapore and one from Boston.”
Cassaro explained how the goal of helping homeowners suddenly expanded to commercial possibilities.
“Initially, our thesis was that we would help homeowners,” he said. “And as we went to Accelerator, we started to realize that there’s potential sales channels.”
Cassaro met the Brightwater team when they had established the Brightwater facility and is still working with the company, serving as a board member. He said they meet every so often and have a great relationship since the StartUp Rutland program.
“We get to meet every week, then we get to meet every month, then we get to meet every quarter because of the board meeting, so long-term relationship there,” he said.
But Cassaro says he does not take credit for the company’s success and praises the professionalism and expertise of the team behind the technology. He is proud, however, to have been able to get the company more recognition.
“I don’t like to take credit for other people,” he claimed. “But I think it put them on a stage where they’re more visible.”
The goal of the company is to provide technology that can help communities transform waste and make it useful for farming.
“Brightwater Tools designs and sells a urine pasteurizer which can render large volumes of urine completely free of pathogens by raising the temperature to 176 degrees Fahrenheit for 90 seconds,” Kass-Johnson said. “That is all that is needed to use pee for fertilizing plants.”
According to Nace, these systems will help prevent water pollution and enhance water conservation.
Although the company specializes in outside waste treatments, the technology can still be applied industrially and commercially.
“Outside treatment is our main area of expertise, but the technology could be applied to any industrial or commercial process where you have a somewhat concentrated waste stream that is expensive to dispose of or contains valuable elements,” Kass-Johnson said.
The company became successful in Brattleboro, where the main plant is located, but company officials decided to expand its technology to other communities as well, especially after joining StartUp Rutland, realizing how much this innovation could benefit the environment globally.
“They realized that they had developed technology that had commercial applications so they decided to take some of that technology and try to develop it into commercial products that could help other communities deal with their waste,” Kass-Johnson explained.
In addition to large community benefits and sustainability, this idea also applies to local households, especially those with gardens or small farming areas.
“If you don’t have a program in your own town, you can still collect urine at your own home and use it to make compost or to fertilize your garden,” Kass-Johnson said.
Brightwater Tools has been recognized and funded by the National Science Foundation SBIR Phase II and won Audience Choice Award at Launch VT’s 2024 Demo Night.
The company strives to eliminate waste and water pollution but realizes that this is a task that must be taken in steps, according to Kass-Johnson, who said focusing on educating people about what steps they can take to help in the fight against environmental pollution is the key to initiating change.
“Talking about it with your community is a great way to get some traction locally to try to reduce pollution and improve the quality of water.”