Wastewater is a gold mine for energy, nutrients and water. Marc Wehmeijer dispels myths about breaking in to the wastewater industry, and takes us on a tour of the global wastewater treatment landscape from the deserts of Durango, Mexico to the Swiss Alps.

Marc Wehmeijer is the CEO of ThinkTIM, a company that designs, manufactures, installs and services wastewater treatment recycling units. Wehmeijer advocates for the use of artificial wetlands as treatment methods and to promote biodiversity. He emphasises wastewater as a 'microbiological zoo', detailing how we can extract phosphates from wastewater and use excess sludge to produce energy.
Additionally, he promotes segmenting wastewater treatment processes with the end use in mind - for example, not using portabilised water for crop irrigation. The key message of wastewater treatment being: decentralise, segment and capitalise to the full extent!

The Living Revolution brings you scientists, industry leaders and entrepreneurs working on engineering biology to solve the world’s most pressing challenges. Listen in to hear the trials and successes of the bioeconomy.

This podcast is produced by Sara Knurowska. The full transcript can be found using this link.

Algae is a high potential and high protein food. Learn how engineers and entrepreneurs like Peter Mponzi are using algae to cultivate the future of nutrition.

Peter Mponzi is a chemical process engineer by training and current entrepreneur in algal production. He has eight plus years experience in the renewable fuel industry, and is currently focusing specifically on downstream algal processing and scale-up. Mponzi talks us through the technical, regulatory and market success criteria for algal cultivation and what you can expect from the algal revolution.

The Living Revolution brings you scientists, industry leaders and entrepreneurs working on engineering biology to solve the world’s most pressing challenges. Listen in if you too like to hear the trials and successes of the bioeconomy.

This podcast is produced by Sara Knurowska.

Access the transcript for this episode using this link.

Join us for a whirlwind tour of the key problems with modern agriculture and the alternative emerging technologies. In this final episode with Agata the biocontainment researcher and Simon, Head of Human Practices, from the Wageningen iGEM team, we discuss how synthetic biology can be used as a technology to prevent crop frost damage. We reflect on using synthetic biology in agriculture and discuss common misconceptions, and the gap between scientific advancements and public perceptions behind the nascent field.