How Innovation Creates New Markets
Innovative ideas have a way of crossing over boundaries to find new applications that may not have been anticipated by their originators. Henry Ford brought the concept of the assembly line to building automobiles and revolutionized not only that industry, but virtually every other modern factory in the 20th century. Ford didn’t even create that innovation; he borrowed it from the meat-packing industry.
Such is the case with a new concept brought to life by the University of Regina’s Dr. Stephanie Young, with the assistance of a Signature grant from Communities of Tomorrow. Dr. Young’s idea is to reclaim and reuse so called “greywater”, the waste water generated by taps flowing into bathroom sinks. Her research involves the installation of a greywater reclamation plant in the new University of Regina Laboratory building. The reclaimed sink water can then be reused for non-drinking purposes such as toilet flushing and irrigation.
The original target of Dr. Young’s work was the development of greywater reclamation plants that could be applied to small municipal water systems. However, her innovation has also sparked interest in the restaurant industry.
The owners of Beer Brothers micro-brewery and restaurant in Regina wondered whether a greywater system might be able to save water, and operating costs, in their dishwashing machine. After reaching out to CT, they were put in touch with Dr. Young, who in turn invited her graduate student researcher, William Cheung to take on the project.
William Cheung is now working with Beer Brothers to determine if the greywater from their dishwashers can be successfully filtered and recycled to drinking water standards. If the system works, it is estimated that up to 90% of the kitchen greywater at the restaurant can be recycled, resulting in an estimated saving in water bills of fifteen to eighteen thousand dollars per year.
The project has also sparked new research money, attracting a fifteen thousand dollar grant from the National Sciences and Engineering Council of Canada, and a further six thousand dollar scholarship donation by the restaurant. The collaboration was recently featured in a Regina Leader Post story (January 31, 2009).
“When we innovate, good things happen,” said Communities of Tomorrow President John Lee. “It is through partnerships between researchers and industry that we find the markets for new developments in sustainable infrastructure.
