Market Trends

ZENON Environmental sold to General Electric for US$689M in 2006, an all-cash exit that capped the Canadian membrane pioneer’s 26-year run under founder Andrew Benedek. His ZeeWeed hollow-fiber technology, generating roughly US$210M in revenue at the sale, seeded today’s multi-billion-dollar membrane bioreactor market.

with 🎙️ Andrew Benedek, Executive Chairman of Anaergia, founder of Zenon and CEO for 26 years, a former member of the IWA board, and the inaugural recipient of the Lee Kwan Yew Prize.

💧 Anaergia aims to convert waste into useful resources, protect the environment, and sustain life for generations to come. Where some see waste, they see resources.

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Lithium Mining is expected to deliver the lithium-ion battery industry 500’000 metric tons a year. Sure, conventional lithium supply will grow by 300% over the next decade but that will still not be sufficient! Hence, it might be an opportunity to get creative and to look for lithium in… water. How? Let’s review.

with 🎙️ Benjamin Sparrow – CEO and Co-Founder at Saltworks Technologies

💧 Saltworks provides innovative products and solutions for industrial wastewater treatment and desalination.

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Jacobs Engineering Group runs an estimated US$3.7 billion water business as a single connected system, its One Water approach uniting drinking water, wastewater, conveyance, and industrial water under one global team instead of treating each in isolation. The NYSE-listed firm frames that integrated water-cycle management as the spine of any credible climate response, since flooding, drought, and reuse pressures move through all of it.

with 🎙️ Susan Moisio – Global Water Director at Jacobs, where she leads a team of 9,000 water professionals across all regions.

💧 Jacobs pledges to push the limits of what’s possible, continually challenging today to reinvent tomorrow.

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When it comes to the race to net zero water, Water UK leads the charge. Not only did it set ambitious goals, but also in a quite timely manner: the routemap leads to 2030! The cherry on that cake? It’s not only about “net zero.” They’re before and above all aiming for a GOOD one.

with 🎙️ Maria Manidaki – Net Zero Technical Lead and Principal Water Investment Planning Advisor at Mott MacDonald

💧 Mott MacDonald is a global engineering, management, and development consultancy, that places social outcomes at the center of all it does.

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The Asian Development Bank has put together a Screening Tool for the Energy Evaluation of Projects. As a result, it can guarantee that the water and wastewater projects it backs are fully aligned in the race to net zero water!

with 🎙️ Stephane Bessadi – Senior Procurement Specialist for the Asian Development Bank

💧 The Asian Development Bank (ADB) commits to a prosperous, inclusive, resilient, and sustainable Asia and Pacific Region.

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Xylem cuts wastewater carbon by attacking its biggest power draw, aeration, through Sanitaire energy-efficient aeration systems and over 4 million Flygt pumps running adaptive variable-frequency drives. The New York Stock Exchange-listed (NYSE: XYL) supplier backs these with 43 audited water-treatment product lines across pumping, biological treatment, and digital optimization.

with 🎙️ Austin Alexander – Vice President, Sustainability and Social Impact at Xylem

💧 Xylem is a leading water technology company with the famous “solving water” motto – and a finalist for this year’s Net Zero Carbon Award at the Global Water Summit

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What levers can you play on to promote greater water reuse? Well, you can act on the money side of the equation, for instance, by incentivizing the deployment of new technologies through grants and loans. But also by making the wrong behavior more expensive. Wanna find out more? Let’s review it…

with 🎙️Jon Freedman – Senior Vice President – Global Government Affairs at SUEZ WTS

💧 SUEZ WTS provides industry-leading water technology and process expertise to solve the toughest water, wastewater, and process challenges

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Have you ever attended a business meeting that seemed to drain your soul out of your body? Or happily slept in a water conference, to digest the jet lag and be in a good shape for the real conference content, aka the late drinks at the

with 🎙️ Annyse Balkwill – Founder of the LuminUS Group and Program Director for the upcoming BlueTech Forum

💧 The LuminUS Group crafts an events formula that has participants engaging, again and again, sharing with their colleagues and offering this feedback. Wanna see it applied? Make sure to attend the upcoming BlueTech Forum!

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with 🎙️ Victoria Edwards – CEO & Co-Founder of FIDO Tech

FIDO Tech detects water-network leaks at over 92% accuracy using a sensor-agnostic artificial-intelligence engine trained on 2.4 million field recordings. The system finds each leak, sizes it, and ranks it for repair, filtering the false positives that send utility crews on dry digs and attacking the non-revenue water lost across distribution networks.

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with 🎙️ Katrina Donaghy – CEO & Co-Founder of Civic Ledger

💧 Civic Ledger is an award-winning blockchain company that builds trust layer solutions for the markets of tomorrow

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with 🎙️ Christopher Gasson – Owner of Global Water Intelligence and authority on water finance and markets

💧 Global Water Intelligence is the leading publisher and events organizer serving the international water industry.

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SKion Water built the 2021 Water Company of the Year by acquiring water-technology firms worldwide, closing 20 acquisitions between 2012 and 2023. Its flagship move privatized Canadian player Ovivo for US$141.6 million in 2016, a deal it ran with Quebec pension fund CDPQ and no investment bank.

💧 SKion Water is an international water technology platform, that aims to empower water technology companies to make a difference.

Update, June 2026: this story kept compounding. Three years, a $1.4 billion turnover milestone, and one $1.8 billion carve-out later, I replayed all of Reinhard’s tapes against my deal database.

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with 🎙️ Antoine Walter, Podcaster in Chief at GF Piping Systems – happy to share the Water Industry Insights he collected for you over the past 6 months!

💧 19 guests shared 1’114 minutes of Wisdom in this Season 4. I dived a bit deeper into 17 of these learnings to add my pinch of salt!

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with 🎙️ Geoff Ward, CEO of Hazer Group Limited (nb: Hazer stands for “Hydrogen And Zero Emission Research)

💧 Hazer Group Limited is a pioneering company undertaking the commercialization of a low-emission hydrogen and graphite production process.

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with 🎙️ Alena Fargere, Principal at SWEN Capital Partners and co-founder of the first European investment fund dedicated to renewable gases.

💧 SWEN Capital Partners, a benchmark player in sustainable investments in private equity, just announced the first closing of its second SWEN Impact Fund for Transition (SWIFT 2). It will be a direct contribution to decarbonizing the economy and creating jobs in France.

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with 🎙️ Paul Martin, Chemical process development expert & founder of Spitfire Research.  

💧 Spitfire research is a Process development consulting company for a decarbonized future, where Paul acts as an antidote to marketing hopium and a tireless advocate for a fossil-fuel-free future.

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with 🎙️ Jonathan Rhone, President, and CEO of Axine Water Technologies 

Axine Water Technologies owns, operates, and guarantees the on-site electrochemical oxidation systems that destroy the toughest organics in industrial wastewater, a treatment-as-a-service model that drew a US$15M strategic investment from water-instrument maker Veralto in 2024. Plant operators never run the process themselves, which is the point: the best industrial wastewater system is the one a company can forget.

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with 🎙️ Kobe Nagar, CEO & Co-Founder at 374Water 

374Water destroys PFAS and other organics at over 99.99 percent using supercritical water oxidation (SCWO), pushing waste past water’s critical point at 374 degrees Celsius where contaminants mineralize in 4 to 40 seconds. Its containerized AirSCWO AS6 reactor runs energy positive, tapping the chemical energy in sludge to sustain the reaction and generate power at scale.

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with 🎙️ David Lynch, CEO & Co-Founder at Klir 

💧 Klir is building the All-In-One Operating System for Water.

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with 🎙️ Ellen Bruno, Extension Economist @ UC Berkeley 

💧 The Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics at UC Berkeley leads research and outreach on economic and policy issues relevant to California’s agriculture and natural resources.

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with 🎙️ Steven De Laet, CEO & Founder of Inopsys 

InOpSys treats hazardous pharmaceutical and chemical wastewater on-site as a one-to-one replacement for incineration, recovering palladium, zinc, and other valuable materials, and was acquired by Indaver in 2024. The Belgian scale-up, founded in 2015, raised US$9.2 million across two rounds to scale its pay-per-use Plant-on-a-Truck model.

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with 🎙️ Cesar Narvaez, CEO & Founder of NXO Engineering

💧 NXO Engineering is a deep tech startup in the Water and Sanitation industry developing a new generation of wastewater treatment plants.

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with 🎙️ Sebastian Andreassen, CCO, Director and Co-Founder of Cembrane

Cembrane makes silicon carbide ceramic membranes that turn an expensive material into the lower-cost choice for water treatment, running at high flux where polymer membranes foul and clog. Founded in Denmark in 2014, the company was acquired by Ovivo in 2021 to scale module production across Europe and North America.

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with 🎙️ Wayne Byrne, CEO of Typhon Treatment Systems

Typhon Treatment Systems raised US$5.0M in 2019 to scale mercury-free ultraviolet LED (UV-LED) disinfection reactors and run the world’s largest UV-LED installation with United Utilities, an ambitious bid to unseat the vapor-mercury lamps the water sector had relied on for 25 years. The Ireland-based startup, founded in 2014, is now defunct, dead in the commercialization chasm between a proven pilot and scaled adoption.

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with 🎙️ Ramzi Bouzerda, CEO and founder of Droople

Droople is a Swiss water-intelligence company that has raised US$4.2M since 2021 to digitize the last mile utilities leave blind, the point-of-use assets sitting past the main meter of any building. Its sensor-agnostic iLink edge device converts raw flow data into leak detection and predictive maintenance insight, the foundation of what Droople calls the Internet of Water.

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with 🎙️ Luke Butler, Director of Innovation at Qatium

💧 Qatium is a new frontier in digital water management, giving utilities of all sizes the visibility to improve network performance, identify efficiencies and ensure continuity of service.

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with 🎙️ Scott Hamilton, Researcher, Policy Advisor and author of “Sold Down the River”

💧 in “Sold Down the River,” Scott Hamilton and Stuart Kells explore how Robber Barons and Wall Street Traders Cornered Australia’s Water Market.

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with 🎙️ Walid Khoury, General Manager of Desalytics & Water Influence Guru

💧 Desalytics is a social impact investment vehicle helping solve Africa’s water challenges that ambitions to change the Water landscape in the Sub-Saharan region.

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with 🎙️ Mina Guli, CEO and Co-Founder of the Thirst Foundation, Director of the Antarctic Science Foundation, Director of the Global Water Partnership and Adventurer.

💧 The Thirst Foundation is dedicated to getting the global water crisis to the top of the agenda and driving innovation to use less water every day.

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with 🎙️ Aaron Tartakovsky, CEO and Co-Founder of Epic Cleantec  

Epic Cleantec has raised US$24.0M to recycle a building’s own wastewater into onsite water reuse for toilet flushing, cooling towers, and irrigation, treating greywater and blackwater where they are produced instead of piping them to a central plant. The San Francisco company runs this distributed treatment to relieve centralized networks as most of humanity moves into cities by 2050.

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with 🎙️ Gerald Pollack, Professor of Bioengineering at the University of Washington, Founding Editor-in-Chief of the WATER research journal, Executive Director of the Institute for Venture Science, and Author of – among other books – “The Fourth Phase of Water.”   

💧 The 4th Phase of Water, or Exclusion Water, is a semi-liquid or crystalline state of water that forms at the interface with hydrophilic surfaces. More on that in a second!

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with 🎙️ Henrik Hagemann is the CEO and Co-Founder of Puraffinity.   

Puraffinity strips PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) from contaminated water using a bio-based adsorbent media that selectively binds the forever chemicals conventional filters let through. The UK company has raised US$26.07M across a 2019 seed and two Series A rounds, scaling the material from lab tests toward drinking-water and industrial treatment.

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with 🎙️ Silvana Di Sabatino, Professor of Atmospheric Physics at the University of Bologna, and coordinator of the OPERANDUM project.   

💧 The OPERANDUM Project aims at delivering the tools and methods for the validation of Nature-Based Solutions as a way to enhance resilience in European rural and natural territories by reducing hydro-meteorological risks.

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with 🎙️ Marc Barra, Urban Ecologist specializing in nature-based solutions at Paris’ Agency for Biodiversity, in charge of the H2020 REGREEN project.  

💧 The REGREEN Project promotes urban livability through fostering nature-based solutions in Europe and China using evidence-based tools and improved urban governance to accelerate the transition towards green, equitable and healthy cities.

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with 🎙️ James Murray, MGSDP Manager at the Glasgow City Council  

💧 the Metropolitan Glasgow Strategic Drainage Partnership (MGSDP) thinks about and manages rainfall to end uncontrolled flooding and improve water quality.

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with 🎙️ Alan Condron, Scientific Researcher and Climate Modeller at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

💧 Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) is the world’s leading, independent non-profit organization dedicated to ocean research, exploration, and education.

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with 🎙️ Olivier Narbey, Senior Business Development Manager – Water Network Performance at GF Piping Systems 

💧 GF Piping System is the leading flow solutions provider across the World.

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with 🎙️ Abdulla Alshehhi, Managing Director of National Advisor Bureau Limited, CEO of Q2 General Cleaning, and Business Support Section Head at GASCO 

💧 National Advisor Bureau Limited leverages creativity and innovation to be a leading Consultant Firm For start-up businesses & Established Companies

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with 🎙️ Alexander Loucopoulos, Partner at both Sciens Capital Management and Sciens Water 

💧 Sciens Water is a research-driven investment fund that identifies uncovered, under-researched, or misunderstood opportunities in the water sector that are hence undercapitalized. 

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with 🎙️ David Lloyd Owen, Managing Director of Envisager, Columnist for Global Water Intelligence, Advisor on several boards, and author of “Global Water Funding.”

💧 In his Global Water Funding book, David Lloyd Owen discusses global progress towards fulfilling SDG 6, proposes alternative solutions to lack of funding, and examines the reasons why countries are failing at implementing safe and sustainable water and sanitation for all.

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with 🎙️ Lea Im Obersteg, Head of Global Design Thinking @ GF Piping Systems

💧 GF Piping Systems is the leading flow solutions provider across the World.

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with 🎙️ Gilles Toussaint, Founder @ GT Impact and Host of the “Mission First – Entrepreneurs for Future” podcast

💧 GT Impact strives to help Greentech companies to increase their revenue with efficient growth marketing sprints and data-driven content marketing

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Ozone diffusion moves dissolved ozone into water two ways, fine bubble diffusers on a basin floor or sidestream venturi injection, the method Mazzei has built since 1978 from its base in the United States. Fine bubble diffusion relies on bubble size, contact area, and rise time, while sidestream injection pulls a slipstream through a venturi and mixes ozone in seconds.

💧 Mazzei Injector Company is a global leader in the design, engineering, and manufacturing of venturi injectors, flash reactors, and other high-efficiency mixing technologies and ozone diffusion systems.

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with 🎙️ Hasmik Barseghyan, President of the European Youth Parliament for Water, among other strategic roles at the World Water Quality Alliance, the World Energy Council, the International Secretariat for Water, or Woman in Climate and Energy.

💧 The EYPW aims to promote youth involvement in the water sector by increasing their awareness of water resource management issues and by fostering an understanding of citizenship and democracy.

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with 🎙️ Denise E Mall, Managing Director of EnsO Earth

💧 EnsO Earth focuses on the intersection of living futures, biomimicry, circularity, and ecological design thinking to go beyond sustainable towards regenerative solutions.

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with 🎙️ Meena Sankaran, CEO and Founder of KETOS.

KETOS SHIELD, an autonomous sensor, measures water quality by detecting heavy metals down to parts-per-billion across 30+ parameters using anodic stripping voltammetry. The software intelligence rides on that hardware, which is why the company built both layers in-house after raising US$45.3M across four priced rounds since 2015.

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with 🎙️ Alice Schmidt, MBA lecturer, Adviser to the European Commission, and non-profit organizations like Extinction Rebellion, Protect our Winters, and Chair of the Board of Endeva e.V.

with 🎙️ Claudia Winkler, CEO, and co-founder of Goood Mobile, Europe’s first B-Corp Certified telecom provider, and a Founding Partner of Adjacent Possible Network.

💧 Alice and Claudia are the Authors of “the Sustainability Puzzle,” a must-read addressing how systems thinking, circularity, climate action, and social transformation can improve health, wealth, and wellbeing for all.

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EMG International, founded in 1996, treats food and beverage wastewater with its Anaerobic Fluidized Bed Digester, a sealed reactor that turns industrial effluent into biogas instead of burning power to aerate it. The American firm drew a strategic utility when TransAlta took a 30% stake in 2020 to enter waste-to-energy treatment.

💧 EMG International is a leading company in Anaerobic Wastewater treatments, with a pretty unique take on anaerobic digestion.

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with 🎙️ Michael Stanley Gallisdorfer

💧 Michael holds a Ph. D. in Geography and builds upon a unique (and multidisciplinary!) skill set, making him a Global Water expert.

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with 🎙️ Ulrike Kelm – Chair of the Women in Water and Sanitation Network

💧 The Women in Water and Sanitation Network is an active ambassador for gender equality, connecting and empowering female professionals, expanding women’s career opportunities, and increasing their visibility.

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with 🎙️ Abdelhakim El Fadil – Ph.D. Researcher and Podcast Host

💧 The “Smart Water Solutions” podcast addresses technical hints and industrial expertise to better exploit water treatment technologies.

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with 🎙️ Gaetane Suzenet – Co-Founder of the European Water Tech Accelerator

💧 The European Water Tech Accelerator aims to boost European water start-ups to drive sustainable growth in the global water sector. 

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with 🎙️ Nicola Lei Ravello – Independent investment consultant and founder of White Stag Investing

💧 White Stag Investing is a research platform for responsible investments, focusing on sustainability as a source of value and stability in the long-term.

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with 🎙️ Brian Moloney – Founder & Managing Director @ StormHarvester

💧 StormHarvester is the leading company in smart drainage systems (and more).

StormHarvester predicts sewer blockages and fatbergs before they cause overflows, and raised a $10.2M Series A in 2025 to roll the system out across Australasia and North America. The British firm reads existing network sensors with machine learning and hyperlocal weather forecasts instead of running hydraulic models, and has taken total funding to $12.56M since 2012.

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with 🎙️ Jim Lauria – VP Sales & Marketing at Mazzei Injector Company

& with 🎙️ Adam Tank – Director, Software Solutions at Transcend Water

💧 Adam & Jim are the co-hosts of the “Water We Talking About?” Podcast

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with 🎙️ Björn Otto – Business Unit and Marketing Director @ Hager + Elsässer

💧 H+E is one of the world’s leading suppliers of water and wastewater technology with more than 30,000 turnkey plants in over 130 countries around the globe.

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with 🎙️ Matthew Silver – Founder & CEO @ Cambrian Innovation

Cambrian Innovation sells treated water and recovered energy by the gallon through its Water-Energy Purchase Agreement, financing the plant up front so industrial customers pay nothing to install and carry no project risk. The model is backed by $17.2M raised in 2019 led by Spring Lane Capital, and the 2020 Baswood acquisition that doubled Cambrian’s installed base.

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Elemental Excelerator, now Elemental Impact, is a nonprofit climate-tech accelerator founded in 2012 that channels catalytic capital, drawn from 47 million dollars under management, into early-stage water and climate startups to push them toward commercial scale. Its water portfolio runs through companies like Capture6, Cambrian Innovation, and Verdi, all backed across funding rounds rather than for an equity return.

💧 Elemental is a non-profit Growth Accelerator supporting entrepreneurs who are building world-changing companies.

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Suez catalogs 49 audited water-treatment products for utilities confronting PFAS contamination, and the route it reaches for first is granular activated carbon, the adsorption media inside its Carbazur filters. Of that portfolio, 42 lines run on physical or biological processes, the workhorses municipalities deploy across North America and beyond.

💧 SUEZ in North America is the US’ second-largest environmental services firm.

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with 🎙️ Sebastien MOURET – Europe and CIS Editor @ Global Water Intelligence

💧 Global Water Intelligence is the leading publisher and events organizer serving the international water industry.

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with 🎙️  Walid KHOURY – Passionate Water Strategist & LinkedIn Influencer

💧 Walid Khoury is followed by over 23’000 water professionals on LinkedIn, where he runs daily water talks under his #WaterQuestion channel, both in written and video form.

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with 🎙️  Ravid LEVY – Founder and Consultant @ RLV-consulting services

💧 Ravid Levy is the founder of RLV consulting services and a former VP Technology for Fluence and CTO for RWL water.

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with 🎙️  Christos CHARISIADIS – R&D Engineer @ Lenntech

Lenntech, a Dutch water-treatment specialist founded in 1999 with water revenue in the US$10M to US$50M band, engineers tertiary recovery for industry’s hardest, brine-heavy wastewater. Its R&D engineer Christos Charisiadis argues Minimum Liquid Discharge beats full Zero Liquid Discharge, recovering nearly as much water at a fraction of the operating cost.

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with 🎙️  Katia WASIAK – CTO and General Manager @ SUEZ WTS

💧 Katia Wasiak is Chief Technical Officer of the Purification and Disinfection BU at SUEZ WTS, as well as General Manager of Degremont Technologies in Switzerland.

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with 🎙️  Ravid LEVY – Founder @ RLV Consulting

💧 Ravid Levy is the founder of RLV consulting services and a former VP Technology for Fluence and CTO for RWL water.

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with 🎙️  Laurent DE FRANCESCHI – Head of Applications @ SUEZ WTS

💧 SUEZ WTS is the industry-leading water technology and process expert to solve the toughest water, wastewater and process challenges.

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