Water Purification Market is BOOMIN’

Water Purification Market is BOOMIN’

The water purification market is booming, and Rich ‘Raz’ Razgaitis, co-founder of FloWater is right in the middle of it. He's seen firsthand how the industry, already worth $43.2 billion in 2022, is set to triple by 2032 and wrote all about it in this Forbes article. A big reason for this growth? People are more aware of the stuff in their tap water, like PFAS chemicals, that regular water treatment can't always get rid of. Plus, as more people ditch plastic bottles for reusable ones, they're also getting interested in home water purifiers. 

With growth comes competition, and that leads to more innovation, more choices for the consumer, and the reduction in prices. Raz writes “While I’ve found businesses are currently the largest buyer of purified water refill station systems, there is a massive untapped market in direct-to-consumer sales.” As concerns about clean water grow, more and more folks want to make sure the water they drink at home is safe. Raz thinks the future is all about making water purifiers that are smaller, simpler, and easy for anyone to use.

Recapping Aquatech Amsterdam

Aquatech Amsterdam 2023 made a big comeback this year, and turned a few heads (okay A LOT of heads) with the latest in water tech. After a quiet 2019 due to travel issues, this year's show brought in a crowd of 24,000 and over 800 exhibitors. They focused on hot topics like getting rid of PFAS, cleaning up city wastewater, and new ways to recycle water. Highlights included better reverse osmosis tech, smart digital tools, and new approaches to tackle PFAS. The Netherlands Pavilion was a big hit, showcasing everything from robot inspections of water systems to smarter ways to monitor water use. We’re hoping when they come back in 2025 they’ll finally have robot dogs…

MORE: WQA Radio podcast discusses Aquatech Amsterdam (12 min)

Is Road Salt the New PFAS?

As winter rolls in, lots of places use road salt to keep streets ice-free, but this common solution isn't so great for the environment. This salt, mainly sodium chloride, persists in the environment, messing with both land and water as it becomes a “forever contaminant.” It's not just about icy roads – it's also about keeping our water clean and our lake life healthy. The salt messes up the water's oxygen and nutrient balance, leading to less oxygen in lakes and more problems for fish and plants. Canada's working on fixing this, but there are many contributors to the problem, such as agricultural runoff, discharges from water softeners and drainage from mine waste and geological salt deposits.

UChicago Smarties Discuss PFAS

In the most recent episode of the "Big Brains" podcast, an educational podcast from the University of Chicago, Linda Birnbaum, an environmental health scientist, chatted about all things PFAS. Y’all know the deal– we listened to the pod so you don’t have to, and here are some key quotes we pulled out:

• “A couple of years ago I pulled off the numbers of papers that were published on PFAS in PubMed, and what you saw was essentially an exponential increase in publications. The ones that have been tested have all been shown to cause health problems.”

• “They exist in the soil, they exist in the sediment, they exist in the water, and some of them exist in the air. And they migrate all over the world, these are very mobile chemicals as well.”

• “Many drinking water systems are going to find themselves out of compliance with the new EPA regulations when they come through. And so many, many water supplies are going to have to put in expensive filtration systems.”

What else is happening:

• Hydrogeologists from UMass have created a new method to figure out when seawater might seep into underground freshwater sources

• WCP releases a report on arsenic in drinking water and discusses solutions from the industry

• Atlantic Coast Water Clinic, a Kinetico dealer, releases 9 Easy Ways to Use Less Water

• Our friends across the pond write about three health symptoms that come from drinking hard water