The prize winning project of this year’s Stockholm Junior Water Prize has developed a unique method to identify, quantify and control water contaminants with the potential to revolutionize the future of water quality worldwide.

Two students from the USA, Ryan Thorpe and Rachel Chang, received the 2017 Stockholm Junior Water Prize on Tuesday for their novel approach to detect and purify water contaminated with Shigella, E. coli, Salmonella, and Cholera.

In its citation, the Jury said:

“This year’s winning project embodies the fundamental principle of providing safe drinking water. The winner’s motivation is to eliminate millions of human deaths each year. The project developed a unique, rapid, and sensitive method to identify, quantify and control water contaminants.”

The students constructed a system that detects and purifies water contaminated with Shigella, E. coli, Salmonella, and Cholera more rapidly and sensitively than conventional methods. Their system detects as little as one reproductive bacteria colony per litre instantaneously and eliminates bacterial presence in approximately ten seconds.

In contrast, conventional methods have detection limits of up to 1000 colonies and take one to two days. The students’ novel approach could prevent the contraction and outbreak of waterborne diseases and expand potable water throughout the world.

“This method is applicable to both developed and developing world. The winning project has used fundamental science in an elegant way to address pathogenic bacteria in drinking water. The project has the potential to revolutionize the future of water quality,” the Jury said.

Torgny Holmgren, Executive Director of SIWI commented:

“This is a very inspiring project that takes on one of the world’s biggest challenges, providing clean drinking water for all. Methods like these can unlock huge human potential, when access to safe drinking water, and by extension health, improves among hundreds of millions of people.”

The Stockholm Junior Water Prize competition brings together the world’s brightest young scientists to encourage their continued interest in water and the environment. Teams from 33 countries competed in the 2017 finals.

H.R.H. Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden presented the prize at a ceremony yesterday during World Water Week in Stockholm.

 

As part of its continued water conservation efforts, Ford Motor Company has become the first automaker to commit to the Business Alliance for Water and Climate Initiative, a coalition dedicated to analysing risks and implementing solutions to water issues around the world.

The Alliance is a partnership between the United Nations Global Compact’s CEO Water Mandate, Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), SUEZ and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development.

Ford decided to join the initiative to enable it to help analyse water-related risks, implement collaborative response strategies and reduce impacts on water availability and quality in both direct operations and along the value chain.

The auto manufacturer’s water strategy is aligned with the six core elements of the UN Global Compact CEO Water Mandate, which focuses on:

• direct operations
• supply chain and watershed management
• collective action
• public policy
• community engagement
• transparency

Water use in Vehicle Life Cycle a key issue for Ford

Water use in the Vehicle Life Cycle is among a number of material issues identified in Ford’s latest annual Sustainability Report which focuses on the company’s progress in addressing sustainability across the business, from climate change to ethical business practices within the supply chain.

The report flags up global water challenges, including availability and access, as closely linked to climate change and human rights issues Ford is addressing in its facilities, supply chain and community engagement.

To better assess Ford’s water footprint, the firm estimated life cycle use for a model year 2012 Ford Focus – both the internal combustion engine vehicle (ICEV) and the battery electric vehicle (BEV).

The analysis includes water used in materials production, parts production, vehicle assembly, vehicle use (fuel production and distribution) and vehicle disposal at end of life.

Both direct and indirect water usages were accounted for throughout the life cycle based on a lifetime driving distance of 160,000 miles.

The report says that under a life cycle analysis that the use phase could be seen as the most water-intensive due to the water used to produce the gasoline or electricity that powers the vehicle, highlighting the importance of reducing the water consumption associated with fuel production, as well as increasing vehicle energy efficiency.

Identifying water-intensive sections of supply chain enables Ford to better assess water risks

Ford said that identifying which portions of the supply chain are most water intensive allows it to better assess the business risk associated with using suppliers in potentially water-stressed areas.

The company owns and operates 62 worldwide manufacturing plants, where it directly manages and control its impacts. However, it also relies on an extended supply chain for goods and services it buys from other companies, including freight providers and components manufacturers.

The carmaker has reduced its global water use per vehicle produced from 4.0 cubic meters in 2014 to 3.7 in 2016. It has also saved over 10 billion gallons of water production from 2000 to 2016 – 62 % less water per vehicle produced – through implementing its water strategy, introducing new technologies and developing its processes.

This includes a reduction in water use by 17.5 million litres at its state-of-the-art production line for the 2.0-litre Ford EcoBlue diesel engine at the Dagenham Diesel Centre in the UK which has reduced water and energy consumption per engine produced by more than 50%.

The automaker said it is continuing its program by rolling out real-time water metering to “aggressively manage” its water use and conducting water assessments to determine where new conservation measures can be applied.

Understanding  suppliers’ water use impact

To better understand the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and water use of its supply base, Ford surveys a selection of suppliers every year, using the CDP Supply Chain program’s questionnaires. In 2016, the firm surveyed 242 production suppliers, as well as indirect suppliers of logistics and information technology services.

The selection of suppliers invited to participate is based on a combination of:

• the GHG or water intensity of their activities or the commodities they supply
• the geographic footprint of their operations, including those in water-stressed regions
• the strategic nature of their relationship with Ford

In 2016, 196 suppliers were also invited to respond to the CDP Water questionnaire, and 140 (71 %) responded. Together, the two questionnaires provide qualitative and quantitative information about suppliers’ management of climate risks, GHG emissions and water use.

The carmaker attributes the high response rate of 84% (average for all participating companies: 70 %) to its ongoing support for suppliers through webinars, guidance documents and technical assistance. This includes one-day supplier training programs for calculating, allocating and reporting GHG emissions and a one-day program for water management and water use reductions, developed through the Automotive Industry Action Group (AIAG).

According to the report, the number of Ford suppliers integrating climate change into their business strategies and those reporting water-related targets is continuing to increase. In 2016:

• 82 % integrated climate change into their business strategy (2015: 78 %)
• 64 % reported a water-related target or goal (2015: 41 %)
• 64 % reported having an emissions reduction target (2015: 66 %)

Building supplier capability through PACE

The data obtained through the surveys has helped Ford to identify“hotspots” for GHG emissions and water use. The suppliers have been targeted to participate in its Partnership for A Cleaner Environment (PACE) program.

Ford is building its supplier capability through PACE – the sustainability initiative has been designed to reduce the collective environmental footprint of Ford and the supply chain.

The goal is to share the leading practices implemented in Ford’s own manufacturing plants for reducing energy and water use, GHG and air emissions, and waste generation, thereby enabling suppliers to replicate best practice, minimize their environmental impacts and report their sustainability performance.

To extend the impact further along the supply chain, Ford also encourages its Tier 1 suppliers to cascade the information down to their own suppliers. PACE now includes more than 40 strategic suppliers with the potential to impact nearly 1,100 supplier sites in more than 40 countries – up from just 25 suppliers in 2015.

Via PACE Ford said it has now successfully implemented more than 350 practices at sites shared with key strategic suppliers and hopes they will help to save 550 million gallons of water and cut carbon emissions by 500,000 metric tons over the next five years.

Ford targets further 30% water use reduction per vehicle between 2015-2020

Looking ahead, Ford said it had updated its long-term water strategy in 2016, using results from water futuring work, which considered a number of “what if” scenarios, and CERES AquaGauge results. Aqua Gauge is a comprehensive assessment tool for evaluating corporate management of water risk.

Ford achieved its previous goal two years ahead of schedule – the revised water strategy sets out a new, aggressive target of saving an additional 30% of water per vehicle produced between 2015 and 2020 – this represents a total 72% reduction in water use per vehicle over the period.

“It’s a first step toward achieving our aspiration to manufacture vehicles without withdrawing any potable water for our processes”, the report says. Ford has a goal of zero usage of drinkable water in manufacturing.

CDP: “business case for action to improve water security never been stronger or more urgent”

Ford is the only North American company in the “consumer discretionary” category to earn the CDP’s highest honour for corporate water stewardship.

Morgan Gillespy, Head of Water at CDP commented:

“The business case for action to improve water security has never been stronger or more urgent. We congratulate Ford Motor Company for achieving a position on CDP’s Water A List. The company is responding to market demand for environmental accountability and at the same time making progress toward achieving a water-secure world.”

For the eighth year in a row, the car manufacturer has also won a place on the Ethisphere Institute’s “World’s Most Ethical Company” list – the only automaker to achieve this recognition.

Click here to download Ford Motor Company Sustainability Report 2016/17in full

To enable humans to capture more of the sun’s energy than natural photosynthesis can, scientists have taught bacteria to cover themselves in tiny, highly efficient solar panels to produce useful compounds.

Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley focuses on harnessing inorganic semiconductors that can capture sunlight to organisms such as bacteria that can then use the energy to produce useful chemicals from carbon dioxide and water.

While photosynthesis provides energy for the vast majority of life on Earth, chlorophyll, the green pigment that plants use to harvest sunlight, is relatively inefficient.

Image courtesy of Kelsey K. Sakimoto

“Rather than rely on inefficient chlorophyll to harvest sunlight, I’ve taught bacteria how to grow and cover their bodies with tiny semiconductor nanocrystals,” says Kelsey K. Sakimoto, Ph.D., who carried out the research in the lab of Peidong Yang, Ph.D. “These nanocrystals are much more efficient than chlorophyll and can be grown at a fraction of the cost of manufactured solar panels.”

Many scientists have worked to create artificial photosynthetic systems to generate renewable energy and simple organic chemicals using sunlight. While progress has been made, to date the systems are not efficient enough for commercial production of fuels and feedstocks.

Though few CO2 reduction approaches can rival the energy efficiency and selectivity of biological CO2 fixation, the limited light absorption of natural photosynthesis pales in comparison to that of inorganic semiconductor based photovoltaics.

“The thrust of research in my lab is to essentially ‘supercharge’ nonphotosynthetic bacteria by providing them energy in the form of electrons from inorganic semiconductors, like cadmium sulfide, that are efficient light absorbers,” Yang says. “We are now looking for more benign light absorbers than cadmium sulfide to provide bacteria with energy from light.”

When Sakimoto fed cadmium and the amino acid cysteine, which contains a sulfur atom, to the bacteria, they synthesized cadmium sulfide (CdS) nanoparticles, which function as solar panels on their surfaces.

The hybrid organism, M. thermoacetica-CdS, produces acetic acid from CO2, water and light. “Once covered with these tiny solar panels, the bacteria can synthesize food, fuels and plastics, all using solar energy,” Sakimoto says. “These bacteria outperform natural photosynthesis.”

The bacteria operate at an efficiency of more than 80 percent, and the process is self-replicating and self-regenerating, making it a zero-waste technology.

“Synthetic biology and the ability to expand the product scope of CO2 reduction will be crucial to poising this technology as a replacement, or one of many replacements, for the petrochemical industry,” Sakimoto says.

Commenting on whether the inorganic-biological hybrids have commercial potential, Sakimoto said:

“Many current systems in artificial photosynthesis require solid electrodes, which is a huge cost. Our algal biofuels are much more attractive, as the whole CO2-to-chemical apparatus is self-contained and only requires a big vat out in the sun.”

However, he points out that the system still requires some tweaking to tune both the semiconductor and the bacteria. He also suggests that it is possible that the hybrid bacteria he created may have some naturally occurring analog. “A future direction, if this phenomenon exists in nature, would be to bioprospect for these organisms and put them to use,” he says.

According to the researchers, the advances and variations of the inorganic-biological hybrid organism concept are driving the work towards out-competing traditional approaches to chemical production and augment the ever expanding portfolio of next generation green technologies.

Click here to watch a video about the research