Rethinking Water: How Urban Reuse and Innovative Tech Can Transform Our Cities
"By connecting technical knowledge with indigenous wisdom, we can become smarter and wiser about how we manage our water resources." — Kyle Pickett
As the world grapples with an escalating water crisis, the need to rethink our approach to water management has never been more urgent. With approximately 75% of the world's wastewater going untreated, the implications for both the environment and human health are staggering. Urban areas, in particular, face unique challenges as population densities rise and climate change intensifies. In this context, the concept of urban water reuse emerges not just as a solution, but as a transformative opportunity to redefine our relationship with this vital resource.
In this episode of Liquid Assets, host Ravi Kurani engages in a thought-provoking conversation with Kyle Pickett, co-founder of the William J. Worthen Foundation. Together, they explore the innovative strategies and technologies that are reshaping urban water reuse, turning what was once considered a niche practice into a mainstream solution for sustainable living.
Kyle's journey into the world of water reuse began with a passion for sustainability and a desire to make complex water concepts accessible to everyone. He emphasizes that the future of water management lies in demystifying reclaimed water and breaking down the barriers that prevent communities from embracing it. The “yuck factor” often associated with recycled water can deter even the most environmentally conscious individuals. However, Kyle argues that education and transparency are key to overcoming these misconceptions. By showcasing successful projects, such as the Salesforce Tower in San Francisco, which saves over 7 million gallons of potable water annually, he illustrates how luxury developments can lead the way in sustainable practices.
Listeners will find themselves captivated by the discussions surrounding the integration of innovative technologies in water reuse systems. Kyle highlights the importance of advanced filtration and monitoring systems that ensure reclaimed water is safe and effective for various uses, from irrigation to toilet flushing. These technologies not only enhance the efficiency of water management but also contribute to a circular economy where water is treated as a valuable resource rather than a disposable commodity.
What you'll hear in this episode:
- The critical need for urban water reuse in the face of growing scarcity
- Strategies for overcoming the "yuck factor" and educating communities on sustainability
- The role of technology in advancing greywater and blackwater reuse systems
- The interconnectedness of water, energy, and carbon in fostering sustainable urban environments
- Visionary ideas for the future of water management and community engagement
Listen On:
Watch the interview:
Meet Kyle
Kyle Pickett is a visionary leader in the field of sustainable water management and the co-founder of the William J. Worthen Foundation. With a background in environmental science, Kyle is dedicated to making complex water concepts accessible to everyone, from policymakers to everyday citizens. His passion for addressing water scarcity and pollution drives his commitment to transforming how communities perceive and utilize water resources.
At the Worthen Foundation, Kyle focuses on demystifying water reuse through educational initiatives and engaging resources. He believes that effective solutions require not only innovative technologies but also a shift in public perception. By leading tours of successful water reuse systems, he provides stakeholders with firsthand experiences that highlight the benefits of reclaimed water, fostering open dialogue and collaboration within communities.
In addition to his work at the foundation, Kyle actively participates in various initiatives aimed at promoting water stewardship and environmental education. His enthusiasm for connecting people with vital conversations surrounding water management is evident in every project he undertakes. With a blend of expertise and a genuine desire to make a difference, Kyle Pickett is paving the way for a more sustainable future in urban water reuse.
The Book, Movie, or Show
Kyle Pickett shares his current favorite read, "Emergent Strategy" by Adrienne Maree Brown. This thought-provoking book delves into the principles of adaptability, resilience, and the interconnectedness of systems, making it a perfect fit for anyone interested in sustainability and social change. brown emphasizes the importance of understanding the dynamics of our environment and how small, intentional actions can lead to significant transformations.
"Emergent Strategy" encourages readers to embrace complexity and uncertainty, advocating for a mindset that values collaboration and community engagement. Kyle resonates with the book's core message of aligning personal values with actionable goals, which is crucial in his work on water management and sustainability. He reflects on how the insights from the book inform his approach to fostering meaningful connections and driving impactful change within communities.
Transcript
00:00
Ravi Kurani
Welcome to Liquid Assets. I'm your host, Ravi Kurani. Liquid Assets is a podcast where we talk about the intersection of business, policy, and technology, all as it looks at water.
00:11
Ravi Kurani
Imagine a world where your toilet flush helps cool a skyscraper. Sounds like science fiction. Think again. I'm Ravi Kurani, and on this episode of Liquid Assets, we're diving into the future of urban water reuse with Kyle Pickett, co founder of the William J. Worthen foundation. From battling the yuck factor to harnessing cutting edge membrane technology, we'll explore how innovative thinking is transforming our relationship with water. Did you know that a single building in San Francisco is saving over 7 million gallons of potable water annually? That's just the tip of the iceberg. Kyle's not an expert. He's a visionary on a mission to make complex water concepts accessible to everyone. Well, unpack the surprising links between water conservation and climate change and how a holistic approach to water stewardship could reshape our cities.
01:05
Ravi Kurani
Get ready for a mind bending journey through purple pipes, grey water systems, and revolutionary ideas that are turning our water challenges into opportunities. By the end of this episode, you'll see the hidden potential flowing through every drain. Are you ready to rethink everything you thought you knew about water?
01:27
Kyle Pickett
Hi, my name is Kyle Pickett. I am the co founder and vp of the board for the William Worthen foundation. It's a design and policy and practice network for people working in the design, construction and related industry.
01:41
Ravi Kurani
Kyle, how are you doing today?
01:42
Kyle Pickett
I'm doing great, Ravi, thanks for inviting me to chat with you.
01:45
Ravi Kurani
Yeah, of course. Thanks for coming on. I know both of us have a ton of stuff going on. You're like moving out of the bay. I already moved out of the bay to New York, but thanks a ton for taking the time.
01:55
Kyle Pickett
It's an important conversation. Happy to be part of it.
01:57
Ravi Kurani
So I want to jump right in to the William J. Worthen foundation. We had talked a little bit about that during our kind of pre call, but can you just kind of talk about what is the foundation? How did you get into it? Your story there is absolutely amazing. So I'm not going to give any spoilers. I'm going to hand the mic over.
02:15
Kyle Pickett
Awesome. So the William Worthen foundation is named after my late life partner and business partner, Bill Werthen. We started a company called Urban Fabric. We are a sustainability consulting and communications practice with an office here in San Francisco and also in New York City. We really focus on lead type certifications. Well, certifications for buildings, for projects, but then also expanding the conversation around the value add that sustainability brings to a developer, to an owner. So we won a project called 181 Fremont. It's an 800 foot mixed use tower here in San Francisco. The J. Paul company, the owner, wanted the building to be LEed Platinum, but the only way to get there was through some sort of resource stewardship strategy within the building. Geothermal wasn't going to work. Wind energy, solar, all of those things weren't going to work.
03:03
Kyle Pickett
The only way to hit Lee platinum was through a water reuse strategy. So it was pretty new here in San Francisco, we helped write article twelve C, which is the initial mandate around water reuse in new construction, over 250,000 sqft. So that was a conversation that were having with the developer, but at that point, water reuse still was very much a yuck factor. Their response to us was, there is no way we're going to put a water reuse system in our luxury tower. So we recognized real quickly that there needed to be some education with developers, designers and owners around water reuse as a strategy, as a viable strategy within buildings. Because it is all over the world, Australia, Israel, Japan, they've all had systems in operation, not to mention direct potable reuse in Africa.
03:51
Kyle Pickett
So there was an opportunity here to kind of demystify really technical information and bring things down to digestible chunks of text and infographics. And we did that through the arm of the urban fabric Collaborative, which was the nonprofit arm to our for profit company. Midway through the production of our water Reuse Practice guide, Bill passed away. And so we recalibrated the organization to a foundation in his name, and then carried on the production of this water reuse Practice guide, which we evidently released to the public in January of 2018. And then everything like it hit the market and it went everywhere, literally spent 200,000 airline miles going to different conferences talking about water reuse as a design strategy.
04:39
Kyle Pickett
And so this was really an opportunity to really uplift the conversation and have a meaningful conversation around the Yuk factor, the technical components, the water reuse within buildings. But then also, what does it mean as a potential differentiator for owners and developers in the marketplace? So the foundation continued on a life of its own. We just published seven volumes of our building decarbonization practice guide. So the whole goal of the organization is to take really technical topics and demystify through infographics and digestible chunks of text, so that anyone, whether you are a policymaker, a developer, a student, can pick up one of our guides and just become better informed about that topic.
05:20
Ravi Kurani
That's super inspirational. And it's so funny you say that, because one of the goals of this podcast is to kind of make it a lot more approachable for the regular layperson to understand what is water. Right. A lot of water policy is convoluted. Just the way that we even use water is kind of obstructed. Like, people don't know that. A lot of it goes to agriculture. Very small portion of it go back into the households for taking showers. And so like just kind of really bringing to the top of mind of the consumer that hey look, we can actually, with our money, make decisions on the products we buy that have particular usage of water.
05:54
Ravi Kurani
It's just really inspirational to hear that seven volumes in of kind of decarbonization as well is the larger goal of water being one small part of that as well.
06:04
Kyle Pickett
Yeah, and water, energy and carbon are all inexplicably linked. We cannot decouple of those things. But that is the tendency that we deal with here in California. Approximately 7% of the state's energy budget goes to pumping water up and over the grapevine to the La basin. Also, additionally, the water supply line down to southern California goes through the Central Valley, where there's a lot of groundwater pumping for agriculture. California is one of those top producing agricultural regions. So it's a really important economic component of the conversation. But again, because there's been so much groundwater pumping, it's actually causing land subsides in that Central Valley. And so like around Fresno, there's about 16ft of land subsides, which impacts infrastructure like rail road, the water supply lines down to southern California. There's really a lot of opportunity to have a much more holistic conversation around water.
06:58
Kyle Pickett
Water is life, but we have an expectation that when we turn on the tap that it will be there. And then once it goes down the drain, we don't even think about it anymore. And we can't continue that kind of business as normal. We actually need to be thinking about water in a much more holistic, you know, kind of strategy. And actually there's a group here in California called the local, it's a localizing California waters conference. And so they bring stakeholders together from urban agriculture, forestry, fisheries, tribes, et cetera. Because watersheds don't have boundaries. I mean they have boundaries, but they don't stop at like a county boundary or a state line. So we need to also have better conversations with the various stakeholders around. What does it mean for a holistic kind of water stewardship kind of strategy.
07:48
Kyle Pickett
But then also at the same time, there's. Tribes have thousands of years of land management practices. They have all this knowledge, mostly verbal, some pass down. But we need to be able to connect with tribes and that indigenous knowledge and uplift them as part of the means to also address our water needs going forward. Why not take advantage of that kind of knowledge and skillset?
08:13
Ravi Kurani
That's so interesting. You say that I kind of imagine two sides of the spectrum as we're using technology to gather data, information and knowledge from the kind of world around us, right? There's all these agricultural sensors, all these pump sensors. But if you look at the other side of the spectrum, this book, braiding sweetgrass, kind of comes to mind of there is a hunt of indigenous knowledge of people that used to live here, that I worked with the land, that know the land. And that, in a sense, is also another data stream. It's another knowledge stream. Right. And so if you connect both of those together, we're going to be a lot more smarter and wiser about what we're doing versus kind of looking at only a. Right. Looking at one particular thing or one particular data stream entirely.
08:55
Kyle Pickett
Well, and we need to keep at it, too. I totally agree, rowdy. And yes, and. But we also need to keep at it. California got a whole bunch of precipitation last year. Our reservoirs are pretty full at the moment. And so people are kind of kicking back on their laurels and be like, okay, well, the emergency is over. Well, that's not how climate works. That's not how weather patterns work. That's not planning for the future. That is living in the moment. And if we're going to continue to advance the economic engine that is California and the US, we need to be smarter about our water policies. Because water goes into manufacturing, it goes into silicon manufacturing, it goes into agriculture production, it goes. I have. There's drinking water in our toilets right now. So flushing our toilets with drinking water is waste.
09:40
Kyle Pickett
We need to change that methodology as well. So there's a lot of opportunity, have better conversations. But I think the key is meeting people where they are. In our early conversations in the firm with water reuse strategies as a means for building certifications, the yuck factor was very pervasive. So our team decided, well, if we can't have fun doing what we're doing, then why are we doing this? And so our team decided that the poop emoji was going to be our little mascot. So we had poop emoji buttons, hacks. There was a big pool flow. It's pretty crazy, but we found that with the yuck factor, these kinds of conversations are difficult for some people. And so if we can have a start the conversation with some ice breaking, with some of the poop jokes are endless.
10:25
Kyle Pickett
We like to say that water has all been dinosaur poop before. What we have is what we have. Right. So what we're trying to do is just accelerate the filtration process, celebrate the natural processes that happen geologically that filter our water, but do it in such a way that it saves money, saves potable water, and just matches up non potable supply with non potable uses, which is the vast majority of our need, especially within commercial buildings.
10:51
Ravi Kurani
I want to go back to the 181 Fremont example you gave and the findings that you had. You mentioned two things. There was this. First is this yuck factor. And then the second is the technical side. I love the kind of implementation of infographics and emojis and really making the message simple so that the policymakers, the people that are building the buildings, understand what's going on. Let's double click into the yuck factory. You brought that up just a second ago. What strategies did you implement? And if you could kind of verbalize that for the audience, what did you tell to 181 Fremont that got them to understand what is not the yup factor? How did you combat that?
11:28
Kyle Pickett
Yeah. So a couple things come to mind. We actually took the design team, the leadership, design team and ownership on a tour of systems in operation. So went down to Sydney, Australia, kind of kicked the tires and lift the lids on some of these systems so that they can see that and see and smell that. These. These methodologies have been in existence for many years. They're proven, they're tested. They're not. It won't make your pet sick. That's one of the things about the sales team at 181 Fremont, because the top third is a luxury, is luxury condos. And so the sales team is initially pretty concerned that there could be a discoloration within toilets, that it can make pets sick, that their luxury tenants and buyers may not want something that reuses like that. So the.
12:17
Kyle Pickett
Between taking the design team and ownership on a tour of systems currently in operation so they can see what's happening, there isn't that odor. They can see the water going through the filtration system and coming out the other end, combined with using a little bit of humor to break down the barrier around that yuck factor so that we can have a much more meaningful conversation. And so we also train the sales team on talking points related to water reuse. Flushing our toilets with drinking water is waste. California is currently in the drought. I mean, all of these different things. Come to find out, actually, that the vast majority of the sales team didn't even need any of those talking points, because when they started talking to potential buyers of these condos, they're like, cool. No, we shouldn't be doing that.
13:03
Kyle Pickett
We are in a drought. And so the discriminating buyer recognizes sustainability as being part of a value add to their investment, not just from a water standpoint, but also from that energy use standpoint as well.
13:15
Ravi Kurani
Wow. That's kind of a flip of the script where it sounds like initially we had come to the table thinking we need to build up an entire sales team that's going to have the messaging and all the sales points. But like you just said, a discerning buyer actually finds that as a plus point. And the problem is that our buildings don't have them. Right? And so now when you actually provide them as a product, people are willing to, quote unquote, buy it.
13:39
Kyle Pickett
Totally. It's funny, though, because it's just like the public, I think, is generally a little bit more ready for the conversation. But developers are pretty conservative. There is a budget. There is a first cost. Dual plumbing. A building essentially adds a bunch of cost to include purple pipe as part of the reclaimed water supply. But when we look at water and sewer rates, escalation over national average, we're looking at seven to 13% nationally between sewage and water escalation rates. So really, for us, the conversation was to. There were several different things with the developer. One, an initial first cost can protect your investment in the long run by controlling some of those water rates, by reusing a lot of the water on site or as much as possible on site.
14:25
Kyle Pickett
The other piece of that, too was that because legislation like SB 966, which is one of the last pieces of legislation that Governor Brown signed into law, it directs the California Water Control Board, in collaboration with the Building Standards Commission, streamlined rules and regulations for onsite reuse across the state. So there was a piece to the conversation with the developer and owner about the value add of having a high level of sustainability within their building, not just from the protection of the asset in the long term, but also differentiating themselves in the marketplace right now, that if they have, if they're planning to build a building and flip it for maximum profit, still, sustainability is the best way to go.
15:09
Kyle Pickett
A high level of sustainability is the best way to go, because that is added into the overall value of the building once it's flipped. But then if they're holding on to the building as part of a long term portfolio and strategy, that controls a lot of those long term o and m costs. So it's a really important and exciting conversation to have. But sometimes owners and developers need their handheld through the process, and recognizing that's where people are and meeting people where they are, that, I think, is the key to really moving the needle is to understand where people are. Where's the pinch point? What's the hangout, if it's emotional, if it's technical, or if it's psychological? So kind of diving into that, I think it was probably one of the more equally important pieces of developing the resource, but then also recognizing what.
15:54
Kyle Pickett
What are people's hang ups for not implementing this kind of strategy? Is it policy or code construct? Is it even allowable by code? That's one. What kind of conversations can people have to at least develop a pilot project? Or if it is allowable by code, why aren't we doing it?
16:09
Ravi Kurani
And you'd mentioned, just to kind of reiterate, SB 966 was signed in by Governor Brown to basically do reuse across the state, correct?
16:18
Kyle Pickett
Yeah. The goal, so I know that the working group has been meeting, the goal is to really fully deploy that legislation in early this next year. But the whole thing was to streamline rules and regs across the state to allow for reuse strategies. Big piece right now is through the international code. It's NSF 350. So there is the blue Ribbon Commission, which is a group of national PUC utilities around water and wastewater use, developing strategies to hopefully kind of realign the NSF 350 code so that it's more broadly allowable, not just here in California through SB 966, but a much more broad revision of NS 350 to allow for reuse.
17:07
Ravi Kurani
Yeah, makes sense. Okay, I want to go back to the 181 Fremont, and we had talked about the kind of yuck factor, which completely makes sense. If we move to now the technical side, what does that look like? If we can kind of. You can verbalize that to the audience of. How did you explain that? How did you make it simple? How does the purple pipe work?
17:25
Kyle Pickett
Yeah. So there are a number of different technologies out there for water reuse systems. Actually, the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission has what they call a living machine around their building. So there's a number of what you see are planners, but the system actually filters through what is an, essentially an accelerated tidal flow wetland. And so that's how a living machine operates. There's also mechanically based systems which are much more popular, especially in larger construction. And like 181 Fremont has a membrane bioreactor. So essentially what that does is there are all these little holes in these nanotubes that is the fraction of a width of a human hair, so the water molecules can get through, but then everything else gets. Gets trapped. And so what is in 181 Fremont is a membrane bioreactor greywater reuse system.
18:17
Kyle Pickett
So it's not treating black water, it's not treating salads, it's not treating dishwasher, anything that has, like the organics. So it's a greywater system. It's projected to save about 1.3 million gallons of potable water a year when the building is in full operation. And because Covid and the pandemic, that kind of changed things and how people work. And I know that the two thirds commercial part of that building is undergoing some revision. So it's unclear what operation will look like based upon the capacity of that building. But we need flows in order to make the system work. So it'll be interesting to see what happens on that side.
18:58
Kyle Pickett
But, like, Salesforce tower has a black water system and their class A commercial, and they have their projective save about 7.1 million gallons of potable water a year because they're treating all that water on site. That includes cooling tower, blowdown, everything from urinals, toilets, dishwashers, etcetera. So it's. It can move the needle. One building can move the needle. 7.1 million gallons of cold boil water a year. Crazy.
19:24
Ravi Kurani
Yeah. Can you kind of give us a quick spectrum of what is gray water versus black water? Like, wherever it seems like you can kind of filter everything or you can filter some things. Where does it. What does that look like? Where does it start?
19:36
Kyle Pickett
Yeah, so black water is. Blackwater is everything that includes the biologicals and some of the chemical. Like stormwater. Stormwater is extremely dirty. There are oils and minerality that come off of the tires and concrete. So stormwater is very dirty. It would need to go through blackwater system. Gray water is essentially all those things of blackwater, but not toilets, not dishwashers, not cooling tower. So the real, the dirtier supplies of water are considered part of that black water spectrum, as opposed to that greywater. But like evaporative cooling, foundation, drainage, all of that can be reused, captured and reused on site.
20:17
Ravi Kurani
And what happens in a greywater system with the opposite of the stuff that's not being filtered that the cooling water towers, the storm water, the toilets, does that also just go back in the waste stream? Again, that goes into.
20:27
Kyle Pickett
It does, yeah, it does. I mean, the real opportunity from a financial benefit is in the blackwater systems because it does capture everything. But again, like with you have to dual plumb a building. So what does that mean? You have the original plumbing that brings water in from the street, from the municipal supply supplies water up through the building from cooling tower. I mean, just all of the things that you need within a building. With membrane bioreactor, we can capture all of that. With black water, we can capture all of that and reuse that water on site.
20:59
Kyle Pickett
So again, that metric around Salesforce tower of 7.1 million gallons of potable water a year saved means that a lot of the water that's being produced or used on site can go back through the system and be reused for cooling tower blowdown, for urinal flushing, for non potable needs. So within a commercial building, up to 90% of the building's water needs is generally non potable in nature. So there's a lot of opportunity there. And like a multifamily or mixed use, it's usually about 50% of the need within a multifamily building can be non potable in nature. Wow. Okay. A lot of opportunity for use.
21:41
Ravi Kurani
Recycle anywhere between 90% to 50%, depending on whether you're commercial or residential, of your water for non potable use, which is basically non drinking water, correct?
21:51
Kyle Pickett
Yeah, yeah. I mean, and there's a lot of residential applications as well. I mean, there's a company called Hydroloop out of Europe that is attempting to make a foothold here. That would be a single family residential kind of reuse system. Pretty cool. There is the whole laundry, the landscape methodology as well, that you can send that water from the washing machine out to the lawn. Good. So there's a lot of residential applications. The vast majority of the current opportunity, I'll say, because the technology exists and the finances there is within multifamily or commercial applications.
22:27
Ravi Kurani
Yeah, makes sense. And what's stopping, I guess the question here is, what is the decision between doing it on site, on premise, at the building level, versus, I think, about the kind of built environment. Right. I mean, especially being here in New York, there's a lot of these older buildings, and I get that 181 Fremont was new, and you have to put in new capital expenditure on new construction. But is there an opportunity to do this at the wastewater plant? Like, can you just make a bigger version of this membrane bioreactor, put it at the wastewater plant, and then get them to recycle 50, 90% and send it back into the drinking into, like, the regular water system. Why are we doing that? And if we are, what's the difference? What's the discrepancy?
23:08
Kyle Pickett
Yeah, well, right now, it's not allowable by code. That is the fundamental piece to that. So the regulatory environment right now just does not allow for it. And I think that's really what the blue ribbon commission is trying to do, is to streamline those rules and regs nationwide, create kind of policy frameworks. The blue ribbon commission talks about log reduction targets. So that's essentially pathogens within the supply line. The conversation is definitely shifting more to, like, a health side of things. So what does it mean to protect public health related to water reuse? And I think that's a really important conversation to have that the utilities will continue to have. But when it comes down to the brass tacks of that, it's just not allowable by code, which is what SB 966 is meant to do.
23:56
Kyle Pickett
San Francisco has something called a purple bipe district. So the. Let me take a step back. So article twelve C within the sitting county, San Francisco mandates that any new construction, over 250,000 births per foot, has to have a water recycling system. That legislation was recently updated in last year to lower that. That square footage to 100,000. So any new construction over a hundred thousand square foot in the city and county of San Francisco has to have a water recycling system. There's also in San Francisco something called a purple pipe.
24:26
Kyle Pickett
And so ultimately, the goal is that the PUC would also be supplying reclaimed water down a purple pipeline, down essentially the center of Mission street, and start supplying reclaimed water to some of these buildings that are dual plum, that can take in additional water supplies for their flushing, cooling tower, irrigation needs, etcetera. So those things, I think, are what the. What the city and county of San Francisco is looking like. I mean, part of the reason why the legislation is even advanced than adopted to begin with is because the area was growing so rapidly that the PUC could not keep up with the infrastructure upgrades needed in order to continue on normal operations.
25:08
Kyle Pickett
And so to mandate reuse, it actually took some pressure off of the existing infrastructure so they can, I think, more deliberately plan what the future needs are related to the reclaimed water supply lines and the buildings currently built, being built within the purple pipe district. But yeah, it is kind of chicken egg horse cart a little bit, but the basis of this is the code and regulatory construct needs to be redefined to allow for it while also protecting public health.
25:39
Ravi Kurani
I'm seeing parallels with the net metering conversation we had from an electrical side, right? Because we had all these solar panels that went up, and Pacific Gas and electric, Pg and E or SoCal Edison, a bunch of other states across the US, and utilities basically purchased back that energy and then you could actually get paid or subsidized to put that energy back in the grid, which kind of makes sense from this purple pipe district of. I almost wonder, is there a cheaper rate that you're paying for this purple piped water that's non potable, or is it kind of still the same rate? Do they have any sort of rate discrepancy?
26:13
Kyle Pickett
Well, there, it doesn't even exist yet. So I know that's part of the future plans, is to, you know, put a reclaimed water supply line that is city supplied down the center of mission to start supplying some of these buildings that are not producing it on site. But yeah, there's related to that question earlier around the utility being able to implement their own membrane bioreactors, and that kind of stuff is happening. So, like in Namibia, Africa, they have a direct portable reuse system online where they do mix waste stream water that has been cleaned through reverse osmosis, through disinfection needs, and then mixed in with potable water supply and sent back to the city. So direct potable reuse is a thing. It's viable. It's actually been in existence in 50 years in Namibia, Africa. So I think that's the future of where we're headed.
27:09
Kyle Pickett
But, you know, people are like, wait, I'm drinking my wastewater. No. So, you know, here in the US, we need to have a much more deliberate, widespread kind of conversation. I think, you know, organizations like the EPA and water reuse, California, or the parent organization, water reuse, you know, has. Has a place, you know, interfacing with the public and getting them used to these ideas, because our water needs are just continuing to escalate and we need to be smarter about it from a much more holistic outlook.
27:41
Ravi Kurani
Kyle, I want to change gears a little bit, and I always like to kind of dig deep into the mind.
27:49
Kyle Pickett
Of what makes Kyle dig deep or dive deep. Right.
27:51
Ravi Kurani
Dive deep, I should say dive deep.
27:54
Ravi Kurani
Why did you start this sustainability consulting agency? What was kind of. If you were to kind of rewind back and I know hindsight 2020, there's no straight line to where you are today, to what kind of brought you here, but are there any moments that you had or inflection points where you're like, hey, this particular event really got me to think about sustainability or water or whatever that might be.
28:16
Kyle Pickett
I grew up in the Pacific Northwest, and so I was raised with kind of a respect for nature and for resource stewardship. It didn't really manifest in the way or in the words of resource stewardship, but it was, we'd go camping, and it would be anything we take in, we take out. Leave no trace. And so I think that was kind of the early piece for me. And then when my late husband, Bill Worthen, who was FaI, he was a fellow to architect and a fellow through USDC, he was the director for sustainability for the American Institute of Architects for a couple of years. And then when he came back, he was like, well, what should I do? Should I go work for a big firm? Should I hang out my own shingle? And I was like, whatever makes you happy.
29:00
Kyle Pickett
And so he hung out his own shingle, and within just a few months, I was proofreading his proposals before they would go out, because he couldn't spell to save his life or add up a fee table. So suddenly, work was being won, and he and I decided that it was best for us to do this together. We had a thing. He was bright lights, shiny things. I was tick tock. How do we get there? How do we deploy? What do people need in order to better understand the strategy that we're proposing or the technical components of a design or sustainability construct? Does everyone understand that? So, like, not being the architect in the room, I also had some flexibility and being able to ask and challenge questions around things that are preconceived or standard design practices.
29:46
Kyle Pickett
But we can think of that in a different way. Not being an architect, or at least I'm not an architect. So that really kicked things up for us. And we won terminal one at SFO, 181 Fremont, number of VA hospitals and some wineries and stuff like that, and then saw an opportunity to open up an office in New York and kind of expand that bright light on the east coast as well. And that's when we brought in Wolfgang Werner to do that.
30:09
Kyle Pickett
But it was after Bill passed that the industry looked to me and our directors for leadership and continued to advance the firm, but then also at the same time, advanced the foundation, his name, where we took a lot of the technical pieces of deploying sustainable action in practice and flip it into meaningful, accessible, professional education for the industry through the foundation. And that's where I'm getting a lot of my dollies. I get little goosebumps from the work that we do and the connections that we make. And so I think it's just so important to, with a topic as big as a changing climate that water, energy, carbon are inextricably linked, that we recognize that for what it is, that our building stock is a primary offender of emissions.
30:55
Kyle Pickett
So decarbonizing, doing water reuse, we do water reuse on site with solar energy or wind energy. That's energy that's produced. So if that's a net negative at that point, and I think, I mean, I never thought I would be in this world. That's not what I grew up with. But here I am and with a value around water stakeholder engagement and education. And I just, I love connecting people with these conversations and seeing where we can go together, which is actually a.
31:24
Ravi Kurani
Perfect segue to you guys are redoing the water Reuse practice guide, which is coming out, I think, next year. Let's talk a little about that. I think we dug really deep, we dove deep into a lot of what we talked about earlier, but what's going to be different in this new guide?
31:39
Kyle Pickett
Yeah. So just to kind of frame people with what the original guide was about, back in 2016, 2017, people were just very unfamiliar with water reuse, even as a concept. So introducing people to the concept of water reuse, what does that mean? What are the kind of technologies out there? Is it permittable? Is it allowable within my jurisdiction? If it's not, what are the kinds of questions that I can be asking of my local code officials and regulatory environment to allow for a pilot project? Who are some of the design teams and who are some of the vendors that are at the forefront of this? It's really important for us to remain technology agnostic as a foundation. Here's what you need to know. Make the best choice for your project. Introducing and kind of laying out the conversation for water reuse.
32:23
Kyle Pickett
Why are people uncomfortable with it? Where has it been done before? But then also, where is it going in the future? And that's kind of where we left things off at the end of the water use practice guide. Since then, it's been downloaded over 5000 times globally. It's part of the UN Global Compact Library of Resources. Again, I spent an embarrassing amount of airline miles in 2018 and 2019 flying around the country, places here in North America to talk about water reuse as a design opportunity. And so in this new guide or this update, we're going to be talking about water stewardship in a much more holistic kind of strategy. Definitely be covering the water reuse, the water use policies, but then also this nexus of water, energy and carbon.
33:03
Kyle Pickett
There are companies out there that are producing, that are reusing water on site, that are capturing the biosolids and transforming it into high value compost. There are so many different opportunities out there and I think we need to, in this update, we're going to be talking about water stewardship as a much more holistic kind of strategy. Who are the stakeholders also involved? What are the kinds of questions that people can be asking? But again, it is a design guide tool towards developers, owners, architects and hopefully policymakers as well. And so we hope that our guides by the technical enough for policymakers to become really comfortable with this and work with us on advancing legislation and policies within their own jurisdiction.
33:47
Ravi Kurani
That's awesome. It's.
33:47
Kyle Pickett
So we're aiming to start up next month, actually. So there's a lot in motion, but it's a really exciting time to actually have this conversation.
33:56
Ravi Kurani
I'd actually love to, when you guys are done with that, actually host it up on the show notes as well, or potentially on liquid assets, I think it'd be great for audience to also get access to it.
34:06
Kyle Pickett
I'm here for it. Thank you.
34:07
Ravi Kurani
Yeah, of course. And it's really awesome you say that. I remember a conversation I was having with John Lane from the International Water Week in Stockholm, and there was a part in the segment that I think is actually live now on liquid assets, but it was around basically making a cohesive plan or series of bullet points that you can hand upstream or downstream to everybody from local educators at schools, to the city level, to the county level, to even federal government or the state level. And it's this kind of nesting fractal of here's how you can physically, actually tangibly do something at the city level all the way to kind of guide these larger, more ephemeral policy nudges from the federal level. And so what you're saying kind of sounds very similar to what we had as a conversation a few weeks ago.
35:00
Kyle Pickett
Yeah, it's kind of funny, though, because like we have, we love the idea of advancing big ideas, big goals, big, hairy, audacious goals, as we like to say in the firm. But at the same time, it is a grassroots kind of action. So what do designers need to know in order to implement that or incorporate that into their design constructs without really the client asking for it? What does it mean for an engineer to design a dual plumbed building that has other sustainability components to it, too, these interlocking components of energy, water and carbon that I think it's important to have the global view around the water stewardship, but I think the action really happens at the grassroots level. And so I think you mentioned something about essentially the workforce, and we see that as a big opportunity.
35:49
Kyle Pickett
So one side, well, the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, Paula Quijo, who's director of water resources here, calls it the silver tsunami. So they have engineers that are turning out, that are retiring, and there aren't enough people coming up through the education system in order to service those systems equally. Or similarly, when it comes to membrane bioreactors and water reuse systems, we don't need a level one wastewater engineer taking care of that system. We need a credentialed skilled technician who can manage these systems. As more and more of these systems come online, so the foundation sees it as inextricably linked to the workforce development and to advancing. Biden's climate. Core is focusing in on what are the educational insights that we can bring in a little sooner.
36:37
Kyle Pickett
So, like working with STEM teachers around what is a water budget, what is an energy audit, what is a carbon calculator, and start kind of priming the pump, as it were, with. Let's face it, not everyone is suited for a four year college degree. Right. There are people coming up through vocational schools and such like that. So also working with vocational schools around what are the curriculums related to water reuse technicians? What is the curriculum for, like, solar system care, overall care, not just wiping it down, but what does it mean from, like, the inverter and stuff like that?
37:10
Kyle Pickett
So we see it as being not only a designer kind of activity, educating designers and policymakers, but we also see it as priming the pump of our workforce to get more and more of these people skilled and trained in monitoring and maintenance of these systems to kind of fill this need. And, yeah, I think it's inexcusably linked to the workforce conversation.
37:34
Ravi Kurani
Yeah, 100%. Kyle, as we're coming close to the end of the episode, I have a question that I ask all of our guests that we have here, and it's, is there a book or a movie or a show that has had just a large effect on you, potentially, like, the overview effect, either in the way that you look at the world or the way that you look at the world of water?
37:56
Kyle Pickett
My favorite book right now actually is called emergent strategy. And it is. It's one of those where it's just like, you have ideas. There is a need in the world. How do you advance that need? And how do you actually take that idea, take that kernel, and turn it into something that is. That is viable, that has. That essentially has legs to it? There's a lot of kind of psychology to it at the moment, too. But, like, I have three priorities. I want to pay the bills, I want to be happy, and I want to make a difference. And so what is making a difference actually look like with the skillset and with the. With what I have to offer.
38:32
Kyle Pickett
And so kind of diving into that has been actually a lot of fun and kind of figuring out where taking some of the things that I've been really, that I'm really care about and turning that into something that is actionable and that can make a difference. My favorite book right now.
38:45
Ravi Kurani
We'll throw that up on the show. Notes immersion strategy.
38:48
Kyle Pickett
Yeah. Kyle.
38:49
Ravi Kurani
Thanks, Ravi, a ton for coming on liquid assets. This has been an absolute pleasure.
38:54
Kyle Pickett
Likewise, Ravi. Thank you so much for inviting me.
38:57
Ravi Kurani
Of course. And for all of those of you out there, you can find liquid assets wherever you get your podcast. We're also on YouTube. Follow us on Instagram now. And we have a TikTok, so you can get little bits and pieces of these conversations. Thanks again for listening. I'm Ravi Kharani, your host, and you've been listening to liquid assets.