Zero-Waste Construction and The Future of Water Recycling
Construction is one of the largest global industries, driving urban transformation and environmental challenges; and water is at its heart.
Every day, construction sites around the world consume millions of gallons of fresh water and generate toxic runoff, silently contributing to water scarcity and pollution. From paintbrushes to power tools, the process of cleaning construction equipment has long been an environmental blind spot, with contaminated water often finding its way into our sewers and waterways. This hidden menace not only wastes precious water resources but also poses significant risks to ecosystems and public health. As urban areas densify and the need for sustainable building practices grows, the construction industry faces mounting pressure to address its water footprint.
In this episode of Liquid Assets, host Ravi Kurani delves into an innovative solution that's reshaping the construction landscape. Andrew Crimston, founder of Washbox Global, joins us to unveil a revolutionary closed-loop system that's transforming how the industry manages its liquid waste. What started as a simple idea to wash paintbrushes more efficiently has evolved into a game-changing technology now deployed on hundreds of projects worldwide.
From the bustling construction sites of New York to the urban renewal projects of London, Washbox is helping dense metropolitan areas reduce their environmental impact while simultaneously boosting construction productivity. Crimston shares the journey of developing a filtration system capable of handling unknown contaminants, a challenge that many experts deemed impossible. Learn how this Australian innovation is saving both water and money for some of the biggest names in building, and discover the ripple effects of improved water management on project timelines, worker efficiency, and urban sustainability.
What you'll hear in this episode:
- The shocking scale of water waste and toxic runoff generated by traditional construction practices
- An in-depth look at Washbox's closed-loop system and how it cleans and recycles water indefinitely
- The technical challenges of developing a universal filtration system for diverse construction contaminants
- Insights into how urban densification and building retrofits are driving growth in the construction industry
- Real-world examples of Washbox adapting to various construction environments, from skyscrapers to hotel renovations
- A forward-looking discussion on the future of sustainable construction and Washbox's role in industry transformation
Listen On:
Watch the interview:
Meet Andrew
Andrew Crimston is the founder of Washbox Global, a company changing how construction sites manage their liquid waste. With over 17 years in the commercial painting and construction industry, Andrew saw a simple problem: the inefficient and wasteful way tools were cleaned on-site. This led him to create Washbox, a closed-loop wash station that cleans tools without wasting water or discharging contaminants, helping construction sites comply with environmental regulations more effectively.
Washbox’s system allows construction teams to reuse water on-site, drastically reducing both water use and pollution. Andrew's innovation is now used globally, recognized as a top solution by the World Economic Forum’s Uplink program.
Focused on practical, real-world improvements, Andrew continues to drive Washbox's growth and adoption across construction projects worldwide.
The Book, Movie, or Show
Andrew recommends Zero to One, which explores how to build innovative solutions and create new markets. It resonated with him as Washbox Global pioneered a new way of managing tool washing in construction, similar to how Thiel discusses first-mover innovation in the book.
Contains affiliate Amazon links.
Transcript
00:00
Ravi Kurani
Imagine a world where construction sites save millions of gallons of water and prevent toxic waste from polluting our waterways. Sound impossible? Think again. And on this episode of Liquid Assets, we're diving into the future of sustainable construction with Andrew Crimson, founder of Washbox Global. From paint brushes to power tools, construction sites generate a staggering amount of contaminant wastewater daily. But what if we could clean and reuse that water indefinitely? Andrew's revolutionary closed loop system is doing just that, transforming how the global construction industry manages its liquid waste. We'll explore how a simple idea to wash paintbrushes more efficiently turned into a game changing technology now used on hundreds of projects worldwide. You'll learn about the hidden environmental impacts of construction site runoff, the challenges of filtering unknown contaminants, and how washbox is saving water and money for some of the biggest names in building.
01:04
Ravi Kurani
Get ready for a fascinating look at an often overlooked aspect of construction that's quietly reshaping our city's environmental footprint. And by the end of this episode, you'll never look at construction site the same way again. Let's dive in.
01:24
Ravi Kurani
Welcome to Liquid Assets. Today we have a really interesting guest for you, kind of in a world that we haven't touched on yet. In the liquid assets podcast, we have Mister Andrew Crimston, who will be joining us from Australia, who's actually now in San Francisco. So welcome. Welcome to the pod, Andrew.
01:42
Andrew Crimston
Thanks, Robbie.
01:43
Ravi Kurani
So you are in San Francisco right now and you're going to be working or presenting to the mayor. Just kind of briefly what I caught. Why don't we just jump into that really quick? What are you doing in SF? Why are you there? And what's this event that you're a part of?
01:56
Andrew Crimston
Yeah, thanks. So as an organization called Uplink World Economic Forum, which is partnered with the City of San Francisco and the Chamber of Commerce for an organisation that's supported by Deloitte and Salesforce and Citigroup, amongst others. And the idea of the platform, essentially is to look at sustainable innovation for the city of San Francisco. The city is facing some challenges and is looking at forward plans in terms of how do they build a sustainable and resilient city in terms of infrastructure and building. There's lots of innovation around that can really help do that in a sustainable fashion. And so through the Uplink World Economic Forum program, Washbox has been recognized as top innovator. And that was announced only last week.
02:41
Andrew Crimston
And so there's an event today with the San Francisco APEC conference, and we're going to be catching up at a media conference with the mayor tomorrow evening, where they're going to make some announcements.
02:54
Ravi Kurani
Wow. Congratulations, by the way. That's amazing.
02:57
Andrew Crimston
Yeah. Great recognition.
03:00
Ravi Kurani
Yeah. And when you kind of talk about the world of companies that are there from, is it just the APAC region or is it globally that are kind of presenting at the Sublink world economic forum event?
03:11
Andrew Crimston
Yeah. So there's representatives from all over the world that are part of this particular challenge. And so there's also some San Francisco based technologies as well. And the APEG conference itself, I think, is an Asia Pacific region conference.
03:25
Ravi Kurani
Yeah. Yeah. Really cool. Awesome. I'll definitely have to check it out and for the guests out there, too, if you want to check out uplink by the World Economic Forum. Andrew, let's obviously jump into what washbox global is. You guys were awarded by Uplink. Can you kind of explain to the audience exactly what you guys do, how you work?
03:44
Andrew Crimston
Sure. So washbox is a closed loop wash station for construction projects. So during the building of, say, apartment buildings, multi story apartment building, shopping centers, office towers and the like, there's a whole lot of finishing trades that need to wash their tools. So if you're staying in a hotel room like I am, you can see paint on the ceilings and walls behind me. During application, you have paint brushes and rollers, various tools to apply tiles or plaster that need to be kept clean so that we can achieve a high quality finish. And on a construction site, there needs to be a provision in order for the trades to wash those tools. And so washbox provides that provision.
04:25
Ravi Kurani
That's super interesting. And so if I just kind of relay that back to you, there's a bunch of construction that's being done, obviously, around the world, right in the built environment that can be everything from schools to apartment complex. Anything that is a building that's being built around us, obviously, there is equipment that needs to be used in building those buildings, from paintbrushes to tiles. And those things need to be cleaned. And when you're cleaning those, obviously water is used as well as probably, I assume, other substances to actually clean a paintbrush or different cleaning tools that you have in that kind of two questions immediately come to mind. One is, how big is this problem? How much stuff actually gets built every single day? Because that's basically your market. Are we slowing down in terms of building or increasing?
05:17
Ravi Kurani
I think that's a little lowball question for you, but what does that look like from a market standpoint?
05:22
Andrew Crimston
Yeah. So it's enormous. Construction is one of the largest global industries. If we look at what's happening in metropolitan cities around the world, in cities like New York, in cities like London, there's an urban transformation happening at the end of the pandemic. We're reviewing what do we do with office buildings that are suboptimally occupied? Do we transfer those into residential apartment type living? And there's also, in terms of the San Francisco challenge that we mentioned before, the San Francisco city realizes that sustainable city is a denser city than a denser city, essentially is more sustainable than a spread out city, less use of motor vehicles for transport, etcetera. And so they have a plan to install more apartment living in the San Francisco area. And that condenses the population. You get more use of public transport. People live closer to where they work.
06:15
Andrew Crimston
And so these types of urban transformations are happening globally. And the other thing that's really interesting in terms of the building industry, in terms of global warming, specifically, building stock consume a lot of electricity and represent a lot of carbon discharge to the atmosphere, if you like. And so there's a movement going on to regenerate inefficient building stock. And so that's upgrading existing buildings and in some cases retrofitting or even demolishing and rebuilding so that those buildings can be more sustainable, more efficient, and better for the environment. So these features combined are really driving the growth in building activity globally.
06:53
Ravi Kurani
Really interesting. And just replaying that back to you, there's two really interesting trends that you mentioned, right. The first is against kind of what San Francisco said, with a more dense city is more economical, more sustainable than kind of spread out cities. But then secondarily, with our older building stock and how we're actually replacing those materials to kind of refresh them or level them up to what current day building standards are. When we look at Washbox Global, there's obviously a tremendous market here in terms of cities just increasing in population in general, with the way that we're even looking at people working from home, the whole COVID pandemic, and people kind of moving from one spot to the other. What did people used to do before washbox level? Let's kind of dig deep into the problem that you guys are solving.
07:43
Ravi Kurani
How did people wash their tools before? I assume you just took some water from the tap and you just kind of let the paint go into the lawn and figure it out later? Or what did this used to look like?
07:51
Andrew Crimston
Yeah, it's pretty simple, really. Most of the global construction industry directs their tradespeople to use fresh water drinking water to wash their tools, and then that water gets discharged from the site. Most construction companies globally are pretty good with ticking off environmental regulations. And so you don't find a lot of sort of rogue organizations, particularly in the top end of town in commercial construction, that would allow discharge of, you know, contaminated wash water, if you like, to the ground or to creeks and rivers directly. But there's a bit of a hidden menace in the current practices, and that is that lots of the industry provides what's known in the industry as temporary washout. So we have the installation of something like a 44 gallon drum or, you know, a large bucket or temporary sink, which is discharging that wash water to the sewer.
08:44
Ravi Kurani
And so from a discharge perspective, what you're kind of saying right now is the current way of doing things is you'll take fresh water, obviously, and you'll just. Construction companies will discharge that into the sewer. And from the sewer perspective, I guess it'll then go into a wastewater plant or something like that, to be filtered out. Is there any part of the process that's not allowed to just be discharged into the sewer, or do you have to do any sort of filtration or special disposal of this dirty water after you're done cleaning it? Or does 100% of it's okay to kind of go into the sewer?
09:19
Andrew Crimston
Yeah, it's kind of a gray area in terms of opinion. It's not that great in terms of fact. But fundamentally, sewer systems around the world are designed not to be crude, but to handle the three p's, right? Peepoo and paper. And so they've got various technologies that are designed to settle out those types of solids. But fundamentally, sewer treatment plants just separate liquids from solids. There's a view, unfortunately, around the world, within cities and populations, that sewer treatment plants are magic places where waste disappears. But it's just not the case. We're discharging wastewater to sewer plants that capture solids, and those solids go into solid containment areas where they end up in either landfill as contaminated solids, or if they're not so contaminated, they go into what's called biomass, where they can be used as fertilizer. But there's issues with that.
10:17
Andrew Crimston
Lots of problems at the moment with PFAS chemicals that you might have heard of that are these forever chemicals that exist in various chemicals and solutions that we use as a human race. Those chemicals last in the environment essentially forever. And so we've got various problems around the world with these chemicals being removed from sewage treatment, and they end up in the solitary biomass, which restricts the ability of that to be used as fertilizer. And the other output of sewer treatment plants is liquids. And so anything that can't be separated from the liquid, such as a dissolved resin or chemical, it just returned to the waterways. And so the idea that from a construction site we're discharging wash waters, the are contaminated with paint and resins and in some cases microplastics that are components in the paint or other products for various reasons.
11:10
Andrew Crimston
It's really, it's a bit of a pollution scourge because the sewer treatment plants just do not solve the problem.
11:15
Ravi Kurani
Really interesting. And I think that kind of paints a very clear picture of the problem now. Right, you have fresh water that you're first of all using at the beginning of the chain to wash this equipment you have in construction sites. With the main fact that construction is increasing around the world, this majority of the disposal goes through sewage lines. And I love this analogy of your three p's of pee poop and paper. And with the kind of output streams being your contaminated solids or your biomasses, if there's anything that's kind of captured inside there being pfas, any sort of resins, any sort of liquids, a lot of that does get put back into the water supply. Really compelling problem. Now let's kind of jump into washbox global.
12:01
Ravi Kurani
How does your product and the fact that you guys actually have a end to end recycling solution of actually using this water? I'll let you kind of speak more to that, but would love to understand how exactly your product is executed at construction sites.
12:15
Andrew Crimston
Yeah, so washbox is closed loop, which means there's a physical disconnect between water and waste discharge lines and our product. So I guess that takes away the human element in terms of guaranteeing the outcome. And that's what we intended when we developed the product. So being standalone, it doesn't need a water supply connection, and it doesn't need a connection to a sewer or any other discharge point. And when we bring it to site, it'll be empty. We'll fill it up with, in the instance of our larger unit, about 120 gallons, or four to 500 liters of water. And from there, it's just plugged into ordinary power, 110 volts here in the US or 240 elsewhere in the world.
12:58
Andrew Crimston
And once it's plugged into power, any trades person who would normally wash their tools in water can approach the unit, pick up the trigger nozzle that's connected to the unit via a hose, and they'll use the water supply. That's contained within the unit to wash their tools. And the unit captures all of that wash water, and it works as a batch scenario. So once the water supply has been exhausted, which in case of our large unit, gives you an hour and a half to 2 hours worth of washing, which is quite significant, the unit will shut down for 15 minutes. It's got a light sequence, so a red light will come on to indicate that the unit is shutting down. During that 15 minutes, the system automatically purifies the water that's in that wash water sort of tank.
13:42
Andrew Crimston
And by doing so, we remove the waste solids that have been washed in. So all the paints, all the resins, the solids, the sands, the fillers that come out of grouts and plasters and sand and cement and that sort of thing, they're automatically removed into a filter bag where they can be easily emptied into solid waste. And so what, they dry as a solid and can be safely disposed of, and then the water is recycled. And so the simple concept is that we take a washbox to site, we put 120 gallons of water in it, and then if your project lasts for, say, twelve months, the washbox doesn't need emptying, it doesn't need refilling. Every day your trades wash into that same 120 gallons of water. So we essentially, for all intents and purposes, reduce the water use to zero.
14:24
Ravi Kurani
Yeah. Wow. And kind of a few questions here. When you, I guess, first of all, is the industrial design on it? What does the kind of usability look like? Is it the size of a porta potty? Or, you know, is it kind of something like, you would, you know, look at it like a portable sink? How does it actually look like? If you can describe that to the audience, sure.
14:43
Andrew Crimston
So we've got two units based on different types of sites that we might encounter. On the larger end, we've got a unit which is about the size of a standard palette in terms of width and dimensions, and it stands about five foot high, but there's a wash station level at about three foot. And so it's a very ergonomic system. That particular unit's got two wash stations. It's got a perforated mesh wash tray, which is great for disassembly of tools that need washing, such as some of the automated setting tools that plasterers use. And then we've got a trolley version, which is small enough to fit through a doorway and on a really cool set of casters that enables it to be spun around on its own footprint, and it's really easy to move around on site.
15:26
Andrew Crimston
And so between the two units, you've either got a pallet unit that you can move around with a pallet jack, or a forklift on site, or you've got a trolley unit which you can push around, can easily be moved by one person. We cover off all of the kind of varying requirements from a major construction site, where you might need one or more of the larger units, right down through to a hotel refurbishment, where we might have a couple of the trolleys wandering through the corridors and that sort of stuff, to essentially put the washing apparatus near where the trades are working for productivity and efficiency reasons.
15:58
Ravi Kurani
That's a really interesting benefit there that I didn't even think about is that in these kind of tenant improvement operations, or, you know, where you're just doing one part of the building, I guess previously you would have to go to where the water is, and now you've brought the wash station close to where the construction is actually happening.
16:17
Andrew Crimston
Yeah. Really important feature, productivity. Everything in global construction, it's typically a pretty low margin business. Lots of stores around with the interest rate rises at the moment and economic circumstances globally. And the construction industry is kind of under pressure always in terms of margin. It's a very competitive industry, and so anything that can be done to increase the competitiveness and productivity and efficiency on a site is highly valued.
16:42
Ravi Kurani
Yeah, entirely the kind of. Next question that I had, Washington, you'd mentioned that there was close to zero losses. Is there any sort of evaporative losses or the fact, you know, do some of the water get, you know, attached to the actual pollutants that are there? Or. It's pretty much, you put in 120 gallons, and over the course of a year, you don't have to refill it at all.
17:01
Andrew Crimston
Yeah, really good question. And you're right, there are some leakages, some losses. So we lose a little bit of water to transfer the waste into the filter bags, and we do lose some through splashing and evaporation. So the way that we solve that issue is that washbox is provided as what we call hardware, as a service, so it's available for hire currently in Australia, the USA and the UK. And as part of our delivery mechanism, we have a locally based technician, which will come to site and service the washbox. And part of that role is to maintain the correct level of water, correct volume of water in the washbox, manage the water quality. We have some solutions which are automatically dosed into the system to manage that water quality.
17:46
Andrew Crimston
And so the technician will check things like ph and watercolor and a number of other factors that we determine are critical for us to manage. And just check over the machine, make sure that there's no blockages building up in any of the lines. And we also carry out training of the users to make sure that everybody understands how the system works and that they're using it to its full capacity.
18:08
Ravi Kurani
The kind of. Next question that I had on the product before we move into business model, which I think you raised a really interesting point on the hardware as a service, which I do want touch on, but the last question on product is, how does the membrane and the filtering work? I mean, is there any sort of pressure problems that happen? Or you had mentioned that kind of. It can run for an hour and a half to 2 hours, and then it has a 15 minutes filtration cycle. What happens in those 15 minutes? And kind of what happens. How does the waste get separated from the water?
18:38
Andrew Crimston
So the waste and water are separated via a process called coagulation, which is not new or unique to us. It's a well trodden path in terms of wastewater treatment. Coagulation is used in sewage treatment plants, for instance. Construction sites might use flocculants or these types of products to clarify water in dams or groundwaters that rise up in a construction projects. So that works really effectively. But one of the challenges that we have as a business and a technology, which was really difficult for us to overcome was the fact that we don't control the waste inputs. And so if you were to go to a filtration expert, for instance, and hire them as a consultant and say, hey, I want to design a washbox that'll work on a construction site, first, they will ask you two questions.
19:23
Andrew Crimston
First question is, what waste is being washed into it? And secondly, what are the volumes of that? What are the volumes of that waste? And we don't know the answer to either of those two questions. One day the washbox might get 100% paint washed into it. The next day it might be 100% plaster. On the third day, we might include concrete. But all the first two components are there as well. And volumes change as well, depending on usability. You know, how much time somebody has, you know, whether they're motivated to, you know, dump some of the waste off their tools into a bin before they wash them, for instance, which is part of our training. So the process that washbox employs to guarantee that it continues to work under these circumstances, where we don't control these inputs, is what makes it very unique.
20:09
Andrew Crimston
And so the batch process removes any link between the wash water and the holding tank. And so it's not a direct filtration in real time. The filtrate from the filter system goes back to the wash water tank, not the holding tank. And so it essentially works like a filtration weir. So we continually purge the waste from the water, run it through the filter bags, and the filtrate returns to the same tank. And so over time, we just continually pull the waste out of the water. And then it's the process of coagulation, which purifies the water and returns it to the holding tank. Wow.
20:44
Ravi Kurani
Really interesting. And for the audience, can you just kind of explain coagulation and flocculants, kind of ingest in lay person language of how that actually works?
20:53
Andrew Crimston
Sure, it's fascinating to watch. There's probably some YouTube videos that I could point you to. But essentially it's a charge reaction. So we're charging certain particles in the water. And so once you dose the contaminated wash water with a coagulant, what you see is the particles of waste starting to physically separate from the clean water. And so you end up with a wash water solution, which is clean water and suspended particles of waste within that water. And then over time, those waste particles bind together and they get heavy and they sink to the bottom. And then you have a slurry solution essentially laying on the bottom of the tank, which might be a couple of inches thick. And then sitting above that is the clean water.
21:37
Ravi Kurani
I want to pivot a little bit to your business model. You had mentioned that you guys are doing hardware as a service, so people don't obviously buy the portable unit or the one that kind of sits on site. How does that work? Does a construction company come to you kind of as they're kicking off a project and they'll say, we need to get washbox Global? Do you guys have salespeople out there? Obviously, as a startup, you're probably really big on in terms of sales. Would love to kind of understand what does partnerships look like? Do you guys work with paint companies to kind of help distribute out the product? Can you kind of talk through what the business model and sales and distribution looks like?
22:16
Andrew Crimston
Yeah, sure. So I guess our customers can be broken down into three main categories. You've got the construction companies themselves. So a large construction company that might operate in a single geographic region or multi geographical region. One of our customers is coming Lendlease, that's an australian based global construction company. So they operate here in the US also and through Asia and Europe. And so you can look at. If we take the example of lend lease, take lend lease as a customer. And so we engage with our customers at sort of corporate head office level with the intention of helping them to identify opportunities for improvement in process. And we'll work with sustainability and operational people at that level to help them to drive change throughout the business. But the construction industry works globally on a level of autonomy that's offered at construction site level.
23:08
Andrew Crimston
So you've got very experienced senior construction management teams that actually build projects. And so they're not directed to a large extent by corporate officers in terms of the process that they use to build a building. They'll be given a design from a set of architects, and they've obviously got minimum requirements that are governed by head office. But essentially they go out and operate as a standalone unit in terms of erecting that particular building. And so the project itself is another way to look at our customer. And so if you look at a particular stadium that might being built, then that particular project might be considered a customer. But the other customer which is really important to us is the project team. So you'll have a senior person in charge of the build, typically a construction manager or construction director or something like that.
23:58
Andrew Crimston
And then you'll have various people, typically five or six key people that are involved in that build. You'll have a head of health, safety and environment, perhaps sustainability manager. There'll be other kind of supervisors and foreman at senior level that look after finishing trades, for instance. And so what we find is those teams are generally pretty experienced and they stick together and they go from project to project. And so that's kind of where we've organically grown is by having construction teams use washbox, really what it does, what it provides from a productivity and improvement point of view. And then when they finish one project, they'll ring us and say, hey, we're starting another project. We want you guys to make sure that we've got a washbox available.
24:38
Ravi Kurani
Really interesting. I didn't actually under know that about the construction industry, that the construction, I would have thought that it's very top down. The construction management companies kind of dictate the way each project is done, but completely makes sense. There's probably a ton of vendors, a lot of people that kind of come in and come out. And I'm sure those group of people actually do stay together from project to project that might work with multiple construction companies instead of the other way around. And so from a kind of a product acceptance or a distribution perspective, then your main support network are these project teams that are actually phoning you up saying, hey, we have a new project outside of the construction company, or is it kind of pretty even 50? What does it just generally look like?
25:20
Andrew Crimston
Yeah, it's a little bit of both. So we certainly get traction at what we call strategic partnership level. So some client organizations believe in driving improvement through their business, driving best practice, driving efficiency and productivity. And so they will actively recommend the washbox solution to their sites. And some of those organizations will contact us and say, hey, we've got this site coming up, reach out to the project teams and let's get this moving. And then we will also keep track of new projects that are coming out of the ground through some of the construction data networks, and we'll reach out actively to those projects where we know that there's knowledge of our solution and interest and kind of pitch those from a sales point of view, and we do that globally.
26:01
Ravi Kurani
I want to pivot a little bit to the mind behind washbox. You've been doing this for what, 1718 years now. What made you start this? What's your background? Kind of. Where did you come with the idea? I always love to hear the founder story of how you came up with the idea.
26:19
Andrew Crimston
Yeah, so I've got a commercial painting business in Australia. We paint and repaint commercial buildings. And so we had a situation back in about 2006, I think now from memory, where we had a number of painters on a job, and the job was for a builder. And were told that we couldn't wash our tools on site. And were kind of new into the commercial painting game in terms of working for builders. In those days, we'd done our start was in repaint of sort of existing builders where the buildings where there was no builder involved. And this was a bit of a first for us. And I was shocked, really, when I got the call from my staff on site saying we can't wash our tools on this project.
26:57
Andrew Crimston
And so I rang the builder and I said, look, this doesn't make any sense to me. This is going to be completely inefficient. The guys are going to have to take it home to wash. I'm going to, it's just not a great way to be doing things. So I said, if I design a system that would allow my painters to wash their tools, would you be okay if I brought it to site? He said, yes, and I did. And we brought it to site and it kind of worked well.
27:22
Andrew Crimston
And we had some relationships with some property companies and various other organizations that were working with at the time, and just kind of through word of mouth, some people became aware that we had this particular technology, and somebody asked me if they could hire it from me, and we did that and the business was born. Wow.
27:41
Ravi Kurani
And did that first prototype have the membrane and coagulation inside there, or was it just a glorified washbox that you could just kind of wash the paint with and you guys dispose of the water later?
27:53
Andrew Crimston
Yeah, it was pretty rudimentary. In the early days, it still used coagulation to settle out the waste in the water. But we didn't have. It wasn't closed loop. We didn't have any sort of inherent filtration. We were discharging the slurry that came out of the system to another vessel, and were collecting that vessel, taking it back to our office, where were putting through a system called a filter press, which was drying the waste solids. And then were recycling those waste solids through a masonry recycling facility. It took us about twelve years to kind of pilot the technology. We didn't do a lot in terms of business for about twelve years.
28:34
Andrew Crimston
Just worked with a couple of customers that were really supportive of what were trying to achieve, and that enabled us to get an enormous amount of real time use on projects across a whole range of different project styles and kind of industry subcategories. And over that period of time, we just continued to work at this idea of, how do we filter real time a wash water solution when we don't know what it contains? And we hired some consultants and did a whole lot of kind of field testing and lab testing. And I remember I had a couple of consultants just after a period of time, say, Andrew, what you're trying to do is impossible. So we just kept at it. We just kept at it. And in about 2017, we kind of cracked the nut, so to speak, and came up with the.
29:28
Andrew Crimston
The process that is now in the washbox that enables it to have real time filtration, thereby making a completely closed loop. Wow.
29:35
Ravi Kurani
And if you think back to those seven to ten years of while you were developing this, what are some things you wish you would have done differently?
29:45
Andrew Crimston
Oh, look, that's an interesting question. That's a really interesting question. I don't want to be too hard on myself in terms of this. It's not easy. It's not easy developing technology from scratch. I'm not an engineer, and I had another business to run. So this was a sideline business for me for a very long period of time. And so we worked with the funding that we had available to us. And, you know, I put together a really good team of extremely sort of passionate and competent people that just continued to chip away at this. And so I don't think I'd change too much. You know, if we had have maybe got some funding, you know, in the early days, then perhaps we could have accelerated the project a little.
30:28
Andrew Crimston
But at the end of the day, I think the other thing we've got to consider is that washbox today is both a productivity solution and also a green building or environmental solution. We live in this space now, which is really what I guess is known as the blue ocean economy. And to be fair, that kind of marketplace has really only existed for a few years. There's been a whole lot of work in the building industry around green building, but it's essentially been related to carbon and how do we reduce the carbon footprint of a building? I guess for the first sort of decade or so, we really weren't recognized in mainstream as a sustainability solution. Talking about water savings and pollution didn't really factor into the green building conversation in those days.
31:19
Andrew Crimston
And so I guess the short answer to the question is that I think the timing for us is right. We spent a decade or more piloting and perfecting the technology. At the same time as were doing that, the global sort of attitudes towards green building and the environment developed alongside us. And here we are now in 2023, and we've got a global best practice solution that's been proven on more than 400 projects globally. And the green building industry is catching up to us. And so I think we're pretty well positioned right now.
31:53
Ravi Kurani
So what does the world look like in the next ten years for you, for washbox?
31:59
Andrew Crimston
I think we've got a real opportunity, Ravi, a real opportunity to be a transformational change to the global construction industry. There is, I guess, inherent challenges in the industry because of the business model we talked about, because we don't have an industry where processes are dictated by corporate officers. When some of these large construction companies that are our clients globally, they might do upwards of 1000 or 1500 projects a year. And so it's very difficult. You know, that's going to be thousands and thousands of staff that are running those projects. And so you can understand the difficulty that they would face in directing and I guess I controlling certain levels of change. So it's certainly going to take some time.
32:43
Andrew Crimston
I hope it doesn't take ten years, but we're really in the driver's seat here as a technology that's creating this real impact in terms of the environmental footprint of construction projects, in terms of their water use and their pollution generation and how that's handled, but also in terms of productivity and efficiency. And so we've got a real opportunity to, I guess, take the construction industry on a journey, share what we've learned over our 400 odd projects. And I think the outcome of that is going to be an industry that's better informed, that's more productive, and certainly an industry that has significantly less impact on the environment moving forward.
33:25
Ravi Kurani
And when you think about washbox, is there more products that you kind of bolt on to this kind of main branch that extends out 10, 15, 20 years from now? Do you kind of build a platform to help these project teams get access to more technology, both in and around water and or even carbon? Or is it just kind of pedal to the metal right now of getting your two products that you have in the portfolio out to enough construction projects as possible?
33:57
Andrew Crimston
Yeah, it's a little bit of both. We certainly need to focus on the core business. The two core closed loop washbox wash stations are ready to scale, essentially, and they're well proven in the market. We understand how to deliver those and the benefits that can be derived by the industry through that technology. We're also piloting some other technology right now, which just gets us into some other kind of very specific market niches and market categories. And so there'll be more information coming out about those sort of in the coming months. But our goal, essentially, over time, is really to fill what we see as a gap in the liquid waste management area in kind of medium sized construction and fit out markets.
34:47
Andrew Crimston
What we find is that very large infrastructure projects, you know, roads and bridges and tunnels and these sorts of things, are generally pretty well looked after in terms of construction of buildings itself. Every building that gets constructed is essentially a pilot program. There's very two buildings that are the same in a commercial sense. And so there's always lots of challenges for the construction teams. And so we've got heaps of knowledge and heaps of experience and a whole range of products in the pipeline that can help solve challenges in those environments.
35:19
Ravi Kurani
Really interesting. Andrew, we have a few more minutes left, and I ask everybody this question because I feel like the media that we consume, right, be it books, shows, movies, sometimes have a really big impact on the way that we look at the world, the way that we kind of interact and implement solutions. Is there a book, a show, or a movie that has kind of distinctly changed your outlook on life? The way that you build your company, that would be good for the audience to pick up.
35:50
Andrew Crimston
Oh, I think an important fact for me is that what we're doing is creating a market that specifically didn't exist before. And so there's a really interesting book called zero to one which talks about the idea of innovation, essentially, and lots of innovations that happened, improvements on something that already exists. Okay, take Uber, for instance. Taxis exist. Modes of sort of motor vehicle transport for hire exist. And they were able to come up with a fundamental shift in how people move around cities by enhancing kind of mechanisms that were already in place using technology. And, you know, that's a disruptive and transformational shift. But I. They didn't create the idea of mobile transport for hire in terms of what we're doing. We didn't create the concept of tool washing.
36:51
Andrew Crimston
But there's a challenge in the industry to wash tools in a productive and efficient way. And there was no solution. And so we're the first mover in terms of providing that solution in terms of its full capacity. So yeah, that was an interesting read for me. It was kind of a lightbulb moment where it helped me realize exactly what were doing as an organization.
37:18
Ravi Kurani
Awesome. Yeah, I'll definitely put the link to zero to one on your show notes when we launch the episode live. Andrew learned a ton today and I hope the audience still did as well around liquid waste management, the construction industry, kind of how waste streams are dealt with before washbox Global and how you guys are kind of changing the category in that sense. For those of you out there, what's the best way to get a hold of you? How can we learn more about what you're working on? What's the website tell us kind of how to get in touch?
37:47
Andrew Crimston
Yeah, sure. So you can reach us through the website, which is washbox Global and we're on social media channels. I post a fair bit of stuff on LinkedIn, for instance, so you can keep track of where I am in the world and what I'm doing in terms of just trying to broaden the conversation around these topics, which is essentially my role. And yeah, feel free to reach out via any of those mechanisms.
38:13
Ravi Kurani
Awesome. Andrew, thanks a ton for coming on the podcast. And for all of those of you out there, you can find us wherever you digest your media. Be that on YouTube, Spotify, Apple podcasts. We are everywhere. Just search for liquid assets, the business of water. Andrew, thanks again for coming on.
38:31
Andrew Crimston
Thanks, Rami.