One of the more unusual cases of a recycling innovation has been started by an Australian inventor named Dr. Bruce Kambouris, who has begun a bottled water company called AquaBotanica. The water is derived from a process that concentrates fruits and vegetables and was previously used to mop the floors of a carrot processing plant and then disposed of. Now, some of the water is used to irrigate nearby farms, and some is used by Kambouris to be purified and turned into bottled water.
The water is already being served in Australian restaurants such as Sydney Chef Grant King’s Gastro Park. AquaBotanica water is said by the chef not to have a hint of the fruit or vegetables from which it is extracted and is not too salty. In the carrot processing plant, 600 liters of water is removed for every metric ton of carrots processed. AquaBotanica was a finalist in the Global Bottled Water Awards in 2015 and won, in the same year, the Australian Institute of Food Science and Technology’s Innovation award.
The idea of recycling wastewater is not new, considering that one of the world’s vexing problems is a shortage of drinkable water. Most water recycling operations involve using waste water for irrigation or for other purposes besides drinking. The AquaBotanica venture is one of the first to take water that would ordinarily be disposed of as waste and turn it into something that is not only drinkable but high class.
Thus far Kambouris’ business is not turning a profit. But he is ramping up to supply more restaurants and to create a bottled water line (that even uses glass bottles) that should shortly be available in stores.
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