Ontario's Clean Water Industry

Creating opportunities for water solutions

People around the world are searching for solutions to water challenges. Ontario is creating the opportunities people need to find those solutions.

Ontario has already garnered international attention and praise for an array of innovative renewable energy, water and clean tech initiatives that have brought the province to the forefront of clean tech investment. The foundation of Ontario's innovations and leadership is that we make it easier for business to do clean technology business.

The province's Green Energy Act, introduced in May 2009, and the Water Opportunities and Water Conservation Act, introduced in November 2010, provide investors, communities and companies the tools they need to create a cleaner, greener future.

A Fountain Of Innovation

Transcription:

NARRATOR:
Water. Free-flowing fresh water. Our planet's most precious resource.  
Ontario is blessed with one third of the world's fresh water.   
In fact, the name "Ontario" is derived from aboriginal languages and means large sparkling or beautiful waters.   
A very appropriate name since Ontario encompasses more than a quarter of million lakes, rivers and streams... and borders four of the five Great Lakes.
And yet, elsewhere in the world, the supply of water is dwindling faster than nature can replace it.  
	
NARRATOR:	
Today over one-point-one billion people live without clean drinking water.
And global consumption is doubling every twenty years.
With a challenge of such enormous scale comes enormous opportunity.   
According to the World Bank,  private investment  in the water industry will double over the next five years. And much of that investment will made in Ontario.

NARRATOR:
So why is a thirsty world turning to Ontario?  
	
DAVID HENDERSON:
Ontario is very fertile ground for the development of water technology because we have a very strong cluster of innovative technologies on the global stage.  Two great examples of this would be Zenon Technologies in Burlington, Ontario which commercialized membrane technology around the world and Trojan Technologies of London, Ontario which commercialized ultra-violet technology around the world. 
	
ANDREW BENEDEK:
Founder, Zenon Environmental 
If you take these two companies, they're the only significant revolution in the way we are used to treating water. And yet you look at the United States, ten times the population, and ...I can't think of anyone that brought a dramatically different technology to the marketplace.
	
NARRATOR:
Dr. Andrew Benedek is the visionary who founded Zenon.  And his revolutionary filtration membrane is essentially a straw.  
	
ANDREW BENEDEK:
Founder, Zenon Environmental
Membranes are designed to get down to roughly the smallest virus. In other words, to take out all the microbial life that could be harmful to human beings. 
The water goes in throughout the length of the fibre. There are tiny pores, billions of them - trillions of them - the size of the smallest virus throughout the length, and the inside is hollow. 
	
NARRATOR:
One place where Benedek's membranes are used to purify the water supply is Collingwood, Ontario.  The plant on the shore of Lake Huron is also a training centre for water managers from around the world. 
	
MARCUS FIRMAN:
Manager, Water Treatment Collingwood, Ontario
We take raw water from the lake which flows in by gravity into our facility, and in essence the membrane just filters out the particulate. .. 
So we're just taking raw water and making it safe.

NARRATOR:
The other Ontario pioneer in water purification is Trojan Technologies.  They use a different technique. 
	
MARVIN DEVRIES:
President & CEO Trojan Technologies, London, Ontario
Ultra-violet light is very effective in destroying bacteria, viruses, and other things that are in our water supplies that we need to control. 
We have just finished delivering the equipment that will be used in New York City to disinfect up to 2.2 billion gallons of water per day.
Our municipal UV systems are used in over 60 countries today on 6 continents. You can go into China and find hundreds of installations... We have over 1500 installations across various countries in Europe. But we also have installations in Africa, in Australia, New Zealand, and South America, and ...in North America in the US, Mexico, and in Canada.

JODI GLOVER:
CEO, Real Tech, Ajax, Ontario
We sell all over the world, so we're in 30 countries and counting. 
	
NARRATOR:
And it's not just the big Ontario water companies that have their eyes on the map and global markets.   The success of Zenon and Trojan is inspiring the startups that are springing up across the province. In fact more water related patents have issued in Ontario over the past 30 years than in any other comparable jurisdiction in the world.   Real Tech is one example of that innovation in action. Its breakthrough invention allows municipalities and industries to monitor the water quality in their systems 24/7.
	
JODI GLOVER:
CEO, Real Tech, Ajax, Ontario
They don't have to rely upon taking a sample of the water, shipping it off to a laboratory, waiting 5 days, getting the results. It allows them to be able to take action immediately if there's a contamination problem.  
	
ANDREW GLOVER:
President, Real Tech, Ajax, Ontario
A lot of municipalities are understanding that this is essential to ensure the safety of the water.
So you can see here, this indicates that the machine has detected the contaminant.
	
NARRATOR:
In Orangeville, they're developing breakthrough technology to not only clean waste water but also to turn it into a source of green energy.
	
ANGELLA HUGHES:
President and CEO, Xogen  Orangeville, Ontario
It's an electrolytic technology to treat raw sewage... the outputs from the technology are clean water.. and the other output is hydrogen and oxygen gas, which has a benefit either as a source of energy for the plant or we can sell as an industrial gas.
	
NARRATOR:
Eco-Tech is a company that produces water systems for industry.  Their equipment purifies and recycles the water used in industrial processes and, at the same time, recovers expensive chemicals for re-use. The benefits are both economic and environmental.

ROCKY SIMMONS:
President & CEO, Eco-Tec, Pickering, Ontario
What you're doing is taking chemicals, which are in... and water based and are in water, and you basically are separating the water and the chemicals, recycling the chemicals, and where possible either minimizing the water use or recovering the full water. ..This particular one is going to PetroChina in China, which is the... which is one of the largest oil companies in the world. 
	
NARRATOR:
Removing contaminants from industrial waste water is also the focus of a company called Vive Nano.  A company with projects around the world.
	
KEITH THOMAS:
President, Vive Nano, Toronto, Ontario  
One is with an Indian company, working with their wastewater from textiles. It'll clean it.  taking arsenic out water, which is a known cancer-causing agent. So people actually have healthy drinking water.
	
ANJAN DAS:
Senior Scientist, Vive Nano Toronto Ontario
It's actually very interesting and exciting for me, especially as you can think of my background.. In India..., Pakistan, Bangladesh, especially South Asia, we have a problem in water… not only the arsenic... There's a lot of heavy metals there also...
It's so exciting for me to develop something here, which will at the end helping the people there in India and Bangladesh. 
	
NARRATOR:
So why is Ontario overflowing with innovation and attracting the attention of the world's water industry?  One answer is the people.  A skilled and diverse work force, a talent pool that is among the best educated in the world. 
	
STEVE WATZECK:
VP Marketing, GE Power and Water
Another great benefit of being located in Ontario is the terrific universities that we have. We've been able to both partner with universities for technology development, as well as get great students as new employees to Zenon, and now General Electric, and today are world leading water engineers helping to drive the growth of this business. 
	
MARVIN DEVRIES:
President & CEO  Trojan Technologies, London, Ontario
We were able to find good talent here locally in the province of Ontario, and we've been very successful in doing that ever since. 
	
ROCKY SIMMONS:
President & CEO, Eco-Tech Pickering, Ontario
The diversity, the culture here is enormously helpful to us because we do work in a multiple number of countries, and this has been a huge benefit. 
	
NARRATOR:
There's another important ingredient in this recipe for success - government support.
	
MARVIN DEVRIES:
President & CEO, Trojan Technologies
The Ontario government was very cooperative and instrumental in getting the technology approved and accepted. 
	
ANGELLA HUGHES:
President & CEO Xogen, Orangeville, Ontario
The province of Ontario has been very helpful to us. We have a partner in the University of Toronto. They've been working with us for the past 4 years to help accelerate our product development. That has been funded by the Ontario Centres of Excellence. ..
	
NARRATOR:
Another great resource is Mars which supports science and technology entrepreneurs with a range of services.

JODI GLOVER:
Mars has been a great supporter for us to help give us some of the tools and resources, the network and connections within the clean tech sector to help us grow.
	
NARRATOR:
And Ontario is also home base for Canada's banking system.  A system that has been ranked as the world's most stable and offers access to capital and services. (6)
	
NARRATOR:
It all adds up to a compelling answer to the question: Why Ontario?  David Henderson is a venture capitalist.  He invests with a global perspective on emerging water technologies. 
	
DAVID HENDERSON:
I think there is a great future for Ontario's water technology sector for many reasons. The first one being Ontario is a great gateway for one of the largest technology in the world in terms of the United States.  Secondly, Ontario is well set up to support innovative water technologies because a lot of industries are water intensive and depend on innovation.  And thirdly we have a long history of supporting water innovation and therefore we have the ecosystem that really support the next generation of up and coming innovative water leaders. 
	
JODI GLOVER:
The innovation that we produce here in Ontario is quite incredible.
	
ROCKY SIMMONS:
Ontario has been very good for us.
	
KEITH THOMAS:
I can't think of a better place to build, to grow a company than Ontario.

The success of these made-in-Ontario solutions is grounded in decades of accumulated water expertise and a concentration of world-class companies and institutions. One example of our expertise in water took place in early 2011. The province organized and hosted Ontario's Global Water Leadership Summit, a unique event that brought together world-renowned water innovators, thinkers, entrepreneurs, researchers and venture capitalists to participate in an active dialogue on the future of innovation in the water sector. The Summit also featured the announcement of the Artemis Project Top 50 Water Tech Listings, which identifies the most promising advanced water tech ventures worldwide.

Ontario is especially qualified to bring together industry leaders in the water and cleantech sectors because so many already operate here, including four of the 2011 Artemis Project Top 50 honourees (see the first four Success Stories, for more information). Today, Ontario companies are producing state-of-the-art water treatment technologies and next-generation smart solutions that meet the challenges of energy efficiency, aging infrastructure and water security.

If you're looking for clean water solutions, there's no better place to start than Ontario.

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