Sustainably-Driven Innovation Is Increasing Performance In Wastewater Treatment Among Leading Food-And-Beverage Companies

By Tyler Elm

Change; it’s perhaps the one constant in business. After many decades of using the same processes and equipment to achieve historical expectations of performance, this axiom is finally beginning to ring true within some of the compliance functions charged with the biological treatment of industrial wastewater.

While this is encouraging, I also write this article to raise awareness amongst fellow business sustainability executives that rely on operations personelle to help identify opportunities for improvement. For several reasons, this collaborative process of identifying opportunities is less likely to occur in the field wastewater treatment compared to any other business function I’ve encountered.

In this article, I touch on the emergence of business sustainability and sustainably-driven innovation as a force for change within wastewater treatment and the associated compliance functions of the food and beverage industry. To help quantify the potential benefits, I highlight a wastewater treatment technology developed at the University of Arkansas and Texas A&M – Supersaturated Dissolved Oxygen (SDOX) – and a case study featuring the economic and environmental benefits awaiting the food-and-beverage industry as they adopt technology that has been used within the municipal sector for more than a decade.