Gunther Pauli Cleans Up

Inside the Biodegradable Factory

"Our zero-emissions philosophy sounds radical today. In 20 years it will be standard operating procedure. Businesspeople will look back on this century and be horrified by the damage inflicted by manufacturing. Zero-emissions is inevitable. Which doesn't mean it's easy.

"Our big challenge now is water treatment. We need water to make our soaps. Of course, after we make the soaps, the water that's left is full of pollutants - vegetable pollutants in our case, but even vegetables are toxic in high concentrations. We generate about 1,500 gallons of wastewater every day.

"We said two things about water when we drew up the plans for the factory. We don't want to pump any waste into the surrounding water supply - none. And we don't want to use any electricity from the public grid to eliminate the waste - none. The system is not fully operational yet, but we are close. It will be running by the middle of next year.

"Here's how it works. First, wastewater goes into a big machine called a biorotor. It's sort of like a cement mixer. It sits outside the plant. It spins around and around and exposes the water to oxygen. The bacteria in oxygen love to eat vegetable waste. This process - exposing water to oxygen - eliminates 80% of the waste.

"Of course, we have to eliminate the remaining 20%. We pump the water through a series of four lagoons, each of which contains specially chosen plants. Micro-organisms in the plants eat away at the waste. The water then flows into a reed meadow for final purification.

"It's been tough. Our water contains 180 different kinds of vegetable waste. It took us four months just to identify their concentration levels. We leased the biorotor to make sure it would work. For the first six weeks there were no results. And then, for about two weeks, we hit a streak of hot weather. And it was like - boom! The reaction started, the bacteria came alive. Eventually we reached 80% purification. We knew the process worked.

"Then we tackled the issue of electricity. First we bought solar panels to power the biorotor. We also figured we could use wind power to pump water from the biorotor into the lagoons. We put up one windmill, studied it, and calculated how many more we would need.

"We've since moved on to the lagoons. Here too we will go slowly. Our four lagoons will have 30 different types of plants. We need to pick just the right kind - plants that ththrive on e `nutrients' in our waste. And we have to pump the water into the lagoons very slowly, over a period of months, to let the plants adapt themselves to the waste. When we've got that right we will use another windmill to pump the water from our reed meadow, the final processing stage, back onto the grass roof for irrigation and cooling.

"The system is radical. But we have been very cautious in the execution."

This Shampoo Is for the Birds!

"Here's a case study of how fast this organization can react. It was the day after that huge oil spill off the Shetland Islands last January. An Ecover customer, no one we knew, called our headquarters and asked to speak with someone - anyone. He was leaving for the Shetlands to help save the wildlife. But he understood, as few people do, what a disaster it is to clean oil-soaked birds with conventional detergents. Basically, you use petroleum-based cleaners to dissolve petroleum. It makes no sense.

"In fact, the cleaners are so harsh they destroy the birds' natural layer of protective wax and oil. They die anyway. These rescue trips are still worth the effort; there's something valuable about the human contact with nature. But they aren't very effective. If the oil doesn't kill the birds, the cleaners will.

"This person was desperate. Our receptionist didn't know what to do. So she switched the call to marketing. The person in marketing knew that one of our R&D people is an ornithologist, so she kicked it to R&D. Then and there we decided to take on the project. Two days later, with people from research and manufacturing working around the clock, we had developed a natural shampoo and conditioner based on pine oil. The shampoo liquefies the petroleum on the birds without completely destroying their natural coatings. The conditioner helps restore the coatings.

"Of course, we still had to get it to the Shetlands. DHL, the air freight company, is headquartered in Brussels, not far from our offices. The CEO is a friend of mine. He agreed to make the shipments. Three days after that first call to our office, we landed bird shampoo on the Shetland Islands. It was great."