Business

This company may turn your wastewater into energy

Americans use a lot of water: between showers, flushing toilets, and washing their hands, they create almost 34 billion gallons of wastewater. But one company might have a solution to cut that number down. All of that water goes down the drain and needs to be processed at a treatment facility before it’s released into nature. But with water becoming increasingly scarce, a company called Epic Cleantec is rethinking how wastewater gets recycled.

What’s the plan?

The company takes grey water (dirty water that doesn’t contain human waste or food) then filters, disinfects, and recycles the water back into toilet bowls. It’s working on a system to process black water (which does include human waste and whatever is in your sink), removing pathogens and turning it into soil amendment.

• Cleantec also wants to find a way to extract energy from wastewater and use it to warm a building’s clean water, reducing energy consumption.

While many cities and towns have already been finding ways to recycle wastewater, Cleantec wants to start smaller. For example, they may begin with individual apartment buildings or local businesses.

But there’s another problem to tackle… sludge. Apparently, the water waste business refers to human solid waste as sludge. The more you know.

Anyway, sludge contains a large amount of carbon and various chemicals which makes it much harder to recycle. One solution is called pyrolysis, which takes the poop sludge and heats it until it turns into biochar, a form of concentrated carbon that can be buried underground or used for farming.

It might be a more pressing issue than you think

By 2050, an estimated 70% of the world’s population will live in cities. And since the use of wastewater outpaces population growth, cities might become even bigger drains on the water supply.

One city is already on it. San Diego has been recycling wastewater since 1981 for farming and industrial use, and will be able to produce drinking water by 2026 following state approval (it better not be murky). By 2035, it aims to provide half the city’s drinking water that way.

While recycling wastewater into either power or drinkable water is admirable, I personally like one of Cleantec’s other applications for wastewater recycling better: the company’s grey water beer.

Why are toilets the ultimate business item?

Steve Ballmer, the 10th richest man in the world and owner of the LA Clippers, is building the most expensive sports arena ever. But the most interesting part? The toilets. Ballmer emphasized how important toilets are to the over $2 billion Intuit Dome, which is designed to look like a giant basketball hoop, saying over 1,200 toilets and urinals will be installed when it opens later this year.

• That’s about one fixture per 15 seats, which is more than double what the typical NBA arena has.

Okay… and?

In order to keep attendance up, sports venues are spending billions on facility upgrades, which includes (you guessed it) toilets. Lots and lots of toilets.

Arena restrooms are paramount to fan satisfaction: The average ticket price for the Clippers’ in-town competition, the LA Lakers, is $518.

• We can assume, with 48 minutes of play, 15 minutes for halftime, and an hour’s worth of breaks (timeouts, fouls, commercials), a fan spends around two hours in the arena.

  • Waiting in bathroom lines for 25 of those minutes is already 20% of the event.

• Spending half a thousand, with $103 worth of time waiting for the bathroom, isn’t the best bang for your buck. Intuit Dome doesn’t want that problem.

Ballmer knows toilets are key. Keeping fans sitting, and buying $13 beers without thinking about those bathroom lines, is good business.

Why does this matter?

Most major sports leagues set attendance records last year, but they can’t expect it to last, according to Front Office Sports. This year is looking a little more bleak:

• The cost to attend live entertainment events is rising (which economists have dubbed “Funflation”), prices for sports tickets skyrocketed 25.1% from 2022 to 2023.

• The average cost for a family of four to attend an NBA game is a steep $304.64, which isn’t encouraging repeat customers.

With high prices and waning attendance, the current business model isn’t looking sustainable for sports venues.

Many teams are already seeing declines in season ticket sales, and competition for fans’ money, and attention, is only increasing. But more toilets will help… right?

Tech

Meet the body that AI’s might live in

These human-like robots have become the new frontier for AI applications, paving the way for a real life Ex Machina. Figure, a robotics company which isn’t yet two-years-old and doesn’t have a commercial product yet, wants to fill the world with AI robot servants. The company announced yesterday that it raised $675 million.

• The company is backed by big name investors including Microsoft; Nvidia; the funding divisions of OpenAI, Intel, and Amazon; the personal investment firm of Jeff Bezos; and even more.

• Figure is valued at $2.6 billion and convinced OpenAI to build specialized AI systems to help Figure humanoids see, speak normally with people, and do physical tasks.

  • However, OpenAI also invested in one of Figure’s competitors, the Norwegian company 1X, so it could be keeping its options open.

Dream team

Before OpenAI developed its world-famous chatbot ChatGPT, it was a struggling robotics hardware company, so the company dropped that venture in 2021 and decided to put all of its chips on AI. But OpenAI “always planned to come back to robotics,” VP Peter Welinder said.

While financial terms of the deal between Figure and OpenAI weren’t made publically available, we know the AI systems will likely be based on OpenAI’s existing technology such as GPT language models, the image-generator DALL-E and the new video-generator Sora.

Fun fact: Despite funding being an issue for robotics startups, VC firms are bullish and have been investing in humanoid robotics companies like mad.

Hey everyone,

We recently put together a FREE E-book to help you navigate the complex media landscape. Step by step, we outline how you can take control of your consumption of information in an objective and rational manner.

If this sounds like something you may like, click the link below for no cost.

We also offer a 75-page full version of the E-book that offers an even more comprehensive look into how you can take advantage of the information around us, for only $2.50.

Grab Bag

Panera ducked a new minimum wage law

Panera may have skirted a new minimum wage law, allegedly with the help of California’s governor. California Gov. Gavin Newsom might have pushed for Panera Bread to get an exemption to the state’s new $20 minimum wage law because of a long-standing relationship (and donorship) with fast-food restaurateur Greg Flynn, according to Bloomberg.

In case you forgot…

In 2023, Newsom signed a law to raise the minimum wage from $16 to $20 an hour for the state’s fast-food workers starting this spring. But there was one intriguing exemption: fast-food chains that sell bread as a standalone item… which is basically only Panera.

Newsom said the weirdly nuanced rule was made due to “the sausage-making” of politics, which is a real quote, by the way.

According to Bloomberg:

• Flynn owns 24 Panera Bread locations in California.

• Flynn and Newsom attended the same high school, where they overlapped for a year.

• Flynn has donated at least $164,000 to Newsom’s political campaigns.

• Flynn said that he played no role in creating the bread exemption, and Panera Bread didn’t respond to Bloomberg’s request for comment.

Industry experts say Panera Bread will likely have to increase wages anyway in order to compete with the other chains that are offering more money to their employees. Some of the Panera Bread locations owned by Flynn already posted job openings with $20 hourly pay. Not suspicious at all.

Gen Z is making Bumble suffer

Gen Z is leaving dating apps in favor of actual communication? Consider me surprised. Bumble said this week that it plans to lay off 30% of its staff after a Q4 earnings report showed that profits are ghosting the company accompanied with Gen Z users.

Bumble CEO Lidiane Jones, who took over the company last fall, said the cuts would save the company around $55 million. Bumble plans to invest in relaunching the app next quarter with new safety and AI features to entice Gen Z users back to the app.

Gen Z just doesn’t like dating apps

Pretty much everyone is losing interest in swiping, however young people in particular are leaving in flocks.

• An Axios/Generation Lab survey showed 79% of college and grad students said they don’t use dating apps.

• Meanwhile, 41% of users over the age of 30 said they’ve paid for dating apps, compared to just 22% of users under 30, according to a Pew Research study last year.

But it’s not just bumble: the company’s competitors are scrambling to figure something out, too. Tinder is trying to rebrand and get rid of its hookup reputation, while Hinge, and other dating apps, are investing in in-person meetups.

Fast Facts

Repulsive Rodents: Family Dollar will pay $42 million, the largest-ever penalty in a US food safety case, and be subject to three years of government monitoring at its Arkansas warehouse, where over 1,000 dead rats were found.

Crypto Crime: Sam Bankman-Fried’s lawyers argued he should only serve between 5 and 6.5 years in prison for fraud at FTX, far from the 100 years that probation officers have suggested.

Plagiarism Plaintiff: The Intercept, Raw Story, and AlterNet are all suing Microsoft and OpenAI, alleging that ChatGPT copied their stories without permission.

AI Accusation: OpenAI asked a judge to dismiss a lawsuit form The New York Times, accusing them of hacking ChatGPT in order to intentionally generate copyright infringement.

OnlyCash: OnlyFans CEO Kelly Blair told The Financial Times that the still-growing platform has paid $15 billion to creators since launching 2016.