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• UNSW to embark on landmark mangrove regeneration project in Fiji
• PFAS 'forever chemicals' above drinking water guidelines in global source water

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Welcome to UNSW Engineering the Future podcast, a series where we'll speak to academics and industry leaders who are embracing cutting edge ideas and pushing the boundaries of what is truly possible. In this episode, we'll explore what innovations are needed to solve the simultaneous problems of too much or too little water at any time around the world. We'll hear from leading experts in the field, Associate Professor Kristen Splinter and Daniel Lambert, as they explain how rapid population growth and urbanization is making it harder than ever to deal with extreme floods on one hand and extreme droughts on the other, they'll analyze exciting potential solutions such as harvesting large amounts of safe drinking water direct from the atmosphere, as well as calling for more education to help everyone understand the true value of water. So join us, as we discover how world changing action starts with fearless thinking in Engineering the Future of Water.

Neil Martin  01:09

Hello and welcome to Engineering the Future of Water. My name is Neil Martin, and I'm a journalist and STEMM communicator working in the Faculty of Engineering at UNSW. Joining me today to discuss what changes we can expect in water engineering over the next 30 years is Associate Professor Kristen Splinter, Managing Director of the Water Research Laboratory at UNSW Sydney. The Water Research Laboratory is one of the leading global facilities tackling a wide range of problems involving groundwater, hydraulic engineering, ecological restoration and coastal engineering. Kristen is also deputy chair of the Engineers Australia, New South Wales, coast oceans and ports engineering panel, and has also served on the executive committee for the International Women in coastal Geoscience and engineering. Hi Kristen,

Kristen Splinter  02:04

Hi Neil. Thanks for having me.

Neil Martin  02:06

It's a pleasure. Also with us is Daniel Lambert, a dynamic engineer with a passion for innovation, technology and the development of sustainable water solutions. Daniel is a partner and Managing Director of Pittwater capital, a water infrastructure developer focused on unlocking economic growth by enabling decarbonisation projects. He is also Chief Executive Officer of Waterstart Australia, which is a nonprofit organization that connects technology companies with water agencies and major water consumers in need of innovative solutions. Daniel has worked in over 25 countries and delivered leading first of a kind, solutions for recycled water, water resilience and wash projects related to water, sanitation and hygiene. Welcome, Daniel.

Daniel Lambert  02:57

Thanks, Neil, great to be here.

Neil Martin  02:59

Kristen, if I might start with you. It seems to me that when we talk about the future of water, there are predominantly two very different challenges that need to be addressed at the complete opposite end of the spectrum. On the one hand, global sea levels are rising, I believe, at the rate of roughly three millimeters per year, combined with an increase in the frequency and intensity of rainfall events and river flooding, especially here in Australia. So that's a problem with too much water. But at the other end of the spectrum, there's also a water scarcity problem, whereby 55 million people around the world are estimated by the World Health Organization to be affected by droughts every year. And in addition, I read recently that the UN had calculated that 2 billion people worldwide don't have access to safe drinking water. They sound like very paradoxical problems. So how hard do you think it will be to come anywhere close to solving them both in the next 30 years,

Kristen Splinter  04:01

I think engineering is going to play a really vital role in this, because we will have to manage when water is there or when it is not there, depending on where we are. And I think that's going to come up with some really diverse and innovative solutions that we're going to need to be able to tackle that problem, and it's temporal as well. So we know Australia can go through periods of both extreme drought and extreme floods. And so how do we build or live when we have to deal with both of those extremes?

Neil Martin  04:32

Daniel, do you see them as being the two major issues? And how big do you think they are?

Daniel Lambert  04:41

I definitely see them as the two big issues. Neil, I think that they are a huge challenge all over the world, whether you're in the developed country context or the developing country context, and they're exacerbated by rapid population growth and rapid urbanization. They're exacerbated by how do we actually not just supply drinking water to people and deal with issues around flooding and sea level rise, but actually providing food for a growing population? So there's a there's a whole range of challenges that come together when we talk about the increased extremes of too much and too little water.

Kristen Splinter  05:22

We had a visitor at our lab on Friday from Timor Leste that was dealing with the issues with water, so looking at, how can we capture water when 80% of the population doesn't live in the cities in that country? But it's not just about capturing the water, it's how that water gets regenerated, how that water can then get used to supply food and growing food in the area where that's also vital for human health and making sure that the young children are growing and the economy as a whole, when you think down to aquaculture.

Neil Martin  05:53

Daniel, did you have any thoughts on that one?

Daniel Lambert  05:56

I think they're both huge challenges, and they are intertwined and but they also represent a huge opportunity for us as a water industry to continue to innovate, and it makes it a very exciting industry for us to be working in.

Neil Martin  06:09

I guess the other issue as well is that even where water is present, there can be an issue with water quality. So there's another problem that's on the agenda for you guys as experts to get your heads around?

Kristen Splinter  06:23

Yeah, well, you think of Pacific islands are surrounded by water. So that's not a water scarcity in terms of quantity there, but it's the type of water that you need, or humans need to be able to survive. And so how do you turn salt water into fresh water, or maintain your fresh water resources in an area like that?

Daniel Lambert  06:39

That's right, and once again, we've got such a diversity of contexts. So Pacific islands, how do we provide fresh drinking water for them and deal with their sea level rise challenges? Whereas in remote Australia, for example, we're not near coastal sources of water. How do we provide sustainable sources and supply and deal with water quality issues, both for supply and from wastewater, is a huge challenge there.

Neil Martin  07:07

This obviously affects so many people around the world, whether it's struggling to get water or having to deal with the likes of floods or coastal erosion. Do you feel, though that those issues are still being taken seriously by, let's say, governments and maybe industries as well.

Kristen Splinter  07:26

For me, in the coastal engineering space, which is where I spend most of my time, we are definitely seeing, you know, bodies like the insurance Council of Australia really recognizing the threats associated with rising seas and coastal erosion we've built, and we have a lot of very valuable infrastructure that is potentially sitting in a natural hazard zone that will change over time, and that's true of all kinds of different hazard zones. We know that if we are sitting on a river floodplain, we saw that a few years ago during the big floods up north, that lots of people had to be removed from their homes, and that's costly, and it's really hard on the people themselves as well to deal with that mentally.

Kristen Splinter  08:04

And what would be your fear, Daniel, if these issues weren't kind of taken seriously, if you kind of project yourself 30 years forward and developments didn't happen or governments weren't taking this seriously, what would be your fear if things didn't get better,

Daniel Lambert  08:22

I've got a number of concerns on multiple levels. I think if you talk about Pacific islands, we might see nations underwater. If you're talking about Asian or African context, in developing countries, increasing numbers of people dying from lack of clean drinking water and wastewater services. And then there's the reality and the connectedness of water to providing food for society. So how do we come up with smart systems to provide sustainable food solutions for a growing population?

Neil Martin  08:54

Kristen, do you think the developments in this area are happening fast enough, or would you like them to speed up?

Kristen Splinter  09:03

I think we could speed up. I think they we could definitely devote a lot more resources and financial resources into progressing some of these technologies faster than we are doing as I was coming here today listening to one of the other podcasts for this series, if you were to redesign Sydney or any major city? Now, would you design it the same way it is? And I don't think we would, in hindsight. So again, if we did start from scratch, how would we redo our water infrastructure to make it more sustainable?

Neil Martin  09:35

So I might quickly follow up on that. Then, what would be your idea if you were giving a blank piece of paper, how would you have done it, or how would you do it? From now,

Kristen Splinter  09:43

We've centralized a lot of things, and there's lots of benefits for that, but there's also, I think, some challenges associated with that. And if we could go back to some of the more micro scale, local scale, ways that we use water, treat water, reuse water. So I'd like to see more of that, and that could be simple as how green walls can be used as the first point of treatment of water, and how you could recycle water within your buildings from gray water.

Neil Martin  10:10

Would that be a dream of yours as well, Daniel, to have a blank piece of paper to start from scratch?

Daniel Lambert  10:16

Yeah, I definitely would. And I think it's music to my ears, what you're saying Kristen around, how do we look at closing the loop, both at a household level, at a precinct level, think more holistically about water as part of circular economy solutions with food and waste and energy. So there's a lot of opportunity for us to do things differently, and I think, I think we need to, I agree we need to invest more in technology. If we use an Australian context, we're not recycling water for drinking water purposes, apart from some examples in Perth, yet we are the driest continent on Earth, and so we're not necessarily leveraging some of the technologies and solutions that are available because of political will or the effectiveness of our engagement with the communities who take them on the journey

Neil Martin  11:08

You talked about the technologies and that might take us more into this question of how we address these problems and potentially solve them 30 years down the track, or reduce them, if not completely solve them Those new technologies you're talking about, one thing that comes to my mind, and maybe people listening to this, who aren't water engineer experts, they might say, we've got lots of water. It's in the sea, you know, we need to provide it, maybe for people to drink, and we can desalinate. Why can't we do that to a level that solves some of this problem in terms of water scarcity, to give people enough water to drink.

Kristen Splinter  11:46

Well, Sydney does have a desal plant, as do have very other spots. One thing about that one, very energy intensive. So where's that energy coming from? And that makes it potentially not viable in some smaller communities as well. And the second one, with that one, as you mentioned, we have maybe a an unknown about recycled water and how we want to drink it. People actually don't like to drink the really pure water that comes out of a desal plant as well.

Daniel Lambert  12:13

I think Desalination is a is a critical part of the solution. If you look at statistics, about half a billion people in the world rely on desalination water, either fully or partially, for their purposes, for drinking, and we've seen a lot of advancements in the technology. So over the last three decades, the capital or the cost of running desalination plants has halved, more than halved. So those advancements have reduced the costs and the energy required has gone down, but it is still a very energy intensive process. Now a lot of desalplants are now being run partially or fully by green energy. So that is a really positive development, but desalination needs to be part of a combination of solutions with fresh water and recycled water and new technologies so that we're not overly reliant on it, and so that we're more effectively managing our overall energy use for development and produce of water.

Neil Martin  13:16

But could that increase you said about the green energy if developments on that side continue a pace, does then that make it more economically viable and cheaper and potential for more growth in that area,

Daniel Lambert  13:33

I think, well, on the green energy front, to produce enough green energy for a desalination plant requires, if you're talking about solar or wind, a significant area of land to do that. So in a lot of locations, land is limited because you're on a coast dealing with an urban environment. So where possible, I think we should be using as much green energy as possible for that site or offsetting it from elsewhere. But we need to continue to look at the technology. So I suppose part of the question is, what's the next technology? But also, what are the other technologies? And one of the ones that I'm really excited about is atmospheric water generation, and that's a really interesting one in certain environments. But also potentially can help solve some of our problems for more inland communities which don't have really easy access to water supply.

Neil Martin  14:26

So just to maybe clarify for people listening, that would be a way of creating or extracting water from from the atmospheric air. Is that correct?

Daniel Lambert  14:37

That's right, and it works. You get different levels of outcome in different environments, but extracting water from humid air to provide potable water is what I mean by atmospheric water generation. And there's a few different ways that can be done.

Kristen Splinter  14:53

I was reading a statistic about that this morning, and you mentioned earlier that just over 2 billion people don't have consistent access to safe drinking water, but this paper from Nature was suggesting up to 1 billion people in the tropics, where this is potentially going to be most successful, could have access to safer drinking water by using this atmospheric water harvesting. So it's got great potential in there.

Neil Martin  15:18

And how does it actually work in practice. How do you take that kind of air and turn it into the water? How? How easy is it? How hard is it? How much do you think it's going to play a part 30 years down the track?

Daniel Lambert  15:31

It's been proven and is being trialled at different scales. How's it done? It is about five different ways. So you can collect fog. You can use membranes that only pass water vapor. There's ways, with using different chemicals, you can expose air to those chemicals that then extracts the water from it, condensation or pressurizing air. So there's a range of ways, and there's a lot of instances where it's being done in smaller, containerized type units. And increasingly, we're seeing systems that are being built with solar so they can be put off grid. So you can go into an Aboriginal community, for example, and have a system that doesn't require being connected to an external energy source to run it. But there's different contexts in terms of the type of air, the humidity in the air, the temperature, etc, so in different countries. So tailoring the solution is important, but also typically, at the moment, most of the systems that are being developed are quite small. So how do we scale them is part of that opportunity.

Neil Martin  16:38

How confident would you be that one of these technologies, or all of these technologies, would actually come to fruition at some point and really be making an impact to help people?

Kristen Splinter  16:50

When I think of the atmospheric water harvesting, the one that comes to mind the most is the condensation type form we're all fairly familiar with that. If you run an aircon unit, you can see water dripping out of things. So imagine if every community could somehow find a way to be able to, you know, have a cold plate where they could cool water and get it. I think that also plays into the bigger role of looking at children and women who do spend in some of these more arid areas in rural and remote areas, at the amount of time that they spend having to walk to get water back and forth in there. So if you could have local ways for them to be able to access safer water, I think it would be great.

Neil Martin  17:29

And I guess in terms of a technology where I spoke before about there's lots of water in the sea that isn't necessarily super available to people in land, but air is all around all of us. So on that basis, it's maybe a good option to really try to develop,

Kristen Splinter  17:47

yeah, but I think, as David maybe alluded to earlier, it's humidity is, I think, required for it as well. So it's going to be tougher in certain areas. So in all of them, finding what's the most viable solution for that area. So potentially, desal is the best option, because you're surrounded by salt water, or potentially you live in an area where high humidity, and you could do this fairly efficiently, or other processes in there too. I think when we think though the desalone, we also didn't touch on it, the byproduct of that is this hyper saline brine that comes out. So in a lot of things, we have byproducts. What do we do with that byproduct? And we can't necessarily just put that back into the ocean without causing other effects to there. So in all cases, there are these other challenges that do exist with the solutions that we have.

Neil Martin  18:37

Maybe some other technologies that we might talk about are related to treating wastewater, which I guess would help with regards to, you know, not wasting water and being able to utilize that in a more productive way. Are there any interesting technologies that you're either working on yourself or you know of that you think might really be impactful in the next three decades?

Daniel Lambert  19:00

Well, there's quite a few, and I think probably as an overarching context where we're seeing an evolution, really, in in the water industry and how we consider wastewater, and it's been occurring over a period of time. But we used to think of wastewater as a problem, and now we're starting to try and think of it as an opportunity. And the term, you might have heard the term 'biofactory of the future', or wastewater resource facility, but where, rather than looking at wastewater as something that needs to be treated and got rid of as quickly as possible, we're looking at what are the products that can be created from it. And so we've talked a little bit about recycled water already, which is a huge opportunity, extracting phosphorus, extracting nitrogen, creating biochar, for which can be used for as a fuel source or as a way of putting carbon back in our soil and making agriculture. To more effective, but also generating energy from wastewater treatment plants. So there's a huge range of sources of products and energy that we can generate from treatment plants, and lot of technologies to enable that. But I suppose the exciting thing is, how do we reframe how we think about wastewater.

Kristen Splinter  20:22

Everyone loves to go on a wastewater treatment plant tour, don't you? [They do?] We do have this negative, I think, connotation associated with it, though it's...they smell. It was not a highlight of my year, three or four in engineering tours. But I also wonder whether or not, right now, in our closed system, you turn a tap on, you empty a clean water bottle into the same system that you flush your toilet. So things where we flush toilets or human feces, those need to probably be treated at a really high level. But why do we put all the other things that are greywater down that same system? And that's a huge energy resource for us as well.

Neil Martin  21:01

I think you touched on it before, Daniel, about some level of education as well, and maybe the value of water. Do you think people need to be thinking about these things a lot more on a on a personal level?

Daniel Lambert  21:11

I definitely do, and I think at the same time, so education's key, and continuing to evolve, not just how we deal with wastewater at a centralized scale, but at a community and household scale, as Kristen touched on, is really important, too. And I mean, I like if we think about 30 years down the track, will we need centralized wastewater treatment plants, or will, will we be able to do it through a closed loop process in a household or in a precinct? And you look at the journey energy's gone on with solar and batteries at a household scale, and there's still a huge amount of opportunity for us to innovate around bringing water innovation to a household at an affordable level.

Kristen Splinter  21:55

I think we're really fortunate here that we, for the most part, are never limited in the water that we have available to us, and so it allows us to be wasteful as well. I can't imagine if I was told tomorrow that I had five liters of water every day allocated to me, and then the taps would turn off. What would I do? You know, my shower probably uses more than that, so how do you have a really quick shower? How do you share bath water? How do you make sure you conserve every bit of water that you're using? And lots of people around the world have to do that every day, but we don't, I think we just put it in the back of our minds, because it's not something we have to deal with ourselves.

Neil Martin  22:04

As part of my research for this episode, I was reading about issues and problems and solutions, and one of the things that cropped up seem to be that maybe water needs to be valued more and also made more expensive, which doesn't sound particularly great, I guess, in cost of living crisis that a lot of places are having at the moment. But do you agree with that, that maybe there is an undervaluing of water, and people just take it for granted it's cheap. Maybe it does need to be more expensive to make people think a bit more.

Kristen Splinter  23:04

I'm not going to say I'm in favour of increasing cost of living for people, but I think if we as a society understood the value of water better, that would help us, like we have to value everything else too.

Daniel Lambert  23:16

I think it's commonly talked about in probably in the water and utility space that most people know what their last energy bill was, but in terms of electricity, whether they're not aware of how much they paid for water, because it's there's a there is a big differential. So, yeah, I agree, not saying that we should be looking to increase our cost of living. But people don't necessarily think about water as much, because it isn't. It hasn't become the burden that electricity has become, over time, on the average household in terms of price. Getting back to your point on education, though, Neil, I think that it's been fascinating watching my my children go through school, and the amount of time that's spent on water, waste energy, the environment, in terms of education for the next generation coming through. And so I suppose on a positive note, it's heartening to see that awareness is coming in the next generation, which I don't think probably we had when we went through our school system. So think we've got a generation coming through that have a huge awareness of the environment, but we need to continue to educate all generations as well.

Neil Martin  23:43

Kristen, I know your area of expertise is more on the kind of coastal erosion side of things. Maybe, are there any new technologies, there kind of crazy ideas that people are maybe coming up with to solve that problem, or is it just too big and too difficult?

Kristen Splinter  24:44

It is a big one, and I think it's only going to get more challenging, as we're expecting sea levels to rise on it. Look, there's, I think wave energy is something that we as a country have. Have a lot of potential capacity to tap into if we wanted to. We're still, I think, fairly young, in the infancy of getting it all working, but when we remove energy from the ocean waves coming towards our coastline, that's also what's contributing to the erosion problem on the side. So can we also put these in areas, potentially, where we're trying to protect infrastructure, and they not only harness energy to provide energy to the grid, but also provide coastal protection to the adjacent coastline in there? I think maybe it's a little bit circular in the sense that we always do consider environmental impacts when we're building anything out onto the coastline. But I think that's becoming more front and center as well, and how engineers can start to work better with ecologists and scientists to understand the full system and provide ecological benefits as well if we're putting in a coastal protection measure.

Neil Martin  25:57

Daniel you mentioned before about the issue with regards to maybe, you know, Pacific islands being really in danger of sea level rises. But I guess the sea level rise is quite a difficult problem to hold back, so to speak.

Daniel Lambert  26:11

Sure is, and how do we plan for different scenarios is probably part of that as well. I know some of the island communities have looked at scenarios where, if the sea level rises to a certain point that they actually have to move an island community to a totally new location. And so part of it's, how do we mitigate and do everything we can to prevent sea level rise.

Neil Martin  26:34

And moving to me, doesn't sound like the best solution to that problem. Obviously, it's ultimately would be required, but it's obviously very impactful on those communities, and not the ideal solution to that problem.

Daniel Lambert  26:50

Yeah, it'd been very difficult on a social level for those communities, and not something that any of us would like to see happen

Daniel Lambert  26:58

and that, I think that cultural connection to land that Kristen's brought up is really important, and probably not just in the sort of island communities, similar challenges with First Nations communities in Australia and in most major continents, different cultures have a different way that they connect to land and water that we need to be really aware of andtry and develop our understanding of it so we can respectfully work with them in those contexts.

Kristen Splinter  26:58

Now, and even, I think we have a view of land here, we can buy and sell land, we move houses, and we don't think too much of it. My understanding is a lot of those coastal islands don't see land the same way. They are, and you can have groups tribes that are ocean based people, and some of them have never actually stepped on land. They only know how to live on water and vice versa. So if your benchmark for where the water levels are changing, you potentially displace people that don't even have a spot to go on their own islands, because they don't sort of own in quotation marks, the land that's higher up that belongs to a different group of people, and so they've got challenges associated with that, even within little spaces. So there's the issue of sea level rise refugees and having to move entire countries potentially away. But then even more locally, there's that other issue that they will also have to contend with that is not something that we necessarily understand as well, because we don't think of land the same way.

Neil Martin  28:33

One thing I was going to pick up on: sea level rising being difficult to deal with. It's obviously the sea level rises are potentially caused by the climate change. Is there a way that we can use water to maybe affect climate change?

Daniel Lambert  28:49

I mean, if you look at Australia and our context, and for a lot of nations now, but two of the key renewable energy sources that there's a significant amount of money being invested in pumped hydro and hydrogen, and both of those water is absolutely critical to helping to develop solutions for so for pumped hydro, the concept of pumping water back up into dams during off peak periods and then generating electricity during peak periods requires a huge amount of water. And for hydrogen, creating hydrogen needs, it requires a huge amount of water as well. And so it's interesting. A lot of these points we've talking about are coming together or intertwining in some of the work that that I've been involved with in pittwater, in the Pilbara and so north of Western Australia, where there's Native Title, lots of First Nations communities, there's a lot of land available potentially for green energy, a lot of land available for hydrogen, and a lot of land available for green steel manufacturing. But working with multiple stakeholders, understanding the First Nations perspective on water, delivering positive benefits for them, but at the same time, trying to streamline and accelerate environmental approval processes so that we can develop water solutions quickly. To develop hydrogen solutions quickly, are critical challenges.

Neil Martin  30:21

Using water to help protect water or save water, sounds like quite a nice loop to hopefully progress

Kristen Splinter  30:29

Closing our loop? Yes, I would hope so. And I guess on a another one, I like those two examples of the pumped hydro and the hydrogen. I'm also learning a little bit more about solar, but the panels, I guess, are more efficient when they're cool, and so using things like green wall or green roof technology in combination with solar, whereas they get fed potentially greywater into them, and then they can act as primary or first point of contact, also cleaning out of things like microplastics or other small debris that's in there. But then, as they evapotranspire, they cool the cells above them, make the cells more efficient, and we kind of get a win win on there as well. So but requires water, and potentially not water that we all want to drink right away.

Neil Martin  31:15

You mentioned the word microplastics there, and that was on my list of things to maybe talk to you guys about because it seems to be a growing problem, and I don't know quite where the experts are at with regards to identifying the scale of that as a problem and potential solutions. Just wondered if you could maybe give your views of how dangerous you think that microplastics problem is, and what the real big problems would be if we don't start dealing with it looking 30 years in the future?

Daniel Lambert  31:47

I think it's a huge problem, and there's some really good technology there, but fundamentally, there's a lot of things we need to work out. How do we influence in terms of removing microplastics at the source so how do we remove it from our supply chain? Whether it's the types of clothing that we produce and use, whether it's the types of products that the packaging that we have for our food products and other items, we're seeing a lot of countries banning single use plastics, which is fantastic, but there's still a huge amount of microplastics in the cosmetics industry, for example, that we need to understand. So I think changing regulation is critical, working out how at the household scale we raise awareness and manage what we do with with our products, and then improving our wastewater treatment plant technologies are all aspects which happy to talk to, but I suspect it's an area that Kristen's quite passionate about as well.

Kristen Splinter  32:46

I think just adding on to it, it's more consumer awareness of what we can do. I'm not walking the talk today. I'm pretty sure I'm wearing a dress that's got synthetics in it, but we have the power as a consumer to only choose things that don't contain microplastics. Be a bit smarter on that, and industry will need to evolve for that. You know, we've allowed them to use microplastics in everything. We want cheap goods. We want things that don't wrinkle. We can change that back. But are we willing to do?

Neil Martin  33:21

Do you think the problem will get bigger, though, before it starts to reduce? Because it seems to me, from a non expert side of things, that every week I'm reading a story about we're finding more microplastics here. It's growing and growing and growing. And I wonder whether people haven't yet got the full grasp of this.

Kristen Splinter  33:42

Yeah, and you think of even if you were to stop making all plastics today, how much plastics are already in our society, and all of that will degrade over time, so I think it's going to get worse before we get better. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't start changing now, either onto that.

Daniel Lambert  34:01

And do you have any thoughts in terms of the new technologies or the, other than the education side of things, and the reduction of those microplastics that source the ways that you think would be best suited to deal with the actual problem that already exists?

Kristen Splinter  34:19

I think we need to also go back to the source of the issue, rather than just trying to keep finding solutions for the problem. We've got 40 odd washing machines sitting over at our labs right now that are there to test microplastics, to test different brands, to test different filters that can be put onto a washing machine to be able to try and capture more things at the source of a laundry machine. We've got other people looking at how green walls can be used to treat that greyter coming out so that some of those are captured in with the soil. They're still there, so we still have to figure out what to do with them afterwards, though, check them in a landfill and then what happens to them so they're not gone, even though we've captured them.

Neil Martin 34:58

See you agreeing there, Daniel,

Daniel Lambert  35:01

I think so, and I think it is, unfortunately, probably going to get worse before it gets better. But there are some great technologies. So we've talked about the consumer, we've talked about regulation. There's a great Australian technology actually called Seabin, which floats in the there's a lot of them in the Sydney Harbor, which they float at the surface, and they skim off and remove plastics, fuels, detergents, and what are the simple technologies that we can install at scale to remove microplastics and plastics entering the ocean? There's filters and technology that can go into stormwater drains and wastewater systems so that before it hits the ocean or the rivers, or before it hits the wastewater treatment plants, we're removing as much as possible.

Neil Martin  35:45

We've spoken a lot about water with regards to how it impacts people, but you were talking about the fish in the oceans. I wonder if you guys had some thoughts about the way the water problems are causing issues with regards to aquatic biodiversity and kind of animal life, obviously again, Daniel, a lot of young people now are very tuned into that and keen to help wildlife. Is that kind of issue, do you think, being taken seriously?

Daniel Lambert  36:17

if you go to the Sydney zoo, or a lot of the sort of zoos or wildlife parks in Australia now there's there's programs, and they talk a lot about plastics in the ocean and the impact on turtles, and I think kids are being educated about it on multiple fronts. There's a lot of studies showing plastics is entering fish, it's entering turtles, it's entering different creatures, and people care about marine life, and so tying a problem to an impact that connects with people at a head and heart level is really important. So that's something that we could draw more closely.

Neil Martin  36:53

And Kristen maybe more generally. How important do you think it is that we take all of those things into consideration? The biodiversity of marine life, all of these problems with regards to clean water, I guess, and water that's going to benefit the environment, not just people.

Kristen Splinter  37:11

I think it should be a huge priority for us, in the sense that the globe, our world, is an entire ecosystem, when you think of it that way. And so if we're destroying one aspect of it, there's no guarantee that nature is going to be able to keep up with the rest of it. And we are learning from that. When we remove sort of primary predators from food change, what does that do? On the knock on effect, as you mentioned, we're getting plastics in the ocean. So those are being bio accumulated. Well, that's going into the food that we eat as well. And I think we can learn a lot from nature as a whole and how it knows how to clean and filter water. So mangroves, wetlands, all of those things are great ways nature knows how to filter water on its own. Before we came in here and started throwing chemicals at it, can we go back and do more of that? And there's lots of, I guess, work going into restoring things like coastal wetlands and mangroves, which were thought of as backwater swamps historically, but understanding now how much value they add to health benefits, economic benefits to the local areas, and they're also a carbon sink. So when we're thinking of decarbonization, that's another thing that when we remove them, then they're gone to help. So yes, I do think we need to be considering that that whole system and working better together with it, to be able to include it.

Neil Martin  38:34

Like you said, the natural solutions have been there for millennium. So you know, they do, they do work.

Kristen Splinter  38:42

They do. They're just slower. I think in a lot of cases, wetlands. I don't have numbers, but I doubt they can filter all the water, that dirty water that Sydney produces in a day, given the size that we have for them. So we can't abandon the technologies we have. We've created them to be able to do things at the scales to which humans live, but they shouldn't be discarded as not being something we can use. And that's where, you know, vertical green walls or green roofs, we can we can take some of that old ideas that nature has and put them again, back in a micro, individual scale and help use those ideas to help offset the larger energy resources or needs that we have when we're thinking about water as a as a closed loop cycle.

Neil Martin  39:27

Do you think some of those natural solutions have been forgotten a little bit? Daniel, and maybe that goes back to what you were talking about, the cultural importance of water. I wonder if that view is not the same in indigenous communities, for example,

Daniel Lambert  39:43

I think there's a lot we can learn from natural systems and the benefits that they provide. And yeah, when we talk about cultural value of water and First Nations communities in Australia, for example, I think we're, we're on a journey, andwe're getting better at listening and learning. But it's quite exciting to think that we're really starting to value the different voices and the different views and different experiences of our traditional owners when we're planning for water.

Neil Martin  40:12

There's some real pressures on water usage and the need to have it. I wonder if there might be potential for geopolitical conflict?

Kristen Splinter  40:21

I think it's definitely a big risk. We all know we need water to survive, and if all of a sudden your country doesn't have enough, where are you going to go and look for it? You're starting to dam off water, potentially, which has downstream effects to other groups huge I think in the future for geopolitical stability.

Daniel Lambert  40:38

There used to be a lot of discussion about wars being fought over oil, and obviously that's still a huge challenge, but most of the predictions are future wars will be fought around water. So looking at the UN, one of the things that they do a lot of work on is trying to identify and anticipate where stress will occur. They define water stress as around 1700 meters cubed per person, as opposed to water scarcity, which is below 1000 meters cube per person, down to absolute scarcity, or 500 meters cube per person. And how do we identify those areas early, which are likely to move from stress to scarcity, and some of them are in locations between very powerful nations. So it is a focus for the UN but how do we help them with diplomacy? How do we help with regulation? How do we help with water sharing and cooperation agreements? How do we take lessons learned from Australia around water trading in the Murray Darling Basin, for example, and try and apply some of those principles in the right context? Yes, it's more complicated when you're dealing with nations, but with the right will and right cooperation solutions can be developed that should be able to deliver Win-Win outcomes.

Kristen Splinter  41:46

Yeah, I think throughout this whole conversation, we've learned that there's a lot of different ways to solve different problems.

Neil Martin  41:52

I just wanted to finish with a question to both of you, if you were a 16 or 17 year old today, thinking of going into a career related to water engineering, what would you be most excited about?

Daniel Lambert  42:04

Well, I love this question because I think there's a lot to be excited about for people entering the water space, and partly depends on their passion area. But for me, one of the things I'd be encouraging them on is the fact that water's critical to the future of humanity, and that as a professional coming into the water industry, you have the opportunity to help solve solutions around the future of food, around the future of energy, around the future of sustainable supply to communities that are in water scarcity situations, and that water is about caring for people and caring for the environment, and you get to work in an area that touches your heart as well as uses your mind.

Neil Martin  42:51

Kristen, What are your thoughts with regards to that question?

Kristen Splinter  42:54

I'd be cheeky and say, besides, come hang out on the beach with me as a coastal engineer. Look, I think Daniel's point's really, really good. It's finding your passion. So even if your passion is potentially in health, you can work for the World Health Organization, but do it in the water space. If you're interested in transport and logistics, you can still do that in the water space. It is. There's so many opportunities to I think, also think slightly outside the box versus a traditional wastewater engineer, or, oh, I design pipes engineer idea. There's so many ways that we work in water that aren't those traditional things that people think about, that you can really start to get creative in your job, and I think have a great, fulfilling career out of it.

Neil Martin  43:37

Well, I think this whole discussion will have really invigorated people and giving them a wealth of information and knowledge. So look, I thank you both. It's been fascinating to speak with you. Associate Professor Kristen Splinter, many thanks for making the time to join us.

Kristen Splinter  43:53

Thanks so much for having me.

Neil Martin 43:55

And thanks also to Daniel Lambert, it's been a pleasure to chat.

Daniel Lambert  43:58

Thanks, Neil, great to be with you both.

Neil Martin  44:00

Unfortunately, that's all we've got time for. Thank you for listening. I've been Neil Martin, and I hope you'll join me again soon for the next episode in our engineering the future series.

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