Friday, March 29, 2024

He’s turning a pest into profit

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A young New Zealander has created technology that can turn the invasive algae didymo into paper, fabric and bioplastic and it is helping to clean up our waterways. Luke Chivers explains.
Reading Time: 3 minutes

He could be a psychologist, businessman or environmentalist but wherever Logan Williams, 23, ends up he will make his mark on the innovation scene.

The young entrepreneur from Timaru founded Biome Innovation, which creates biodegradable material from didymo, the invasive river weed also known as rock snot.

Williams saw first-hand the impact didymo had on waterways in South Canterbury while he was growing up.

“As a kid I spent most of my time in the Mackenzie Country.

“We’d go camping, hiking and fishing there every year.”

But he began to realise the number of native species in the region was rapidly reducing. 

“I could see this thick brown sludge, didymo, was infecting river after river from Rangitata to the Tekapo River and devastating native populations in the process,” Williams said.

“It suffocates the waterways and has a big impact on the wildlife, hydro dams, irrigation and boating. 

“It’s horrible and it’s likely to be only a matter of time before it spreads.”

Didymo is commonplace in North America, Asia, Europe and, since 2004, the South Island. 

It attaches itself to rocks in fast-flowing streams, creating dense benthic mats that can extend for several kilometres. 

It is not toxic, just a mess.

And it is threatening to ruin our waterways.

“Unfortunately for us, this stuff thrives in cold, clean and low nitrogen water so the South Island’s climate is perfect,” Williams said.

“And once it’s established it just takes over everything. The river effectively dies.”

Angered at seeing waterways devastated and frustrated by the apparent lack of action by the authorities, Williams, in 2015, sought a solution.

“I was studying science and psychology at the University of Canterbury at the time.

“I’d learnt a bit about materials engineering and very quickly became infatuated with didymo.

“Its large blooms are what make didymo so unique and it’s these filaments you can layer on top of one another in order to make a material from it.”

Williams spent hours waist deep in freezing water, testing in a laboratory and doing hundreds of iterations to finally create a material from the algae.

He has managed to synthesis didymo into paper, fabric and bioplastic, which is 100% recyclable, eco-friendly and could be an alternative to plastics in consumer goods.

Biome Innovation has established a full manufacturing cycle, which starts by removing didymo from rivers then manufacturing at Kilmarnock Enterprises in Christchurch and distributing end products to customers.

“Didymo can be sustainably removed from our environment. 

“Sure, just a single drop of infected water or plant fragment can spread the algae but if you continually extract the didymo starting from the top of the river and put the infrastructure in place you can get on top of it.”

As a result of his ingenious scheme Williams was accepted into the 2018 round of the Kokiri Accelerator Programme, designed to help Maori start-up businesses.

Williams is also known for his Polar Optics invention – contact lenses that help sufferers of photosensitive epilepsy – and he was one of the 10 shortlisted nominees for the 2017 Young New Zealander of the Year award.

Another project he is looking into is finding a way of using spirulina to make dairy farms more environmentally-friendly.

It is still theoretical but the idea is that if watered with dairy runoff, spirulina will absorb nitrates and the plant could then be fed to stock with no ill-effects.

Today Williams is based at Fonterra’s Research and Development Centre in Palmerston North where he is researching sustainable agriculture.

His areas of focus are ways to reduce methane levels on-farm and increase the availability of compostable food packaging in the primary sector.

“My passion is to find solutions for problems.

“I feel the real solution to many of the environmental issues we face is to build social enterprises and businesses around conservation – that way, efforts are sustainable because they’re self-funded. 

“I think that’s the long-term solution to conservation,” he said. 

Williams is looking to partner other NZ companies and secure ongoing investment to scale up his ventures.

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