Innov8tia is a startup based in China developing a sustainabel and profitable solution to address the sludge problem.
Western consumerism produces hundreds of millions of tons of hazardous manufacturing sludge annually, most of which is generated and dumped across China and other industrializing countries. The resulting human and ecological crisis is unprecedent in scale yet largely hidden from the societies primarily responsible for it.
Innov8tia has developed the world’s most advanced hazardous sludge treatment solution, based on microwave pyrolysis technology developed by the team. Across China and the industrializing world untreated hazardous manufacturing sludge is dumped, silently polluting the environment and the lives of hundreds of millions of people. Traditional solutions such as landfilling or incineration are unviable in densely populated regions where manufacturing is highly concentrated. Emerging from a synergy between one of the world’s leading universities in industrial microwave applications and rapidly innovating China, Innov8tia has developed a sustainable and profitable solution to address this massive, growing, and deadly sludge problem.
175,000 tons of sludge are produced every day in China, and 80% of them has been dumped.
According to an investment report by Goldman Sachs, soil pollution is a larger problem for China than either air or water pollution. Chinese manufacturers generated approximately 50 million tons of highly-hazardous sludge in 2017; 1,700 tons per day was generated in Ningbo, one of 590 Chinese cities with serious sludge problems. 80% is dumped, untreated, affecting the lives of hundreds of millions of people; a fifth of China’s land is unusable for agriculture, cancer villages are becoming cancer cities, villages are being wiped off the map by sludge floods — and entire schools are being hospitalized. Children as young as nine are diagnosed with cancer.
Innov8tia is commercializing the world’s most advanced hazardous sludge treatment solutions. Using patented technologies and processes developed by our team, Innov8tia produces high value chemicals, energy, and clean water from industrial sludge while generating little to no pollution.
Seth Knutson, founder and scientist behind Innov8tia, talks about the cause of the ecological crisis in China and his engineering solution to mitigate the dire effects of toxic sludge. Innov8tia is a 2017 Laudato Si’ Challenge Company.
