And businessmen should be keeping an eye on their water meters too, as increased costs result in decreased profits.
“The hotel industry, in particular, consumes a large amount of water – a significant part of which is used for second class uses and therefore considered a waste of expensive potable water,” Mr Cremona explains.
“Around 85 per cent of all of all hotel water ends up as sewage. While a handful of the larger hotels recycle this water for second class uses such as landscaping, this only represents around 30 per cent of their water requirements. And uses such as landscaping only apply in summer,” he adds. “This means that conventional in-house wastewater recycling is only marginally economically viable at present.”
While water can be treated relatively easily for use in second class items such as watering plants or flushing toilets, there still needs to be certain economies of scale for it to be efficient and effective.
“I realised that a hotel would benefit the most from a water treatment system that produced first class, potable water from waste water. This would be very efficient in terms of cost,” Mr Cremona says.
The project began when Mr Cremona submitted an application to the Malta Council for Science and Technology for funding from the 2006 Research and Innovation Fund. His project was chosen and he obtained a small grant to get his project off the ground.
“I immediately brought on board several partners. The first was the German research institute TTZ Bremerhaven who had developed a compact wastewater treatment system for camping sites. They had a prototype plant already constructed and I arranged a lease agreement with them.
“In addition, I also brought on board the Public Health who would test the water I produced to ensure it was potable, as well as Island Hotels Group, who would provide a location to install the plant and support services,” he continues.
Following discussions with Island Hotels it was decided to site the plant at the Radisson Golden Sands Resort & Spa. Here it was operated for twelve months with the quality of the water being constantly tested against drinking water standards – which it consistently met and exceeded”
“The water that was produced was not used by the hotel as this was a test scenario. However, the results showed that the water was actually closer to bottled water rather than normal town water that comes through the tap,” Mr Cremona notes.
The system designed by Mr Cremona uses an inbuilt failsafe mechanism to eliminate the risk of producing contaminated water.
“The system is monitored in real time, so that in the event of a failure the system shuts itself down and the hotel can revert to normal supply while repairs are conducted,” he explains.
The system itself won the national prize in the Energy Globe Award in 2009. It also won the Report Terre prize that is sponsored by French national television France 5 which featured ‘green’ business ideas from around Europe.
It was while taking part in this international competition that Mr Cremona learned of another competition – the CNBC Good Entrepreneur competition. This highly prestigious award is judged by some of the world’s top executives and successful businessmen.
“My entry was selected for the final and I had to make a two minute pitch to a panel of five executives and experts who represented major international companies such as Nani Becall-Falco, CEO of General Electric, Jean-Philippe Courtois President of Microsoft International, and Professor Sir David King, climate change advisor to Tony Blair,” Mr Cremona recalls.
“It was a great achievement to be selected as one of the three finalists in this very tough competition and enabled me to get excellent advice, business development strategies and to further expand my business concept.
“It was a unique opportunity it marketing terms. CNBC produced four 1-hour episodes from the competition which were broadcast around the world. The exposure my project (and Malta) got from the competition was phenomenal and I am still being inundated with enquiries from interested investors and potential clients from around the world – weeks after the episodes were first shown. It is of course a pity that I did not get away with the Euro 250,000 prize – but I consider getting to the finals as a victory in itself.”
Mr Cremona is now ready to begin marketing his service to hotel chains around the globe.
“I have developed a unique plant that can offer substantial savings to hotels or other large water consumers. However, I am not selling a product, but a service. I will install and operate the machinery on the hotel grounds, taking the hotel’s sewage and transforming it into clean, potable water. I will then sell this water back to the hotel at a saving of 20 per cent on what it is currently paying,” he explains.
He is clear that he would very much like the first plant to be installed in Malta.
“This is something that was developed in Malta and, although the tariffs are lower in Malta and thus I would see a much lower return on investment, I would very much like to bring this technology to our island before expanding into Europe and other parts of the world.”
With water consumption rising and tariffs escalating in parallel, Mr Cremona’s solution would seem to be a very viable addition to any large water using location, for as the old saying goes, “money saved is profit earned.”