A US company backed by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has produced its first batch of test beer from waste water - a revolutionary development in the drinks industry.
Epic Cleantec originally received a grant from the Gates' Foundation as part of a "Reinvent The Toilet" challenge in 2012, a contest where various companies had to come up with ways to further develop water reuse.
Over a decade later, San Francisco-based Epic Cleantec has produced its first test beer, named Epic OneWater Brew, which is made from wastewater.
On the company website, Epic Cleantec describes itself saying: Our work shifts the water industry toward a distributed, circular approach in which wastewater resources — water, nutrients, energy, carbon — are recovered and reused. With our technology, the "waste" in wastewater is converted into an endlessly renewable supply of valuable commodities.
According to the US Environmental Protection Agency, the average family can waste 180 gallons per week, or 9,400 gallons of water annually, from household leaks. That's equivalent to the amount of water needed to wash more than 300 loads of laundry. Household leaks can waste approximately nearly 900 billion gallons of water annually nationwide.
Making use of waste water has never been more important, so turning it into beer could be revolutionary for the drinks industry.
Find out more about Epic Cleantec here.