Published on IDRA Global Connections Spring 2021 Issue
By Ms. Nicole Richards, CEO of Allonnia
Waste is a failure of imagination. For me, this statement–- Allonnia’s motivating mantra–- is the embodiment of a world full of possibilities to create the change needed
for a sustainable future. Our operating thesis is to draw inspiration from nature, the most powerful tool we have to address our waste challenges today.
No industry today understands the waste remediation power of biology better than the wastewater industry, which every year represents almost a $9B biological wastewater treatment market.
We see many examples of biology doing this powerful work throughout nature; from ocean sea sponges filtering bacteria and particles from the water and converting
them to a food source to naturally occurring bacteria becoming active in the presence of oil to clean oil spills in the ocean. It has been theorized that up to 50% of the Deep Water Horizon Oil spill was degraded by naturally occurring organisms (1). These organisms remain dormant until the presence of their contaminant of preference is introduced. No industry today understands the waste remediation power of biology better than the wastewater industry, which every year represents almost a $9B biological wastewater treatment market.
One of the biggest challenges to implementing biological solutions is the efficiency with which these organisms typically operate. Given enough time, many experts believe that natural organisms will evolve to degrade most contaminants. And yet, the process of evolution is too slow and inefficient to address growing waste challenges for emerging contaminants such as PFAS, that need a solution today–- not in 1,000 years. This is where biology meets technology. Over the past two decades, governments and business across the globe have catalyzed a new, biological, industrial revolution. Companies such as Allonnia, can now tailor the function of these natural organisms to target and degrade compounds of interest efficiently. Science has progressed and enables us to now read, or sequence, the DNA of a given organism. By transforming the A, C, G, and T’s of DNA molecules into a “code” we can read and begin to optimize the functions that exist as they relate to waste remediation and upcycling.
With SCIENCE and SOCIETY working together, embracing shared values and goals, waste can be a resource and the potential is limited only by our collective imaginations.
This exponential trajectory of developments in synthetic biology will unlock nature’s potential to solve many of our environmental and planetary health problems. Combining the ability to read and write DNA, with high throughput and automated experimentation, enables us to customize a bio- based solution
that can supplement existing chemical or mechanical processes in an effective and cost-efficient way. Our capabilities span many functionalities including organism
carrying enzymes that metabolize the carbon fluorine bond for degrading PFAS, organisms that can reduce aeration in secondary wastewater treatment, to an
engineered protein that can upcycle recycled polyurethane into polyols. The waste treatment industry is a fertile field for further improvements using advanced biology
based treatment solutions. With SCIENCE and SOCIETY working together, embracing shared values and goals, waste can be a resource and the potential is limited only by our collective imaginations.
1| https://asm.org/Articles/2020/April/How-Microbes-Clean-up-Oil-Lessons-From-the-Deepwat
2| https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/
