|
Founded in 2016, Triangle Environmental Health Initiative (TE) is on a mission to transform the way we think about and use our waste. TE develops water and sanitation technologies with a focus on resource recovery, including non-potable water for flushing toilets or irrigation and natural nutrients to fertilize plants. Their small, but mighty, team of six employees also offers Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WaSH) consulting services for underserved communities with experience in 13 countries throughout Africa and Southeast Asia.
TE’s NC-based Research & Development team is developing a range of technologies that address challenges and opportunities in the onsite wastewater industry, ranging from nutrient management to graywater reuse to total wastewater treatment and reuse.
“Our goal is to change the way we value what gets sent down our household drain,” said founder Tate Rogers. “Once the waste is collected, treated, and transformed, you are left with valuable products for reuse. These safe and sustainable products include non-potable water for irrigation or toilet flushing and fertilizer solutions rich in nitrogen and phosphorous."
According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the average American home uses 300 gallons of water each day. Seventy percent of water use happens inside the home. Approximately 50 gallons (of clean drinking water!) is used daily to flush the toilet. Not all of this wastewater gets treated. As a result of our aging sewer infrastructure, 900 billion gallons of raw sewage is unsafely discharged every year into our waterbodies. In addition, approximately half of the 20 million septic systems are malfunctioning and polluting our home environments. Meanwhile, 40 U.S. states expect to face water shortages over the next 10 years. There is an urgent and growing need for affordable, sustainable on-site wastewater treatment systems that protect our homes, our living environments, and our resources.
Since 2020, TE has received three Phase I SBIR awards from the EPA to develop products to protect our water resources. The first two received Phase II awards, and the third will be submitted for a Phase II application in the coming months. The SBIR funding is critical to prove the technology concept(s) during Phase I and to pilot and commercialize the products in Phase II. The support TE received from the EPA not only resulted in successful treatment demonstrations of the wastewater treatment products, but also supported efforts to establish valuable connections to commercial partners that will allow TE to accelerate the adoption of these products into the market.
For small businesses that are new to the SBIR program, Rogers offered the following suggestions:
- As engineers and scientists, it’s easy to try to create the “perfect product” before understanding your market and commercial strategy. However, it is critical for the success of your company or product to engage stakeholders early and often to inform product development and market direction.
-
Make sure to leverage your SBIR funding for other opportunities, including commercial partner outreach, additional funding, and promotion. Through direct funding and connections from our SBIR awards from EPA, we received a matching grant from the NC Department of Commerce and a RISE Resilience grant.
"As a small business with limited finances, the SBTDC was a great, no-cost resource to strengthen our early SBIR proposals. Through the SBTDC review process, we received key insights into reviewer approaches and why many companies struggle to receive SBIR/STTR funding. We also participated in a summer internship program which we utilized to get key market insights into our nutrient recovery product (under our first SBIR Phase I award), including shortlisting potential commercial partners. We are currently working with the SBTDC to strengthen and expand TE’s consulting services by networking with large prime recipients for federal contracting projects through agencies like USAID."
TE’s goal is to continue working with commercial partners throughout the SBIR R&D phase (usually 2-3 years) to extensively field-test and create market-ready products by the end of Phase II funding. TE is continually searching for strategic commercial partnerships during the SBIR funding process to inform the research and help shape products, with the goal of accelerating time-to-market.
| 
