CYCLE - circular household cleaners
Basic information
Project Title
Full project title
Category
Project Description
CYCLE - circular household cleaning products made from municipal sewage sludge through hydrolysis where acetic acid (main active ingredient) is recovered together with water. These recovered substances make 90% of our cleaning products. The rest is natural citric acid, natural surfactant and recycled PET bottle. All our products are waste derived, circular, easily biodegradable. Safe to use it around pets and kids, no harmful chemicals used.
Project Region
EU Programme or fund
Which funds
Other Funds
H2020 SME-Inst GA783638
Description of the project
Summary
The mother company UTB Envirotec is an engineering firm which has been working in the field of municipal and industrial wastewater and sludge treatment for over 25 years. R&D is a core pillar of our everyday life and Renew Technologies as a spin-off company is a result of a successful R&D project.
We take municipal sewage sludge (or other biosolid waste) and we feed that into a bioreactor where hydrolysis and acidification takes place under a controlled environment. Using special filtration we recover a permeate containing volatile fatty acids and nutrients. Through distillation we separate the acids from the nutrients. We use the acid - which is mainly acetic acid with some propionic and butyric - to make our CYCLE household cleaners while the nutrients are used as plant fertilizer. The technology is patent protected and is in operation in Budapest, Hungary. The products are available in retail stores in Hungary and Austria, and worldwide through our webshop.
The cleaning products have been independently tested for efficacy by SGS Fresenius, we are EU Ecolabel (HU020/023) and Cruelty Free certified. We've also won numerous awards for sustainability and innovation.
Key objectives for sustainability
By using a waste material - biosolids - to create, recover our chemicals to produce our products we truly contribute to a sustainable, circular modern life. Our goal was to take a waste material and create a useful product than after usage it can be processed again to create another new product. As an example:
Step 1: municipal sludge from wastewater treatment is taken and processed by us using renewable power and heat available form the biogas engines at the wastewater treatment plant.
Step 2: the recovered acids together with recycled water make up 90% of our toilet cleaner. The rest are natural surfactants, thickeners and scents.
Step 3: after cleaning the toilet bowl and flushing it it ends up in the sewage system where after treatment becomes sludge and we process it again to make cleaners.
This is how we close the loop and contribute to sustainability and circularity.
Key objectives for aesthetics and quality
Making the cleaners is one challenge. To mask the acetic acid smell we add lavender and mint to give a nice fragrance to the products so it is very nice while using them.
Another challenge is packaging. We wanted to put the products into rPET bottles that are made from recycled PET. None of these bottles are clear, transparent but we found a manufacturer who makes nice smoky looking recycled PET bottles that truly compliment our products. We made sure that the labels are also recyclable, made of paper.
So no compromise to conventional products in efficacy even the price matches those in the category, but it is truly safe and sustainable.
Key objectives for inclusion
One of the key objective of the project was to develop a technology and subsequently products that are affordable and sustainable. In one way the technology has to be appealing to the wastewater treatment plant in terms of CAPEX and OPEX. The other, the products made for the customers has to be efficient and affordable. We managed to implement both and bring a new product to life. We fully cooperate with the wastewater treatment plant and buy renewable energy and heat from them while giving back our "waste" to generate more biogas. Our waste is hydrolysed sludge which is ready to be turned into biogas. We practically don't produce any waste at all.
Results in relation to category
We not only create products, but create our own ingredients for the products. We are in general getting more conscious of our own immediate environment and how we see ourselves in it. It is a growing trend to use our cars less, waste less food and water, doing more to recycle. Our solution contributes to this progress, we can make a home healthier, more sustainable. People need to be engaged more, educated in what is available and how it can contribute for a sustainable urban living. Locally generated waste used locally is a beautiful example of that and should be the norm everywhere.
How Citizens benefit
Every home has a toilet and running water. Any village, town or city needs wastewater treatment. That is a must for a healthy urban living. By taking and processing the waste that the city produced and giving back products that are free of harmful, toxic chemicals but efficiently clean our homes is a gamechanger. It is not only the home itself but the inside the home is what matters as well.
Our mission to reuse, recover and recycle is completed from this respect - waste produced by us is given back to us in form of cleaners, again and again.
Innovative character
New technology developments enable us to look at waste differently. Waste is becoming more and more as a resource mine and we need to learn how to exploit that. There are loads of challenges like - would you use a cleaner made from sewage sludge? Through technology breakthrough this is actually safer and no less efficient that by using toxic chemicals, which we are surrounded by in every home.
Safe, circular, sustainable products are the features of our products.
