The water crisis is one of the most pressing issues facing our planet, with climate change, population growth, and pollution threatening the availability of clean water worldwide. One company working to tackle this problem head-on is Spout Water. This California-based startup has developed an innovative solution, the Spout Monolith, a sleek kitchen device that produces pure drinking water from the moisture in the air. Spout founder and CEO Reuben Vollmer joins the conversation to explain how a personal challenge began his mission to solve water scarcity and quality issues. Reuben recently contributed an article to Earth911, mapping his journey into the world of water. It started with an unexpected letter his family received during a drought in 2010, warning that their olive farm's well could be restricted.
Water production and distribution needs a good swift kick in the form of a surprising alternative to how we've done it during the Industrial Era. The Spout Monolith may be one kick in our complaisance. We are surrounded by water in the atmosphere. A June 2022 study by the University of Reading in the United Kingdom found that total atmospheric water vapor is increasing by about 1% a decade due to warming climates. One percent may not sound like much, but the United States Geological Survey reports that the planet's atmosphere contains 12 trillion gallons of water, so one percent more water vapor represents 120 billion gallons. That one-percent increase in atmospheric water vapor per decade means that between 2010 and 2050, as much as 480 billion gallons of additional water vapor will migrate into the air, around half of today's annual human consumption of freshwater. You can learn more about the company and preorder a Monolith with a $100 discount using the code "MITCH911" at https://www.spoutwater.com/
Water production and distribution needs a good swift kick in the form of a surprising alternative to how we've done it during the Industrial Era. The Spout Monolith may be one kick in our complaisance. We are surrounded by water in the atmosphere. A June 2022 study by the University of Reading in the United Kingdom found that total atmospheric water vapor is increasing by about 1% a decade due to warming climates. One percent may not sound like much, but the United States Geological Survey reports that the planet's atmosphere contains 12 trillion gallons of water, so one percent more water vapor represents 120 billion gallons. That one-percent increase in atmospheric water vapor per decade means that between 2010 and 2050, as much as 480 billion gallons of additional water vapor will migrate into the air, around half of today's annual human consumption of freshwater. You can learn more about the company and preorder a Monolith with a $100 discount using the code "MITCH911" at https://www.spoutwater.com/
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
Hello, good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, wherever you
are on this beautiful planet of ours. Welcome to Earth
nine one one's Sustainability in Your Ear. This is the
podcast conversation about accelerating the transition to a sustainable carbon
neutral society, and I'm your host, Mit Racliffe. Thanks for
joining the conversation today. The water crisis is one of
(00:28):
the most pressing issues facing our planet, with climate change,
population growth, and pollution threatening the availability of clean water worldwide.
One company is working to tackle this problem head on.
It's called Spout, a California based startup that has developed
an innovative solution. It's a sleek kitchen device, the Spout monolith,
that produces pure drinking water from the moisture in our air.
(00:52):
Our guest today is Reuben Volmer, CEO of Spout, who
turned a personal challenge into a mission to solve water
scarcity and water quality issues. Ruben recently contributed an article
to Earth nine one one that mapped his journey into
the world of water, which began with an unexpected letter
that his family received during a drought in twenty ten.
It warned them that their olive farms well could be restricted.
(01:15):
In other words, they were getting their water cut off.
Ruben's article explains his experience designing a device to capture
water from the air, a water dispenser that addresses two
significant global challenges, dwindling water supplies and the rising contamination
of drinking water by microplastics and other pollutants. Spout's atmospheric
water generation technology makes high quality, microplastic free water accessible
(01:39):
to homes and businesses, while avoiding the environmental damage caused
by plastic bottles and by depleting our natural water sources.
We'll talk to Ruben about the technology that makes Spout work,
how the company ensures its water remains free from contaminants
like microplastics, and the broader impact his work could have
on water security in a world where clean, safe, drinking
(01:59):
water is becoming increasingly scarce. You can learn more about
Spout and its technology at spoutwater dot com. We'll get
to the conversation right after this quick commercial break. Welcome
to the show, Ruben. How you doing today?
Speaker 2 (02:16):
I'm doing great. How you doing so?
Speaker 1 (02:18):
It's a beautiful morning here in southern Oregon. Yeah. I
wanted to ask because you had this startling note to
your family saying the water on your olive frome was
going to be cut off. How did that catalyze the
experience of designing an atmospheric water condenser and all the
work that you've put in to get to where you
are today.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
Yeah, I mean it really it scared me because never
in my life has anyone I've known personally been in
that position before of all of a sudden, not knowing
if they were going to have water on their property.
So it was really terrifying. But by chance, at the time,
I was working as a rapid prototyper for Fortune five
(02:56):
hundred companies, and literally the next morning after I heard
what their problem was, I was just walking my dog
and I noticed all the dew on a grassy field.
But what if I could build a machine that could
capture that dew and you know, help my family with
their water sourcing issue. And once I realized that there's
(03:19):
a lot of people around the world who don't have
access to water, I've decided to make that into a
product that could help a lot of people.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
Now, it's a kitchen countertop device. Can you describe it
for us?
Speaker 2 (03:33):
Yeah, So it's about the size of a large coffee
maker and Essentially, what it does is it brings in
air with a big fan. It filters the air with
a carbon felt and a MERV thirteen air filter, which
is just like a hospital grade air filter. And then
there's a clay wheel which absorbs the water vapor out
of the air, and then that wheel turns and is heated,
(03:56):
and that heat causes the moisture to leave the wheel,
and then we get against that hot moist air and
then we filter it essentially, and then we put it
in the picture and then you can pull the picture
out of the machine and use it to fill up
your whatever you want. It's a half gallon picture, So
basically the machine works to create water from air until
the picture is full, and then the machine shuts off.
(04:16):
And there's actually twenty one different steps of filtration throughout
the machine, which I could get into later, but fundamentally,
we're making about two to two and a half gallons
of fresh drinking water a day from the air wherever
you plug in this machine.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
What are some of the challenges you have there or
come to make a device like this?
Speaker 2 (04:33):
Oh, my gosh, so much. It's been actually, know about
nine years of developing this, so there's been innumerable challenges.
But you know, in the beginning, like I made this
very large machine that was very heavy, very loud, and
it was kind of ugly, and it had essentially it
was a big white box with a hose sticking out
of it. And it turns out that that wasn't very
(04:55):
appetizing to people. They didn't look at the device and think, oh,
I want to drink that water. So there's like a
whole design kind of humbling that had to happen because
I approached it as an engineer. I made a product
that was like, this thing makes water wherever you want.
But I didn't think as a designer in terms of
making a product that was actually attractive to people made
them want to drink that water. That was a big hurdle.
(05:17):
I mean, working with people, learning how to be a CEO,
learning how to lead teams was was a challenge. I
definitely used to be more of a jerk that I've
learned to soften and and really love my team and
follow them instead of demand that they follow me. So
there's been a lot of personal growth along the way. Yeah,
there's so many hurdles, you know, even if like the
(05:39):
machines used to leak. You know, that was a big
problem for people. So it's like, if it leaks, then
that could be a problem for you know, people's floors
or for their countertops, And so how do we make
a device that does not leak no matter what. That
was a big technical hurdle that we had to figure
out a solution for and now we have that. Yeah,
I mean honestly, I could go on and on and on,
(05:59):
but those those are some of the first ones that
came to mind.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
Well, and you also relate how what you learn from
consumers about their feelings both about bottled water and what's
coming out of the tap, how did that shape the
thinking about going to a kitchen device versus, you know,
solving the problem on the farm.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
Well, what I've realized being out in the world is
that most people don't love their water. So if they
buy bottled water, they feel guilty about you know, quote
unquote recycling the bottled water, which unfortunately doesn't happen very often.
They feel guilty for using something for sixty seconds that's
going to last five hundred years. They don't feel good
drinking water that comes out of plastic bottles because it
(06:37):
just doesn't feel right. As a human that think, you
immediately get the sense there's something plasticky about the water.
And then with tap water, with stories about what's happening
in Flint, Michigan, and Jackson and different cities across America,
it just kind of degrades the faith that people have
in their government and in the municipal water supply, so
that you know, people want to feel good when they
(06:57):
drink water. It's supposed to make us feel good, it's
supposed to add to our health and give us energy.
But when people have to, you know, wrestle with the
guilt or the insecurity of drinking out of plastic bottles,
or again the lack of faith and the municipal water
supply and in the government, you know, they need a
new solution. So I realized that that's exactly where we
(07:18):
can come in. Where our machine you get to own
your own source of water. It's completely microplastic free. It's
the purest water you could get, you know, And it's
not because we're we have these crazy filters. It's because
we're actually making it from scratch, taking the individual water
vapor molecules out of the air. And people really like that.
They really like owning their own source. It gives them
(07:39):
a deep sense of security.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
Well, and you describe the kind of the response from
people that you've tested this, where it's kind of amazement
that it seems like magic, and that Arthur C. Clark
sense that you know, technology always appears as magic. First,
I get to take that amazement and turn that into
the kind of marketing and outreach that's going to be
necessary to reach scale.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
It's honestly been pretty Actually, the machine really sells itself,
especially kids. Like when kids see the machine, they just
light up because this is transformational technology. We are taking
air obviously a gas, and turning it into a liquid
into drinking water, and that process is inherently, i think,
almost literally magical, and we're incredibly proud of that. And again,
(08:23):
just to be able to plug it in and watch
the picture fill up with water over the course of
a few hours just really excites people. And the coolest
thing is when people have the device in their home
and they plug it in whenever they have a guest over.
It's like the first thing that they bring their guests
over and go, look at this thing. Isn't this incredible?
And that also really helps us, you know, with sales
(08:43):
and just the word of mouth spread of the machine.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
Magic doesn't come cheap. The Monolith now is priced at
seven ninety nine. That's a steep entry point for a
lot of people. How do you anticipate the price changing
over time? And do you see the technology integrated into
other things like refrigerators and so forth in order to
bring this to the masses.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
Absolutely. Yeah, I mean there's a few things we can
do to lower the barrier to entry. We do have
sales every a couple of months, it seems like, and
we'll give you a special discount code at the end
of the podcast. But we also are exploring a way
that we could have like a subscription service where every month,
perhaps the user pays thirty dollars and they're able to
own their own source of water for that price. You know,
(09:27):
over time we can lower the price of the machine.
Right now, we're a startup and we're having to fundraise
money from investors. You know, we just finished paying essentially
five hundred thousand dollars for all of the molds, you know,
and how do we make the mold before we sell
the product and all these things, so it's like we
have to justify our revenue and all that stuff, and
so the price point is really set as a way
(09:48):
to prove to investors that people are willing to pay
for this. But also the crazy thing is that with
a spout machine, you actually pay less than if you
have water delivery or bottled water. So the price for
Leader is significantly cheaper than a plastic bottle of water.
So it may be a lot more upfront cost, but
(10:09):
over time, over the course of a year, it pays
for itself a few times over.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
Bottled water has some other shortcomings. Tell us about what
the microplastics research that you did on bottled water.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
Yeah, I mean it's it's incredible that I'd never seen
this before. But I've got this incredible microscope on my desk, Alika,
and it's got four hundred x zoom on it. And
what I did is I just took a plastic bottle
that I got at seven to eleven. I don't want
to say the brand, I guess I don't want to. Yeah,
I cut open the bottle and then I was looking
(10:41):
at it under the microscope and it was literally terrifying.
It looks like an alien landscape. I don't want to
be alarmist. Sorry, but it is like literally freaky. But essentially,
like what I saw is that it's incredibly rough on
the inside. Like you look at the plastic bottle, it
looks shiny, it looks clean, but under the microscope, it's
incredibly rough because you can literally see that what a
(11:01):
plastic bottle is is somebody taking a piece of plastic,
melting it, stretching it out. It's just a piece of
melted plastic that's been stretched out into the shape of
a bottle. And if you can imagine like stretching silly
putty in a way, how it gets all kind of
rough and breaks apart, that's exactly what's happening inside of
the plastic bottle. So and again it's really fascinating. Like
(11:24):
at the neck of the bottle you see kind of
like it looks like almost little bushes and trees of
plastic versus peeled up a bit. And then like on
the bottom of the bottle you can see like different
amounts of plastic and different kinds of plastic. It looks
like they're swirling together in this toxic stew. I mean
it again, it's hard not to be not to speak
harshly against it because it is literally terrifying to look at. Again,
(11:48):
I really encourage your viewers to check out these pictures
or try to find your own pictures, or if you
have a microscope check it out. Make sure I'm not,
you know, crazy, but it is really terrifying what it.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
Let me ask this because micro plastics are also in
the air. Now, oh yeah, how does the spout device
remove that? And does that require that you have a
filter in it that you have to change over time.
I'm just curious about the maintenance involved.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
Absolutely. Yeah. So we've done everything we can to ensure
the quality of the water, which are probably going to
hear me say many times, but essentially we've got this
robust air filter which is again a hospital grade air
filter submicron air filter, which means it's able to take
out any particles that are less than one fortieth the
width of a single strand of hair, incredibly small particles
(12:34):
in the air. Our air filter reduces PM two point five.
We've proven that, so this machine actually acts as an
incredible air filter for your home. On top of everything
else that helps removing any microplastics in the air. And
then we have this zeolite the clay wheel, which only
absorbs water vapor, so that helps. Again that's another barrier.
(12:55):
And then we have this heater which bakes the wheel,
which again would break down anything that would potentially stick
to it, even though we don't have any evidence that
anything does stick to it. And then we have our
NASA derived water filter which takes out which is again
another sub micron filter and a powder activated carbon And
essentially there's just so many different layers of filtration in
(13:17):
our machine that that's how we are very proud to
produce water that has zero microplastics. That's something we care
a lot about.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
It's really interesting. Actually, the process, particularly the clay wheel
it absorbing and then being baked to take the moisture out,
sounds a lot like some of the carbon capture technology
that I'm worrying about too, where you do a treatment
you then heat the block of treated material to bring
the carbon out. Also sounds like there's going to be
a lot of standardization of that kind of technology over
(13:47):
the next few years, and that could, to my earlier question,
help propagate this into a lot more settings.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
Yeah, I mean, it's really it's crazy because it's in
a way, it's a very simple technology that's been around
for a long time, but we've done a whole bunch
of things to make it more efficient and smaller and
quieter and you know, something that consumers would want to buy.
But yes, it is a cyclical process, the same process
that they use for removing CO two out of the air,
where you are able to continuously do something because you
(14:17):
actually have a wheel that's rotating and then three quarters
of the wheels open to absorb water vapor and a
quarter of the wheel is closed off with a totally
separate airflow to remove the water vapor or CO two
or any other gas that you're trying to trap in
that cycle. So, yeah, it's really cool. I'm super proud
of our design. It's taken you know, it took us
(14:38):
about seven years to get to the point of realizing
that we need a cyclical system. Yeah, so that we're
very proud of the system. And it is patented as well.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
So before we go to a break, you're taking pre
orders right now, when does the device ship?
Speaker 2 (14:53):
We're taking pre orders. We've taken twenty six hundred pre
orders in the last year. We're shipping the device in
December twenty twenty five four. I'm not sure when your
listeners are going to have the chance to listen to
this podcast. But by December twenty twenty four, we will
have shipped our first thousand machines. Those are being prepared now,
and yeah, that's the plan.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
Well, we'll take a quick commercial break and come back
and continue the conversation phenomenon. Now, let's get back to
the conversation with Ruben Volmer. He's CEO of Spout, which
recently launched the Spout Monolith, a kitchen device that makes
water from atmospheric monister. So, Ruben, as I was thinking
(15:32):
about all of this in the technology of carbon capture
that you just described being sort of similar, we're going
to be doing a lot to the air. Could harvesting
water from the air at scale, you know, when millions
of people are doing it, change weather patterns? Could we
inadvertently do things that we don't expect.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
Yeah, I mean it's a great question. And it was
one of the earlier questions I got when I was
working on this technology was people were like, well, what
happens when you take the water vapor out of the air.
Don't we need that? And so the crazy thing is,
and this is like the greatest blessing slash surprise of
my life. It's that, according to NASA, the most abundant
(16:12):
greenhouse gas on Earth is water vapor, not CO two,
which is crazy. I talk to a lot of people
in climate, you know, venture capitalists, et cetera. Almost nobody
knows that water vapor is actually the most abundant greenhouse
gas on Earth. So what's happening is that the water
vapor in the air holds on to heat in our atmosphere.
(16:35):
That's how we get these hurricanes and so. And the
more heat in our atmosphere, the more water vapor is
created from our oceans. As you warm up water, more
of it becomes to the vaporing. We're stuck in this
positive feedback loop which is causing global warming. It's definitely
a major factor of it. The warmer the planet is,
(16:57):
the more water vapor is created. The more water vapor
in the air, the more heat the atmosphere can hold
on to. And so what we are literally doing is
taking the most abundant greenhouse gas on Earth and turning
it into our most precious natural resource. So all that
to say, as far as we can tell, at the
(17:17):
very least we have that one marker of like water
vapors not helping us. So I would say it's not
a problem. And you know if I can't imagine if
it would be a problem, what we'd do. But I'm
not concerned about it since it is number one, you know,
the most abundant greenhouse gas on Earth.
Speaker 1 (17:34):
Well, you know, it's interesting because one of the consequences
of global warming is that there's more atmospheric moisture. To
your point about hurricanes for instance, that's why extreme other
happens is different concentrations of this material than before. Talking
about just the really challenging water environment. Even here in
the United States, where we think of ourselves as being
(17:55):
the pinnacle of technological accomplishment, we have a lot of
water contains ammination problems. How do you see your mission
aligning with this growing awareness amongst consumers and government about
the dire quality of water available in the United States.
Can we potentially even see incentive programs or rebate programs
put in place in order to help get this kind
(18:17):
of technology and the more people.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
Stands Absolutely, I mean that's exactly the plan. I mean,
right now, forty percent of Americans don't trust their tap water,
which is driving them to bottled water and water delivery,
which is significantly worse for the environment. Obviously. I think
most of your listeners probably know that. So we fit
in exactly into this paradigm where we are not creating
(18:42):
plastic bottles, we don't create plastic waste on a large
scale at all, and we don't have any CO two
emissions from water delivery, and we are also a fraction
of the cost of these other options. So I think
that there's a lot of alignment there. And yeah, the
sad thing is that we can't rely on ourminnis water system.
Not to say I can't knock our municipal water system,
(19:04):
because I actually have tremendous respect for the engineers, the
men and women who work tirelessly to deliver water to
hundreds of millions of Americans. That is such an incredible
feat of engineering. But I believe that that quality of
water isn't intended for drinking, you know, like according to
the EPA, it's okay to drink lead, it's okay to
(19:27):
drink arsenic, it's okay to drink uranium. Like there's there's
a level where you're allowed to consume these chemicals that
we know are toxic to the body and the mind.
So you know, it's just that that alone has me
not have any faith really in the tap water. The
fact that they set the standards to what they can achieve,
(19:48):
not to what's actually safe to drink. And that's where
we step in. Where our goal isn't just to get
under the standards and call it a day. We are
on a mission to make the greatest water on earth,
full stop.
Speaker 1 (20:01):
So how do you balance the sustainability goals that you outline,
you know, the reduced use of plastic and so forth,
with the impact of the device itself. Obviously you have
to use electricity to run this thing. Have you looked
at the full life cycle impact of the device versus
a bottle of water for instance.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
Yeah, I mean, we've done the best that we can.
You know, we're just again getting through our first manufacturing run,
so I think those tests are going to begin shortly.
But fundamentally, you know, you plug in our machine, you
have two or so gallons of water a day. That
versus that would be like sixteen plastic bottles, maybe more
(20:41):
depending on the size of the bottle, which again those
every one of those bottles would last for five hundred
years or you know, if they're part of the lucky
five percent that gets recycled, then you know, then they're lucky.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
But each of them has a carbon impact and embodied
carbon impact of its own, just making the bottle exactly.
Speaker 2 (20:58):
Yeah, because they have to mine the oil out of
the ground, They've got to ship that oil to refinery,
they got to blow it into plastic, they got to
ship the plastic bottles to the source of the water.
And then we're taking the area of taking water that
should be going to you know, our environment, to our ecosystems,
and they're putting it in plastic bottles. And then of
course there's a co two footprint of moving that plastic
(21:19):
bottle from the bottling plant to your home or to
the grocery store, and from the grocery store to your home.
I mean, it's just, you know, I want to say,
it's like a murder scene, you know, for the environment,
the whole plastic bottle fiasco, and then with.
Speaker 1 (21:32):
Our entire economy.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
Let's get real, yes, thank you, thank you. Yeah, it's
a scary time to be alive. And that actually reminds
me another reason why people are buying these machines. Is
because they don't trust the government and they feel like
everything's about to implode, and so they want to secure
they have solar panels. Twenty five or twenty eight percent
of our customers have solar panels and are lift off
of solar. So we pair very nicely with anyone who
(21:58):
has solar because now you have your own old tricity
and your own water in case things get really ugly.
So that's another thing that's driving people to get our machine.
But yeah, i'd still say fundamentally again, like the footprint
of our machine is significantly less than plastic bottles for
shirt or water delivery, because we're not creating and using
plastic continuously.
Speaker 1 (22:18):
Now you spend a lot of time on the aesthetic
design of the device. But I asked you about this
earlier and actually didn't get to an answer. Do you
imagine integrating this technology into other things large appliances for instance,
or offering water refail stations or other things in public
settings that you could move into as a business opportunity.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
Absolutely, Like, fundamentally, at our core, our technology revolves around
making water right where it's needed, So that could plug
into absolutely everything you just said. Essentially from being built
into refrigerators, to rooftop devices that can create water for
the whole home, to farms. When I initially again I
got into this because of my parents, all of Orchard
(22:58):
having its water and by the state. And the coolest
thing is that what I learned, you know, for farms
in particular, is that it's possible we can have a
water neutral farm in the future, and even today we
can do it, and we've experimented with it a little bit.
But the crazy thing is that, you know, plants, they
don't just drink the water and that water disappears or
(23:21):
gets fully absorbed into the plants. Plants actually use water
to move nutrients from their roots up to their leaves
to grow, and then they exhale that water vapor back
into the air. So we can recapture that water vapor
that the plants are exhaling and feed it back to
their roots and be able to grow plants without having,
you know, using water over and over again from natural resources.
(23:44):
So I'm very excited about that potential.
Speaker 1 (23:47):
Could that work in a closed environment like a.
Speaker 2 (23:49):
Greenhouse exactly exactly, That's exactly what we're talking about.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
Yeah, So your team obviously is still small because you're
a startup, how do you how do you diversify into
all these opportunities the path to doing so, and are
you having to raise money in order to do that?
Speaker 2 (24:05):
Yeah, So it's really the hardest thing is not to
do those things because we want to because they're exciting,
but also we have yes limited budget, time team, all
that stuff. So my approach to CEO has been to
just go one step at a time. We got to
first deliver these first thousand machines for our customers, and
(24:27):
then second thousand, you know, up to eight thousand or
so machines, and then we can start talking about the
next iteration. And there's other integrations of our technology that
I haven't mentioned on this call that are incredibly unique,
that are very exciting that I just can't wait to
bring to the world.
Speaker 1 (24:45):
It will be interesting to hear about that when that happens.
I won't press you for those details at the moment,
but tell me about how do you market this this?
This is an interesting story. You already kind of talked
about the fact that even some sort of survivalist approaches
to this messaging are intrinsic in it because people are
worried about the reliability of the infrastructure. How do you
(25:05):
sell something like this to a world that is not
aware of the fact that you can make water from air.
Speaker 2 (25:11):
It's honestly so much fun. Luckily, because I worked in
advertising marketing for years, I've got a few tricks up
my sleeve, some things I've learned along the way. But
like we're you know, we've done a bunch of different
advertising campaigns, but fundamentally, I think that we were able
to win people over by mocking their current solution. You know.
(25:31):
So we were just doing this ad where there's a woman,
you know, buying a palette of water at Costco, and
she's pushing her car back to her car, and their
car keeps getting further and further away as she's walking
towards it, and then you know, by the end, she's
like crawling on the ground trying to push this palette
of water forward. Or you know, it's like it's all
these funny moments that we have in our lives where
(25:52):
we just know that the water situation doesn't make sense.
Whatever gets in between somebody loving their source of water.
We can target and kind of reflect for people, because
people don't want to think that their Brita is ineffective.
They want to think that their Brita is making fresh
water for the people that they love in their lives.
You know, have you ever tested water from a Brita,
because we have, and you don't really want to know
(26:15):
what's in it. Unfortunately, it's again quite terrifying to look
at what Brita's do to the water don't do. But
in terms of filtering, pee fast lad all these other things,
I would not personally count on that for the health
of my family. And fundamentally, the issue is that tap
water is different out of every spicot in the world.
Speaker 1 (26:35):
So, Reuben, you're taking orders now and the first units
are going to shift this December. How can our listeners
learn more and get their own bout model it?
Speaker 2 (26:44):
Yeah, thanks for asking. So the discount code is Mitch
nine to one one. That's just a little shout out
for your listeners. And yeah, if they pre order a
machine today, they will get one in December twenty twenty four.
So I'm not sure when people will be listen to this,
but we will give people one hundred dollars off their
order for listening to this podcast and for being your fan.
(27:06):
We'd love to get to meet your your listeners and
help them get a new source of water.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
Well, thank you, we appreciate that. It's been a fascinating conversation. Rubin,
thanks for spending time with us today, and we're looking
forward to hearing about those future technological innovations.
Speaker 2 (27:20):
Yeah, my pleasure. I hope to be back on soon.
Speaker 1 (27:27):
That was my conversation with Ruben Volmer, founder and CEO
of Spout Water, maker of the Spout Monolith, a countertop
device that harvests clean drinking water from the air. You
can learn more about the company and pre order a
monolith at spoutwater dot com. And if you use the
discount code Mitch nine one one, which is all capitalized
with no spaces, no dashes, Mitch nine one one, you
(27:50):
can get one hundred dollars off on your order. Thanks
Spout and Rubin for a nice deal. Now. Water distribution
feels like a practice set in stone. It's the way
we've done things always and that tends to anchor people
in the habits and more arrays of their times, and
that prevents change. Water production and distribution needs a good
swift kick in the form of a surprising alternative to
(28:12):
the way that we've done it during the industrial era.
The spout monolith maybe one of those kicks. We're surrounded
by water in the atmosphere, and according to a June
twenty twenty two study by the University of Reading in
the United Kingdom, the total water vapor in the atmosphere
is increasing by about one percent a decade due to
climate change. One percent may not sound like a lot,
(28:33):
but the United States Geological Survey reports that the planet's
atmosphere contains twelve trillion gallons of water, so one percent
more water vapor represents one hundred and twenty billion gallons
of water. If we extrapolate from that, we can expect
it over the period from twenty ten to twenty fifty,
as much as four hundred and eighty billion gallons of
(28:55):
additional water vapor will be migrating into the air, and
that's about half the human consumption of fresh water annually.
All that water is expected to drive hurricanes and extreme
weather events, causing trillions of dollars in damage. But maybe,
just maybe, harvesting water from the sky could be one
facet of how we help solve the water crisis while
alleviating some of the damage caused by human activity. It's
(29:18):
a story worth exploring. So stay tuned to Sustainability in
your Ear as we continue to ask questions of innovators
and experts in this field, and I hope you'll take
a moment to spread the word about this podcast or
any of the more than four hundred and ninety interviews
in our archives. Folks, by writing a review on your
favorite podcast platform, you help your neighbors find us. You
are the amplifiers that can spread more ideas to create
(29:40):
less waste. So please tell your friends, your family, or coworkers,
the people you meet on the street that they can
find Sustainability in your Ear on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Audible,
or whoever they prefer to find their podcast goodness with
thanks for your support, I'm Metraclift. This is Sustainability in
your Ear and we will be back with another innovator
(30:02):
interviews soon. In the meantime, folks, take care of yourself,
take care of one another, and let's all take care
of this beautiful planet of ours. Have a green deck,
Hello, good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, wherever you
are on this beautiful planet of ours. Welcome to Earth
nine one one's Sustainability in Your Ear. This is the
podcast conversation about accelerating the transition to a sustainable carbon
neutral society, and I'm your host, Mit Racliffe. Thanks for
joining the conversation today. The water crisis is one of
(00:28):
the most pressing issues facing our planet, with climate change,
population growth, and pollution threatening the availability of clean water worldwide.
One company is working to tackle this problem head on.
It's called Spout, a California based startup that has developed
an innovative solution. It's a sleek kitchen device, the Spout monolith,
that produces pure drinking water from the moisture in our air.
(00:52):
Our guest today is Reuben Volmer, CEO of Spout, who
turned a personal challenge into a mission to solve water
scarcity and water quality issues. Ruben recently contributed an article
to Earth nine one one that mapped his journey into
the world of water, which began with an unexpected letter
that his family received during a drought in twenty ten.
It warned them that their olive farms well could be restricted.
(01:15):
In other words, they were getting their water cut off.
Ruben's article explains his experience designing a device to capture
water from the air, a water dispenser that addresses two
significant global challenges, dwindling water supplies and the rising contamination
of drinking water by microplastics and other pollutants. Spout's atmospheric
water generation technology makes high quality, microplastic free water accessible
(01:39):
to homes and businesses, while avoiding the environmental damage caused
by plastic bottles and by depleting our natural water sources.
We'll talk to Ruben about the technology that makes Spout work,
how the company ensures its water remains free from contaminants
like microplastics, and the broader impact his work could have
on water security in a world where clean, safe, drinking
(01:59):
water is becoming increasingly scarce. You can learn more about
Spout and its technology at spoutwater dot com. We'll get
to the conversation right after this quick commercial break. Welcome
to the show, Ruben. How you doing today?
Speaker 2 (02:16):
I'm doing great. How you doing so?
Speaker 1 (02:18):
It's a beautiful morning here in southern Oregon. Yeah. I
wanted to ask because you had this startling note to
your family saying the water on your olive frome was
going to be cut off. How did that catalyze the
experience of designing an atmospheric water condenser and all the
work that you've put in to get to where you
are today.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
Yeah, I mean it really it scared me because never
in my life has anyone I've known personally been in
that position before of all of a sudden, not knowing
if they were going to have water on their property.
So it was really terrifying. But by chance, at the time,
I was working as a rapid prototyper for Fortune five
(02:56):
hundred companies, and literally the next morning after I heard
what their problem was, I was just walking my dog
and I noticed all the dew on a grassy field.
But what if I could build a machine that could
capture that dew and you know, help my family with
their water sourcing issue. And once I realized that there's
(03:19):
a lot of people around the world who don't have
access to water, I've decided to make that into a
product that could help a lot of people.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
Now, it's a kitchen countertop device. Can you describe it
for us?
Speaker 2 (03:33):
Yeah, So it's about the size of a large coffee
maker and Essentially, what it does is it brings in
air with a big fan. It filters the air with
a carbon felt and a MERV thirteen air filter, which
is just like a hospital grade air filter. And then
there's a clay wheel which absorbs the water vapor out
of the air, and then that wheel turns and is heated,
(03:56):
and that heat causes the moisture to leave the wheel,
and then we get against that hot moist air and
then we filter it essentially, and then we put it
in the picture and then you can pull the picture
out of the machine and use it to fill up
your whatever you want. It's a half gallon picture, So
basically the machine works to create water from air until
the picture is full, and then the machine shuts off.
(04:16):
And there's actually twenty one different steps of filtration throughout
the machine, which I could get into later, but fundamentally,
we're making about two to two and a half gallons
of fresh drinking water a day from the air wherever
you plug in this machine.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
What are some of the challenges you have there or
come to make a device like this?
Speaker 2 (04:33):
Oh, my gosh, so much. It's been actually, know about
nine years of developing this, so there's been innumerable challenges.
But you know, in the beginning, like I made this
very large machine that was very heavy, very loud, and
it was kind of ugly, and it had essentially it
was a big white box with a hose sticking out
of it. And it turns out that that wasn't very
(04:55):
appetizing to people. They didn't look at the device and think, oh,
I want to drink that water. So there's like a
whole design kind of humbling that had to happen because
I approached it as an engineer. I made a product
that was like, this thing makes water wherever you want.
But I didn't think as a designer in terms of
making a product that was actually attractive to people made
them want to drink that water. That was a big hurdle.
(05:17):
I mean, working with people, learning how to be a CEO,
learning how to lead teams was was a challenge. I
definitely used to be more of a jerk that I've
learned to soften and and really love my team and
follow them instead of demand that they follow me. So
there's been a lot of personal growth along the way. Yeah,
there's so many hurdles, you know, even if like the
(05:39):
machines used to leak. You know, that was a big
problem for people. So it's like, if it leaks, then
that could be a problem for you know, people's floors
or for their countertops, And so how do we make
a device that does not leak no matter what. That
was a big technical hurdle that we had to figure
out a solution for and now we have that. Yeah,
I mean honestly, I could go on and on and on,
(05:59):
but those those are some of the first ones that
came to mind.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
Well, and you also relate how what you learn from
consumers about their feelings both about bottled water and what's
coming out of the tap, how did that shape the
thinking about going to a kitchen device versus, you know,
solving the problem on the farm.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
Well, what I've realized being out in the world is
that most people don't love their water. So if they
buy bottled water, they feel guilty about you know, quote
unquote recycling the bottled water, which unfortunately doesn't happen very often.
They feel guilty for using something for sixty seconds that's
going to last five hundred years. They don't feel good
drinking water that comes out of plastic bottles because it
(06:37):
just doesn't feel right. As a human that think, you
immediately get the sense there's something plasticky about the water.
And then with tap water, with stories about what's happening
in Flint, Michigan, and Jackson and different cities across America,
it just kind of degrades the faith that people have
in their government and in the municipal water supply, so
that you know, people want to feel good when they
(06:57):
drink water. It's supposed to make us feel good, it's
supposed to add to our health and give us energy.
But when people have to, you know, wrestle with the
guilt or the insecurity of drinking out of plastic bottles,
or again the lack of faith and the municipal water
supply and in the government, you know, they need a
new solution. So I realized that that's exactly where we
(07:18):
can come in. Where our machine you get to own
your own source of water. It's completely microplastic free. It's
the purest water you could get, you know, And it's
not because we're we have these crazy filters. It's because
we're actually making it from scratch, taking the individual water
vapor molecules out of the air. And people really like that.
They really like owning their own source. It gives them
(07:39):
a deep sense of security.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
Well, and you describe the kind of the response from
people that you've tested this, where it's kind of amazement
that it seems like magic, and that Arthur C. Clark
sense that you know, technology always appears as magic. First,
I get to take that amazement and turn that into
the kind of marketing and outreach that's going to be
necessary to reach scale.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
It's honestly been pretty Actually, the machine really sells itself,
especially kids. Like when kids see the machine, they just
light up because this is transformational technology. We are taking
air obviously a gas, and turning it into a liquid
into drinking water, and that process is inherently, i think,
almost literally magical, and we're incredibly proud of that. And again,
(08:23):
just to be able to plug it in and watch
the picture fill up with water over the course of
a few hours just really excites people. And the coolest
thing is when people have the device in their home
and they plug it in whenever they have a guest over.
It's like the first thing that they bring their guests
over and go, look at this thing. Isn't this incredible?
And that also really helps us, you know, with sales
(08:43):
and just the word of mouth spread of the machine.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
Magic doesn't come cheap. The Monolith now is priced at
seven ninety nine. That's a steep entry point for a
lot of people. How do you anticipate the price changing
over time? And do you see the technology integrated into
other things like refrigerators and so forth in order to
bring this to the masses.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
Absolutely. Yeah, I mean there's a few things we can
do to lower the barrier to entry. We do have
sales every a couple of months, it seems like, and
we'll give you a special discount code at the end
of the podcast. But we also are exploring a way
that we could have like a subscription service where every month,
perhaps the user pays thirty dollars and they're able to
own their own source of water for that price. You know,
(09:27):
over time we can lower the price of the machine.
Right now, we're a startup and we're having to fundraise
money from investors. You know, we just finished paying essentially
five hundred thousand dollars for all of the molds, you know,
and how do we make the mold before we sell
the product and all these things, so it's like we
have to justify our revenue and all that stuff, and
so the price point is really set as a way
(09:48):
to prove to investors that people are willing to pay
for this. But also the crazy thing is that with
a spout machine, you actually pay less than if you
have water delivery or bottled water. So the price for
Leader is significantly cheaper than a plastic bottle of water.
So it may be a lot more upfront cost, but
(10:09):
over time, over the course of a year, it pays
for itself a few times over.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
Bottled water has some other shortcomings. Tell us about what
the microplastics research that you did on bottled water.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
Yeah, I mean it's it's incredible that I'd never seen
this before. But I've got this incredible microscope on my desk, Alika,
and it's got four hundred x zoom on it. And
what I did is I just took a plastic bottle
that I got at seven to eleven. I don't want
to say the brand, I guess I don't want to. Yeah,
I cut open the bottle and then I was looking
(10:41):
at it under the microscope and it was literally terrifying.
It looks like an alien landscape. I don't want to
be alarmist. Sorry, but it is like literally freaky. But essentially,
like what I saw is that it's incredibly rough on
the inside. Like you look at the plastic bottle, it
looks shiny, it looks clean, but under the microscope, it's
incredibly rough because you can literally see that what a
(11:01):
plastic bottle is is somebody taking a piece of plastic,
melting it, stretching it out. It's just a piece of
melted plastic that's been stretched out into the shape of
a bottle. And if you can imagine like stretching silly
putty in a way, how it gets all kind of
rough and breaks apart, that's exactly what's happening inside of
the plastic bottle. So and again it's really fascinating. Like
(11:24):
at the neck of the bottle you see kind of
like it looks like almost little bushes and trees of
plastic versus peeled up a bit. And then like on
the bottom of the bottle you can see like different
amounts of plastic and different kinds of plastic. It looks
like they're swirling together in this toxic stew. I mean
it again, it's hard not to be not to speak
harshly against it because it is literally terrifying to look at. Again,
(11:48):
I really encourage your viewers to check out these pictures
or try to find your own pictures, or if you
have a microscope check it out. Make sure I'm not,
you know, crazy, but it is really terrifying what it.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
Let me ask this because micro plastics are also in
the air. Now, oh yeah, how does the spout device
remove that? And does that require that you have a
filter in it that you have to change over time.
I'm just curious about the maintenance involved.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
Absolutely. Yeah. So we've done everything we can to ensure
the quality of the water, which are probably going to
hear me say many times, but essentially we've got this
robust air filter which is again a hospital grade air
filter submicron air filter, which means it's able to take
out any particles that are less than one fortieth the
width of a single strand of hair, incredibly small particles
(12:34):
in the air. Our air filter reduces PM two point five.
We've proven that, so this machine actually acts as an
incredible air filter for your home. On top of everything
else that helps removing any microplastics in the air. And
then we have this zeolite the clay wheel, which only
absorbs water vapor, so that helps. Again that's another barrier.
(12:55):
And then we have this heater which bakes the wheel,
which again would break down anything that would potentially stick
to it, even though we don't have any evidence that
anything does stick to it. And then we have our
NASA derived water filter which takes out which is again
another sub micron filter and a powder activated carbon And
essentially there's just so many different layers of filtration in
(13:17):
our machine that that's how we are very proud to
produce water that has zero microplastics. That's something we care
a lot about.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
It's really interesting. Actually, the process, particularly the clay wheel
it absorbing and then being baked to take the moisture out,
sounds a lot like some of the carbon capture technology
that I'm worrying about too, where you do a treatment
you then heat the block of treated material to bring
the carbon out. Also sounds like there's going to be
a lot of standardization of that kind of technology over
(13:47):
the next few years, and that could, to my earlier question,
help propagate this into a lot more settings.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
Yeah, I mean, it's really it's crazy because it's in
a way, it's a very simple technology that's been around
for a long time, but we've done a whole bunch
of things to make it more efficient and smaller and
quieter and you know, something that consumers would want to buy.
But yes, it is a cyclical process, the same process
that they use for removing CO two out of the air,
where you are able to continuously do something because you
(14:17):
actually have a wheel that's rotating and then three quarters
of the wheels open to absorb water vapor and a
quarter of the wheel is closed off with a totally
separate airflow to remove the water vapor or CO two
or any other gas that you're trying to trap in
that cycle. So, yeah, it's really cool. I'm super proud
of our design. It's taken you know, it took us
(14:38):
about seven years to get to the point of realizing
that we need a cyclical system. Yeah, so that we're
very proud of the system. And it is patented as well.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
So before we go to a break, you're taking pre
orders right now, when does the device ship?
Speaker 2 (14:53):
We're taking pre orders. We've taken twenty six hundred pre
orders in the last year. We're shipping the device in
December twenty twenty five four. I'm not sure when your
listeners are going to have the chance to listen to
this podcast. But by December twenty twenty four, we will
have shipped our first thousand machines. Those are being prepared now,
and yeah, that's the plan.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
Well, we'll take a quick commercial break and come back
and continue the conversation phenomenon. Now, let's get back to
the conversation with Ruben Volmer. He's CEO of Spout, which
recently launched the Spout Monolith, a kitchen device that makes
water from atmospheric monister. So, Ruben, as I was thinking
(15:32):
about all of this in the technology of carbon capture
that you just described being sort of similar, we're going
to be doing a lot to the air. Could harvesting
water from the air at scale, you know, when millions
of people are doing it, change weather patterns? Could we
inadvertently do things that we don't expect.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
Yeah, I mean it's a great question. And it was
one of the earlier questions I got when I was
working on this technology was people were like, well, what
happens when you take the water vapor out of the air.
Don't we need that? And so the crazy thing is,
and this is like the greatest blessing slash surprise of
my life. It's that, according to NASA, the most abundant
(16:12):
greenhouse gas on Earth is water vapor, not CO two,
which is crazy. I talk to a lot of people
in climate, you know, venture capitalists, et cetera. Almost nobody
knows that water vapor is actually the most abundant greenhouse
gas on Earth. So what's happening is that the water
vapor in the air holds on to heat in our atmosphere.
(16:35):
That's how we get these hurricanes and so. And the
more heat in our atmosphere, the more water vapor is
created from our oceans. As you warm up water, more
of it becomes to the vaporing. We're stuck in this
positive feedback loop which is causing global warming. It's definitely
a major factor of it. The warmer the planet is,
(16:57):
the more water vapor is created. The more water vapor
in the air, the more heat the atmosphere can hold
on to. And so what we are literally doing is
taking the most abundant greenhouse gas on Earth and turning
it into our most precious natural resource. So all that
to say, as far as we can tell, at the
(17:17):
very least we have that one marker of like water
vapors not helping us. So I would say it's not
a problem. And you know if I can't imagine if
it would be a problem, what we'd do. But I'm
not concerned about it since it is number one, you know,
the most abundant greenhouse gas on Earth.
Speaker 1 (17:34):
Well, you know, it's interesting because one of the consequences
of global warming is that there's more atmospheric moisture. To
your point about hurricanes for instance, that's why extreme other
happens is different concentrations of this material than before. Talking
about just the really challenging water environment. Even here in
the United States, where we think of ourselves as being
(17:55):
the pinnacle of technological accomplishment, we have a lot of
water contains ammination problems. How do you see your mission
aligning with this growing awareness amongst consumers and government about
the dire quality of water available in the United States.
Can we potentially even see incentive programs or rebate programs
put in place in order to help get this kind
(18:17):
of technology and the more people.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
Stands Absolutely, I mean that's exactly the plan. I mean,
right now, forty percent of Americans don't trust their tap water,
which is driving them to bottled water and water delivery,
which is significantly worse for the environment. Obviously. I think
most of your listeners probably know that. So we fit
in exactly into this paradigm where we are not creating
(18:42):
plastic bottles, we don't create plastic waste on a large
scale at all, and we don't have any CO two
emissions from water delivery, and we are also a fraction
of the cost of these other options. So I think
that there's a lot of alignment there. And yeah, the
sad thing is that we can't rely on ourminnis water system.
Not to say I can't knock our municipal water system,
(19:04):
because I actually have tremendous respect for the engineers, the
men and women who work tirelessly to deliver water to
hundreds of millions of Americans. That is such an incredible
feat of engineering. But I believe that that quality of
water isn't intended for drinking, you know, like according to
the EPA, it's okay to drink lead, it's okay to
(19:27):
drink arsenic, it's okay to drink uranium. Like there's there's
a level where you're allowed to consume these chemicals that
we know are toxic to the body and the mind.
So you know, it's just that that alone has me
not have any faith really in the tap water. The
fact that they set the standards to what they can achieve,
(19:48):
not to what's actually safe to drink. And that's where
we step in. Where our goal isn't just to get
under the standards and call it a day. We are
on a mission to make the greatest water on earth,
full stop.
Speaker 1 (20:01):
So how do you balance the sustainability goals that you outline,
you know, the reduced use of plastic and so forth,
with the impact of the device itself. Obviously you have
to use electricity to run this thing. Have you looked
at the full life cycle impact of the device versus
a bottle of water for instance.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
Yeah, I mean, we've done the best that we can.
You know, we're just again getting through our first manufacturing run,
so I think those tests are going to begin shortly.
But fundamentally, you know, you plug in our machine, you
have two or so gallons of water a day. That
versus that would be like sixteen plastic bottles, maybe more
(20:41):
depending on the size of the bottle, which again those
every one of those bottles would last for five hundred
years or you know, if they're part of the lucky
five percent that gets recycled, then you know, then they're lucky.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
But each of them has a carbon impact and embodied
carbon impact of its own, just making the bottle exactly.
Speaker 2 (20:58):
Yeah, because they have to mine the oil out of
the ground, They've got to ship that oil to refinery,
they got to blow it into plastic, they got to
ship the plastic bottles to the source of the water.
And then we're taking the area of taking water that
should be going to you know, our environment, to our ecosystems,
and they're putting it in plastic bottles. And then of
course there's a co two footprint of moving that plastic
(21:19):
bottle from the bottling plant to your home or to
the grocery store, and from the grocery store to your home.
I mean, it's just, you know, I want to say,
it's like a murder scene, you know, for the environment,
the whole plastic bottle fiasco, and then with.
Speaker 1 (21:32):
Our entire economy.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
Let's get real, yes, thank you, thank you. Yeah, it's
a scary time to be alive. And that actually reminds
me another reason why people are buying these machines. Is
because they don't trust the government and they feel like
everything's about to implode, and so they want to secure
they have solar panels. Twenty five or twenty eight percent
of our customers have solar panels and are lift off
of solar. So we pair very nicely with anyone who
(21:58):
has solar because now you have your own old tricity
and your own water in case things get really ugly.
So that's another thing that's driving people to get our machine.
But yeah, i'd still say fundamentally again, like the footprint
of our machine is significantly less than plastic bottles for
shirt or water delivery, because we're not creating and using
plastic continuously.
Speaker 1 (22:18):
Now you spend a lot of time on the aesthetic
design of the device. But I asked you about this
earlier and actually didn't get to an answer. Do you
imagine integrating this technology into other things large appliances for instance,
or offering water refail stations or other things in public
settings that you could move into as a business opportunity.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
Absolutely, Like, fundamentally, at our core, our technology revolves around
making water right where it's needed, So that could plug
into absolutely everything you just said. Essentially from being built
into refrigerators, to rooftop devices that can create water for
the whole home, to farms. When I initially again I
got into this because of my parents, all of Orchard
(22:58):
having its water and by the state. And the coolest
thing is that what I learned, you know, for farms
in particular, is that it's possible we can have a
water neutral farm in the future, and even today we
can do it, and we've experimented with it a little bit.
But the crazy thing is that, you know, plants, they
don't just drink the water and that water disappears or
(23:21):
gets fully absorbed into the plants. Plants actually use water
to move nutrients from their roots up to their leaves
to grow, and then they exhale that water vapor back
into the air. So we can recapture that water vapor
that the plants are exhaling and feed it back to
their roots and be able to grow plants without having,
you know, using water over and over again from natural resources.
(23:44):
So I'm very excited about that potential.
Speaker 1 (23:47):
Could that work in a closed environment like a.
Speaker 2 (23:49):
Greenhouse exactly exactly, That's exactly what we're talking about.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
Yeah, So your team obviously is still small because you're
a startup, how do you how do you diversify into
all these opportunities the path to doing so, and are
you having to raise money in order to do that?
Speaker 2 (24:05):
Yeah, So it's really the hardest thing is not to
do those things because we want to because they're exciting,
but also we have yes limited budget, time team, all
that stuff. So my approach to CEO has been to
just go one step at a time. We got to
first deliver these first thousand machines for our customers, and
(24:27):
then second thousand, you know, up to eight thousand or
so machines, and then we can start talking about the
next iteration. And there's other integrations of our technology that
I haven't mentioned on this call that are incredibly unique,
that are very exciting that I just can't wait to
bring to the world.
Speaker 1 (24:45):
It will be interesting to hear about that when that happens.
I won't press you for those details at the moment,
but tell me about how do you market this this?
This is an interesting story. You already kind of talked
about the fact that even some sort of survivalist approaches
to this messaging are intrinsic in it because people are
worried about the reliability of the infrastructure. How do you
(25:05):
sell something like this to a world that is not
aware of the fact that you can make water from air.
Speaker 2 (25:11):
It's honestly so much fun. Luckily, because I worked in
advertising marketing for years, I've got a few tricks up
my sleeve, some things I've learned along the way. But
like we're you know, we've done a bunch of different
advertising campaigns, but fundamentally, I think that we were able
to win people over by mocking their current solution. You know.
(25:31):
So we were just doing this ad where there's a woman,
you know, buying a palette of water at Costco, and
she's pushing her car back to her car, and their
car keeps getting further and further away as she's walking
towards it, and then you know, by the end, she's
like crawling on the ground trying to push this palette
of water forward. Or you know, it's like it's all
these funny moments that we have in our lives where
(25:52):
we just know that the water situation doesn't make sense.
Whatever gets in between somebody loving their source of water.
We can target and kind of reflect for people, because
people don't want to think that their Brita is ineffective.
They want to think that their Brita is making fresh
water for the people that they love in their lives.
You know, have you ever tested water from a Brita,
because we have, and you don't really want to know
(26:15):
what's in it. Unfortunately, it's again quite terrifying to look
at what Brita's do to the water don't do. But
in terms of filtering, pee fast lad all these other things,
I would not personally count on that for the health
of my family. And fundamentally, the issue is that tap
water is different out of every spicot in the world.
Speaker 1 (26:35):
So, Reuben, you're taking orders now and the first units
are going to shift this December. How can our listeners
learn more and get their own bout model it?
Speaker 2 (26:44):
Yeah, thanks for asking. So the discount code is Mitch
nine to one one. That's just a little shout out
for your listeners. And yeah, if they pre order a
machine today, they will get one in December twenty twenty four.
So I'm not sure when people will be listen to this,
but we will give people one hundred dollars off their
order for listening to this podcast and for being your fan.
(27:06):
We'd love to get to meet your your listeners and
help them get a new source of water.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
Well, thank you, we appreciate that. It's been a fascinating conversation. Rubin,
thanks for spending time with us today, and we're looking
forward to hearing about those future technological innovations.
Speaker 2 (27:20):
Yeah, my pleasure. I hope to be back on soon.
Speaker 1 (27:27):
That was my conversation with Ruben Volmer, founder and CEO
of Spout Water, maker of the Spout Monolith, a countertop
device that harvests clean drinking water from the air. You
can learn more about the company and pre order a
monolith at spoutwater dot com. And if you use the
discount code Mitch nine one one, which is all capitalized
with no spaces, no dashes, Mitch nine one one, you
(27:50):
can get one hundred dollars off on your order. Thanks
Spout and Rubin for a nice deal. Now. Water distribution
feels like a practice set in stone. It's the way
we've done things always and that tends to anchor people
in the habits and more arrays of their times, and
that prevents change. Water production and distribution needs a good
swift kick in the form of a surprising alternative to
(28:12):
the way that we've done it during the industrial era.
The spout monolith maybe one of those kicks. We're surrounded
by water in the atmosphere, and according to a June
twenty twenty two study by the University of Reading in
the United Kingdom, the total water vapor in the atmosphere
is increasing by about one percent a decade due to
climate change. One percent may not sound like a lot,
(28:33):
but the United States Geological Survey reports that the planet's
atmosphere contains twelve trillion gallons of water, so one percent
more water vapor represents one hundred and twenty billion gallons
of water. If we extrapolate from that, we can expect
it over the period from twenty ten to twenty fifty,
as much as four hundred and eighty billion gallons of
(28:55):
additional water vapor will be migrating into the air, and
that's about half the human consumption of fresh water annually.
All that water is expected to drive hurricanes and extreme
weather events, causing trillions of dollars in damage. But maybe,
just maybe, harvesting water from the sky could be one
facet of how we help solve the water crisis while
alleviating some of the damage caused by human activity. It's
(29:18):
a story worth exploring. So stay tuned to Sustainability in
your Ear as we continue to ask questions of innovators
and experts in this field, and I hope you'll take
a moment to spread the word about this podcast or
any of the more than four hundred and ninety interviews
in our archives. Folks, by writing a review on your
favorite podcast platform, you help your neighbors find us. You
are the amplifiers that can spread more ideas to create
(29:40):
less waste. So please tell your friends, your family, or coworkers,
the people you meet on the street that they can
find Sustainability in your Ear on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Audible,
or whoever they prefer to find their podcast goodness with
thanks for your support, I'm Metraclift. This is Sustainability in
your Ear and we will be back with another innovator
(30:02):
interviews soon. In the meantime, folks, take care of yourself,
take care of one another, and let's all take care
of this beautiful planet of ours. Have a green deck,
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