Water Rangers at OCE Discovery 2016

Posted on by head-ranger

The Water Rangers Team would like to thank the Ontario Centres of Excellence for inviting us to participate in the Social Enterprise Zone of the OCE Discovery 2016 Conference! This past week, we traveled to Toronto in order to showcase the work we’ve been doing in making water quality data more accessible and engaging people in environmental stewardship.

Thanks for stopping by!

It was a great opportunity for us to engage with people and build interest in the cause of freshwater conservation; we spoke with researchers, students, social entrepreneurs and recreational river users who were excited to see how they could become involved in our project and protect the bodies of water that matter to them. While our network of volunteers doesn’t extend quite as far as Toronto yet, we look forward to seeing how this conference will help us to continue growing.

We were particularly impressed with how many organizations also came to the conference to showcase new innovations in the field of freshwater quality and conservation, coming from a wide variety of backgrounds ranging from university and college research institutes to start-up technology firms and other social enterprises.

Our favourite projects

Some of our favorite water innovators from this year’s conference include:

  • Building Up, a social enterprise whose mission reduces barriers to employment in the skilled trades by providing trading and employment using the savings in utility costs achieved by performing water-efficiency retrofits in residential buildings.
  • Econse, whose chemical-free wastewater treatment system for craft breweries custom solution, which allows brewers to deliver a more sustainable product by reducing water use in production while treating wastewater more effectively.
  • The Centre for Alternative Wastewater Treatment at Fleming College, whose facilities allow researchers and industry partners to test new technologies which could significantly improve freshwater quality and bring them to market.

We hope that more of this sort of innovation will continue to provide us the tools we need to protect the freshwater resources which our rivers, lakes, and wetlands represent. Congratulations also to Jocelyn from Wastenot Worm Farms for winning the Social Innovation Zone pitch competition this year; we look forward to seeing what the future holds for this exciting new model of biocomposting!
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The Water Rangers Booth at OCE Discovery 2016