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By Kyle Mullin
For The Daily Gleaner

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Shawn Wilkie says our most precious resource is literally running down the drain.

Enlarge Photo

Ray Bourgeois

Efficiency expert: shawn Wilkie of Grun-sol Technologies kneels beside a domestic solar hot-water heating panel. Grun-sol is a Fredericton- based firm that specializes in the installation of water and energy conservation systems which are becoming more popular.

"We all know there's a global water shortage," said the president and founder of Grun-Sol Technologies, a local company that specializes in water and energy conservation.

"It's becoming more valuable than oil. Our population keeps multiplying, but our fresh water will not."

He said the problem has simple solutions. One of them is a grey-water recycling system.

It may not look impressive at first glance, the system looks no different than a conventional hot-water heater.

But inside its tank is an internal pump, chlorination input device and filter. It's hooked up to the house's existing piping, which feeds 'grey water' from showers or bathtubs to a holding tank to be treated.

With a flick of the toilet handle the water is then pumped back inside to the flush, before draining to the septic system.

This not only makes the user's water go further, it saves the electricity that would normally be needed to pump the toilet water.

"Most of us are just flushing fresh water down the toilet, literally," said marketing director Troy Burke. "These systems use it for a purpose, rather than just putting it directly in your septic tank."

Grun-Sol was founded more than two years ago by Wilkie. Aside from the grey water systems, it also offers similar rain-water harvesting systems, and solar hot-water heating. It has installed five wind turbines in New Brunswick and one in Nova Scotia.

Wilkie said Grun-Sol is equipped to offer these services on a residential and a small- to medium-sized commercial level. The company has a small staff, employing six including Burke and Wilkie.

All the company's administrative business is conducted at home and a lot is done via email.

Clients are visited on site on a case-by-case basis before materials are shipped in from wholesalers. In the case of water treatment, for instance, Grun-Sol is the distributor of grey-water products for Montreal owned and operated BRAC.

Burke said it's much easier for a small company like his to operate on a broader level these days thanks to Blackberrys and email.

"We just can't waste money on overhead for showrooms and offices when we can essentially do the same thing from home, in terms of customer contact, before bringing our services to them. You can't do a solar site assessment from an office," he said.

Wilkie said those services will have to become more common in New Brunswick if the province wants to stay environmentally healthy, pointing out that grey-water recycling is commonplace in British Columbia and already mandatory in Australia.

He said Efficiency New Brunswick energy audits can help homeowners take advantage of federal and provincial grants, which can help a solar hot-water heater pay for itself in the short term before it starts giving users long-term savings.

"In my opinion it's going to have to be mainstream," he said of energy and water saving products.

"I mean, why waste water in such a way when there's no reason to do so? You can have all the oil in the world, but if there's no water that's when wars will really start."

Forward Thinking is a Thursday feature that explores research and development, as well as new technologies in our community. Send your comments and story ideas to news@dailygleaner.com.