Over the weekend, the Department of Environment (DoE) and Japanese company, WOTA Corporation held a series of initial tests of technology that could help to alleviate the challenges of water scarcity.
The WOTA Box was designed by the Japanese firm to be a portable water reuse system even with little to no water supply.
Through a system of filtration, contaminated or wastewater would be turned into safe and reliable water that can be used for showering or hand washing, especially in post-disaster scenarios.
The DoE’s Project Coordinator, Christa Joy-Burton, said the initial phase of testing — which took place at the YASCO Sports Complex, Fort James beach and Pigeon Point beach — will be assessed while a second phase is planned for the new year.
“Right now, we’re just conducting research — we have a memorandum of understanding with the WOTA corporation; it’s a two-year MOU started in 2022 and, under the MOU, we’re doing research to see the viability of the technology.
“It hasn’t been fully determined as yet if we will be able to utilise [as] it also depends on the government’s interest in using the technology, whether it is through public facilities or if it will be available for private sector,” Joy-Burton explained.
WOTA Corporation was founded in October 2014, with the objective of developing a small-scale, decentralised water recycling system, according to the company’s website.
Since the 1980s, Japan has been utilising technology to reuse water following severe drought and economic growth and increased urbanisation on the Asian island nation, for example, urban applications such as toilet flushing.
“Based on the feedback and the demonstrations that we would have done where persons got to test out the technology whether they were showering, washing their hands or anything else, then we can see if it would have to be tweaked to match the differences in terms of temperature or anything else in Antigua since Japan has a bit of a different climate, in some respects,” she said.
Over the weekend, co-founder and Vice President of Incubation at WOTA Corporation, Ryo Yamada spoke about the recycled water filtered by the technology meets WHO standards.
Ryo Yamada, who is also in charge of the company’s overseas market development, said in the interview that the company began initial talks with Antigua and Barbuda at the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference, held in Glasgow, Scotland in 2021.
According to the project coordinator, the second phase of the testing will include a testing of the technology for home usage, such as toilet washing where the Japanese firm will be bringing equipment for the filtration of blackwater—wastewater mainly from toilets—and greywater—wastewater from non-toilet plumbing systems such as hand basins, washing machines, and showers.
“We haven’t quite decided as yet if it’s going to be public demonstration or if we’ll just be focusing mainly on homes because we’re hoping to test the system out, connecting them to some homes and from that maybe have persons utilize the system, whether it’s for a few days or more, just to see how well it works in Antigua,” Joy Burton noted.
She adds that while there was not the level of interest that the Department was expecting from the public during the testing, they plan to increase the publicity of their testing.