Changing the Way the World Thinks About Waste
The current focus of Merah Mas is water, specifically domestic municipal wastewater treatment - Sanitation (expanding to solid substrate fermentation - basically composting with a twist - in the near future). We aim to use non-sterile conditions, and non-genetically modified organisms, in order words, natural, indigenous little bacteria and fungi and plants and maybe animals along with smart bioprocess engineering design to produce valuable products from dilute resources (previously considered waste).
These products can be the old, boring energy, like biogas, or slightly more interesting fertiliser, but we aim to achieve sexy stuff like plastics and related products right up to fine chemicals like dyes and biosurfactants. One crazy end goal is to produce textiles, the processing agents for those textiles and the dyes to colour those textiles in one kick-ass industrial ecology. Yup, we want to wear our shit. Because we can. And it's a brilliant marketing and educational tool. No, we don't expect that particular goal to go mainstream.
Merah Mas Divisions:
- Indigenous Biotechnology:IndieBio
- Industrial Ecology:IndieEco
- Adventure Sport & Science Tourism:ASST
- Astute Design
Merah Mas pursues an integrated approach to education, waste management and profitability. Specifically, Merah Mas aims to combine adventure sport and tourism to educate both tourists and the local public about science, while making it fun (ASST). Merah Mas believes wastewater treatment can be used to aesthetic effect in a landscaping application while educating about biotechnology and contributing to service delivery - Astute Design.
So far, the most useful approach has been to work with existing companies and groups to bring people and projects together to achieve this - IndieEco by design, and it is one steep learning curve.
Ultimately, Merah Mas's core industry will be the development of valuable (bio)products, specifically biopolymers from wastewater: IndieBio.
Merah Mas promises to respect water as a source of life, to be mindful of how we use water, and to preserve our water sources. Merah Mas is for love of water.