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The catastrophic global effects of climate change––rising sea levels, warming temperatures, devastating natural disasters, record-setting droughts––affect us all. While hope for a brighter environmental future seems to grow dimmer by the day, some Israeli innovators are tackling sustainability head on, specifically when it comes to preserving and optimizing how we use [one of] the world’s most precious resources: water.
The Israeli sustainability sector’s commitment, ingenuity and perseverance has become a global model. The why is rather simple. Israel is in the Middle East, an arid part of the world with scarce water sources. So, in this case, necessity truly is the mother of invention. Israel’s precarious water security made water conservation and innovation a top national priority. And Israeli water planners, scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs, and others have answered the call.
How are they doing it? Here are some of the ways Israelis are pioneering water sustainability on the world stage.
Drip Irrigation:
Israelis have contributed many important inventions to the world, few as important as drip irrigation. Created by Simcha Blass in 1959, it’s an incredibly simple yet effective irrigation system. It uses pipes, or “drip lines,” to deliver water and nutrients to the root zones of crops.
Today, innovations help drip irrigation systems operate even more efficiently, reducing the water needed for a farm by up to 70 percent in some places. Each plant gets what it needs when it needs it. Farmers enjoy higher yields with almost no waste or run off, all while conserving energy and water.
Israelis are helping rural farmers across the globe take advantage of drip irrigation, particularly in Africa. Organizations such as Innovation Africa, a non-profit that brings Israeli water, solar, and agricultural technologies to villages across the continent, are providing fresh water and drip irrigation in ten African nations. With over 500 projects, they’ve helped provide access to clean water for over 3 million people.
Desalination:
Israel is a country that’s largely arid with only one sizable fresh water lake. So fresh water is hard to come by. But it does have a very large saltwater source… the Mediterranean Sea.
If you heard “saltwater” and thought “desalination,” you’re spot on. The availability of seawater isn’t as dependent on the climate or political disputes like inland water sources, and there’s also plenty of it to go around.
Desalination uses massive facilities to make seawater drinkable, and Israelis are only relying on it more. The country’s seventh desalination plant will be completed in 2025, at which point desalinated seawater will account for over 85 percent of the water Israelis consume.
Thanks to homegrown technological improvements and marketplace competition, desalination costs in Israel are dropping and production is becoming better and more efficient.
Recycled water:
Like drip irrigation, this one is as simple as it sounds. Israelis recycle and reuse nearly 90% of their waste water. That’s about four times higher than any other nation on earth. Compare that to the United States which reuses less than 10% of its water.
So how do they do it? Dedicated treatment plants take raw sewage, filter it, filter it a second time with microorganisms, and clean it until it’s so clean you could drink it, though it’s mostly used for agriculture. The Shafdan treatment plant in Petah Tikva, one of 67 such plants in Israel, has been cited as a model wastewater treatment facility by the United Nations.
Recycled water, along with desalination, now supports Israeli economic growth and will help Israelis withstand dire droughts brought on by climate change. With global water demand expected to surpass supply by 40% by 2030, learning from Israel’s network of recycled water treatment facilities will be of vital importance.
Smart Agriculture:
There’s agriculture and there’s smart agriculture, or agtech. Agtech brings big data and tech into the mix to maximize crop yields. And Israelis are leading the way.
Israeli sustainability entrepreneurs are discovering innovative ways to bring technologies like robotics, drones, artificial intelligence, data analytics, and more to crop production.
The result? More crops, better crops, and a more efficient use of resources like water, plant nutrients, fertilizers, and even human labor.
Take two Israeli startups, Phytech and CropX, whose specially designed plant sensors provide real-time data from crops. Using this data, farmers don’t have to play guessing games or adopt a one-size-fits-all approach. They can make informed, educated decisions about when, where, and how much water to provide each crop, and how much to fertilize, leading to an increase in the quantity and quality of produce.
AgriTask, another Israeli agtech company, allows farmers to access all their agricultural data from sources like aerial imaging, weather stations, and in-field soil sensors all on a mobile app.
Today Israel’s agtech sector is booming, with over 450 companies that help feed the world.
Solar water heaters:
Big data isn’t behind every Israeli sustainability achievement. Some, like solar energy, are actually relatively simple. But the way Israelis harness the power of the sun is nothing short of remarkable.
Heating water accounts for 25 percent of residential energy use worldwide, mostly through burning fossil fuels. But solar water heaters can reduce a household’s water heating fuel consumption by 50 to 70 percent.
And Israelis are sold on these solar water heaters, which harness the sun’s heat to directly heat water without having to convert it to electricity first.
Back in the 1950s, Israelis experienced a severe energy shortage. To combat the rising cost of energy, Zvi Tavor and Levi Yissar created what is now known as the “dude shemesh,” or “sun boiler.”
By the mid 1960s, barely two decades after Israel’s founding, one in every 20 Israeli households already had their own sun boiler. Israeli companies producing solar water heaters soon began exporting them to other Mediterranean countries like Greece, Turkey, and Italy.
After the oil embargo Israel faced following the Yom Kippur War, energy independence became a national priority. In 1976, Israel mandated solar water heaters for all new residential buildings over eight stories tall which later expanded to all new residential buildings.
Today, Israeli society is the solar gold standard. 85% of Israelis get hot water from solar water heaters, which reduces electricity consumption by an estimated two million barrels of oil a year, or nearly $84 million. By contrast, in the U.S. less than 1% households have a solar water heater.
Israel isn’t keeping this all for itself either. Israeli companies export about $2 billion of water tech all over the world every year, particularly to Africa and Asia. Israeli irrigation exports account for 30% of the global irrigation market. And with water crises expected to intensify around the globe as our planet warms, Israelis will likely play a major role in the water sustainability sector for years to come.
Israelis are even fine-tuning what, at first glance, sounds like science fiction –– creating water out of thin air. Israeli startup Watergen filters water vapor out of the atmosphere and converts it into safe drinking water. Watergen’s cutting edge technology is providing water to hospitals in the Gaza Strip which is suffering from a shortage of clean drinking water, and rural villages in central Africa, where people would otherwise need to walk for hours to find water. Watergen’s technology has also been used to provide drinking water to the first responders in California and Australia battling record-setting fires in recent years.
Israelis may be leading the charge to help forge a more sustainable model of water consumption, but when it comes to the future of our planet, we're all in this together. That’s why we’ve joined the global campaign led by Mr. Beast and Mark Rober, along with dozens of other YouTubers to clean up 30 million pounds of plastic pollution from the earth’s waters. Every dollar raised will help clean up one pound of plastic and trash from our oceans, rivers and beaches. Donate and learn more at teamseas.org.