By Rachel Major
Water. Earth’s favorite molecule.
Two hydrogen orbiting a humble oxygen. The first atom in our periodic table zipping around a cousin to the ever-bonding, ever-expanding carbon. The mischievous, undeniably important nature of this molecule doesn’t end there. And it bred life as we know it.
Ice provided a protective layer over our early oceans due to the energy needed to change its temperature. This made water a gentle, constant setting for life’s nursery.
Leaving water was a challenging evolutionary feat. It relieved early tissues of the heavy obligations of gravity, so crossing the threshold to land required minor anatomical tweaks like backbones. Lungs and skins were also developed to overcome drying out and breathing air.
Still today, water carries the nutrient streams on land and at sea and the pulse through our veins and the veins of countless species we share the planet with.
The fertile crescent, where civilization developed, was flush with rivers and oceans. Ancient, revolutionary cities like Alexandria, Rome, Machu Pichu, Beijing all thrived because of access to water.
Today, 14 of 15 of the world’s largest cities are by oceans.
Water gives birth to fertile land, routes for transportation, and reliable sources of food and other resources. It gave our planet life and so we have built life around it.
Water is just as important for biodiversity. The most productive ecosystems - estuaries, rain forests, and marshes - are all filled with water. The world is shaped around ocean currents and local rainfall, and without water nature shrivels and die just as easily as we do.
Those who don’t remember our history are doomed to repeat it. We can’t repeat our entire evolutionary history, but if we don’t remember it we are doomed to make disastrous decisions about our present and future societies. And anyone who has relaxed into a bath, delighted in the smell of rain, or found comfort in the lullaby of the waves knows this connection.
And yet here we are in a thirsty world filled with scarcity. We’ve built coastal cities that pollute our oceans, filled in rivers and built dams to redirect waterways. Our leaky infrastructure wastes our most precious resource, and we have waged countless water wars for centuries.
We’ve treated water unmercifully and our society is bloodied and broken. Remember our history and find comfort - water is a nurturer, a healer, and our most powerful ally.
With this philosophy we built our NuTree as an intuitive water recycling device that uses nature’s lessons to bring water to everyone - with energy and food, too. Now we’re not just making water recycling easy, but investing easy too with crowdfunding. Water treatment and recycling is a $91.5B market and only going to increase!