Interview with Fidan Karimova

Transcript

Sheldon Young
Welcome to No Footprints, a podcast brought to you by Alfa Laval. I’m Sheldon Young.

Jason Moreau
And I’m Jason Moreau.

Sheldon Young
And we’re here to talk about impact and efforts and the people behind making sustainability real. How are you, my friend?

Jason Moreau
I’m doing well. I’m doing well. Well, the spring has sprung here in Richmond.

Sheldon Young
It has.

Jason Moreau
I’m very much enjoying the weather, despite the pollen.

Sheldon Young
No, I enjoy the weather. I do not enjoy the accompaniment of the yellow dust that we get that makes my eyes and my nose sound not so great.

Jason Moreau
The yellow scourge.

Sheldon Young
Yes, that’s what it is. But we have a great guest today. I’m very excited about this.

But first, we have Earth Day coming up, which is this weekend. Anything planned exciting for Earth Day?

Jason Moreau
I would like to say yes, but because we’re keeping it real on this podcast, I do not have anything. I do not have anything currently planned. But perhaps you will inspire me with what you’ve got planned.

Sheldon Young
Well, sure. There’s some activities around the city here that you can add and join any of those. Earth Day here, they were launching this thing called Cool the City here in Richmond, which is really cool.

It’s about… It’s really cool. Yeah.

There we go. But it’s really about… Yeah.

It’s really about how do we lower the temperature for… Cities are heat sinks, basically, and they have a whole bunch of activities planned. They’re kicking it off.

They’re actually trying to increase the tree canopy here to reduce the urban heat effect, which is kind of fantastic. And it’s a collaboration. But there’s all kinds of little activities to go and join.

I’m just going to find one of those and probably participate. Maybe a park cleanup or something like that. That’d be kind of fun to do.

The weather’s nice enough to do that right now, so that’s great. Let’s see. Also, before we move on, a couple updates.

Our friend from our first episode, Paul Shapiro, he has a couple updates I want to kind of share, which is kind of fun to see right after we had him on. He secured a new deal with a South American meat company to sell their Riser protein, so congratulations on that. Again, it’s a hybrid product he talked about, which is increasing nutritional value and reducing the carbon footprint of actual meat.

They also had a second piece of news around securing patent rights on making Riser protein from potatoes, which I’m trying to figure out how that works, but it’s kind of cool. Another new breakthrough. It’s kind of fun to see that kind of happen, so congratulations, Paul.

Absolutely. Good stuff. Episode three, what are your thoughts?

You’re feeling, again, 50% more than we were last week, right?

Jason Moreau
Yeah, it’s feeling good. I’m feeling just privileged to be part of the conversation and to learn from the guests that are coming on. Yeah, as I said early on, I am not the expert in this area, so for me, it’s just exposure to some of the really great things and the great work that all these people are doing, which it’s inspiring, quite honestly.

We’ll make you an expert in a few episodes here.

Sheldon Young
You’ll be one of those, or do you want to play that role? Is that your role? Like, I’m the guy that doesn’t know things, right?

Come in and ask questions.

Jason Moreau
I’m the guy who doesn’t know things, slowly evolving into the guy you don’t want to get stuck next to at the dinner party because he knows too many things. Yeah.

Sheldon Young
Yeah, I think I might be that guy, Jason. I just might be that guy, but anyways, okay, let’s move on. So today, we have a fantastic guest.

She talks about water circularity, and it’s kind of a, you know, I’m not going to spoil the story here. She kind of goes into it, but it’s really happened. What happens when water is, you know, a problem, and how do you close that loop and really make things, you know, it’s such an important resource, so how do you keep it rolling?

How do you prevent the loss of fresh water because it’s so limited here on our planet? I will close with one fun little statement. I did a presentation recently, and I used this quote because it’s such a great one.

It’s from Benjamin Franklin, and so he says, Known for a lot of great quotes. There’s a lot of great Ben quotes, and so I pulled this one out because I was talking about water use and stuff like that. It’s really around, when the well is dry, we know the worth of water, right?

And so with that, I say we move on to our guest. What do you say? Perfect.

Let’s do it. Very excited about our guest today, done a lot of work in the water and wastewater space myself, and her organization WEF is at the center of it all, so really excited to talk to her. Today, we welcome Fidan Karamova, Senior Director of Circular Water Economy at the Water Environmental Federation.

She holds degrees in International Business and Environmental Management from the University of Maryland, and she’s on the front lines of reimagining how we manage water, leading bold cross-sector projects that turn waste into resources and push for smarter, more sustainable water systems. With over a decade of experience in sustainability and global development, Fidan’s helped innovators around the world move from big ideas to real-world impact. She’s here to talk about what really makes to build a circular water future, and it matters more than ever.

My pleasure to welcome Fidan to No Footprints. Welcome.

Fidan Karimova
Thank you, Sheldon. Nice to see you here.

Sheldon Young
Absolutely. So thanks for joining us. I think I stumbled across your name.

I was looking up people in the industry that would be interested in talking to you about water, and your name was one that popped right up, and I’m really glad you agreed to join us here. So first thing, just tell us kind of your path. How did you get into water, and what drew you to it?

Fidan Karimova
Well, I was born near the water. I was born on the Caspian Sea in Baku, Azerbaijan, and ever since then, I was very much into anything water for my personal hobbies. Even slowly, when it came to work, I started getting into water when I created my own app called the Water Tracker, and it tracked how much water you use throughout the day.

Then I read Cradle to Cradle. It’s a book, I think that was published in 2002, and it focused on having products go from cradle to cradle as opposed to cradle to grave. So always cycling in a loop and never generating any waste.

And that connects directly to what I’m doing now for WEF, and for those that may not be familiar with WEF, Water Environment Federation was founded in 1928, and we’re going to be celebrating our 100 years very soon. And our mission is to inspire the water community in pursuit of human and environmental well-being. We have 30,000 individual members and 75 member associations, nationally as well as globally.

Sheldon Young
Wow, so that’s fantastic. So what brought you to WEF, like what was your career steps that kind of got you here?

Fidan Karimova
I worked previously at an organization that focused on innovation and startups, getting their ideas generated from just an idea on a piece of paper to a full blast company. And then while I was working there, I created the app, the WaterTracker app. And then I realized that I wanted to have a bigger impact.

I wanted to work at an organization that had a global impact, that had people coming together to talk, to collaborate, to come up with solutions. I joined the Water Research Foundation and I focused more on the innovation side, working with technologies, bringing them into the water industry. And then now I joined WEF, specifically looking at the circular water economy, how not only are we talking to people within the water, but how water can connect to other industries like agriculture, like data centers, like anything, any other business that has water, which is literally every single business out there.

Sheldon Young
Yeah, yeah, that’s for sure. I think anywhere you look around, you see water and how it impacts our lives and how it impacts our businesses and whether you want to expand a business and realize, wow, I don’t have enough water to be able to do that, right? In some cases, right?

You see that. But circular, you used that word a couple of times there. It’s an important one.

We hear it a lot. I’m not sure anyone, everyone, sorry, knows exactly what that word truly means. And so when you’re talking about the world of water, what do you mean by circularity and how does it kind of manifest itself?

Fidan Karimova
So the term circular economy was coined in the 70s and it really became popular with the Ellen MacArthur Foundation in 2010. The goal in general means getting away from the take, make, dispose process, the linear process and turning it more into the circular process where there is no waste generated, but the waste circulates and becomes actually a resource for another organization, for another industry. And when we’re looking at circular water economy, we at WEF define it as aiming to reduce waste, to recover resources, specifically nutrients and energy, and most importantly, also regenerate nature.

And we look at wastewater not as waste, but we look at it as a resource.

Sheldon Young
Excellent. Yeah, I think that’s a great definition. I think it’s certainly one that kind of encompasses what we think of and even more.

Jason Moreau
I was curious, so most people take water and wastewater treatment as a given. When it’s working, it’s just sort of an invisible thing in the background. We had an incident here in Richmond earlier in the year that reminded people that when it’s not working, it’s a problem.

So in terms of the circular economy, what should the average person know about water, wastewater that they might not, and how can they more positively contribute?

Fidan Karimova
Yeah, that’s an important question. As you said, most of the people don’t really think about water unless it’s broken or it’s not working. Most important piece to keep in mind is that our planet, the water on our planet has been here for 5 billion years.

This water is the same water that the dinosaurs drank back in the day. Most people probably think about water, unfortunately, when something happens that’s bad. They just flush it, usually down the toilet, and it goes away.

But unfortunately, with what happened with Flint, Michigan, and in the Alabama Black Belt, that comes to the forefront. The go away actually never goes away. It goes to a whole system, and a workforce is in charge of making sure that our water gets cleaned and comes back to us through the clean faucets that we have, the water that we can actually drink.

And in most other countries, that’s not the case. And that’s thanks to the many people that are putting in a lot of time and hours at the water resource recovery facilities. And we don’t call them wastewater treatment plants, but water resource recovery facilities, because when the water goes there, it gets cleaned, but also other products are derived from it, such as, for example, biosolids that can then be land-applied.

And then the water goes back into the land as well as in the form of groundwater through aquifer recharge.

Sheldon Young
So when it comes to sustainability, what are the most important things that need to be true for us to think about for this to not be a problem in the future?

Fidan Karimova
Three most important things, I would say. One, quantity, two, quality, and then the last one is efficiency. So when looking at quantity in particular, due to overuse and pollution, our water gets dirtier and it’s harder to use.

So that’s when we look at sustainable solutions to that are water reuse, desalination in certain locations, and better water infrastructure, making sure that the water is not leaking out, that it gets to its destined location. And then when we’re looking at quality, we’re looking at specifically maintaining clean rivers and lakes and making sure that groundwater also is being recharged, because if we are not recharging groundwater, then we have issues with the land settling and other connected issues with that. As well as another part of the equation is oceans, because oceans are essential for human ecological health.

And oftentimes we tend to split that up where we have water, wastewater, and we put oceans separately. But at the end of the day, it’s all one. And then last, specifically looking at efficiency out of the one third of water that we actually have on our planet, 70 percent that is available for us.

We use 70 percent for agriculture and looking at agriculture, we are looking into making smart irrigation because that’s a top priority since so much water goes into it. And then when you bring in the industry portion in industrial water reuse, you have to look at closed loop systems. And a good example of that is data centers.

A lot of times they have access to freshwater, but most are moving to using a closed loop system, working with water resource recovery facilities and using reused water so that that could be used at the data centers.

Sheldon Young
Very interesting. It’s an area that we play a lot in is that water reuse and all that, and how do you make it happen? So it’s really neat to hear it from someone that’s in the industry looking at that and the importance of that and how it all manifests itself and turns into that circular economy that we’re looking to create.

So what are the big lessons that you’ve learned on your journey that might help others trying to kind of blaze their own sustainability path in water?

Fidan Karimova
I would say always stay curious because the path is definitely not straightforward. I did not start in water. And the big question that we have in our industry is, did you choose water or did water choose you?

And in my case, I definitely chose water. And I decided to go into water because I was passionate about it. But a lot of times we find people that fall into water and they never come out of it because there’s a lot to do always.

Water always has to stay clean and there are always innovative ideas and not just for engineers to enter the water industry, but for policymakers, for entrepreneurs, anyone can find people that are focused on PR and communication. That’s another big aspect. So I would say definitely stay curious and join the water industry.

Jason Moreau
So what projects or initiatives are you engaged in right now that you’re just really excited about?

Fidan Karimova
There are many. We’re standing up the Water Environment Federation as the go-to organization for all things circular water economy. And as part of that, we have a number of initiatives that are taking place this year, as well as many more in the future.

The first one that’s coming up is the nutrient trading workshop that we’re going to do in May of this year, on May 28th in Madison, Wisconsin. And we’re bringing in people to focus in specifically on this topic from the ag perspective, from the governmental perspective, because it does need to be addressed. And once this conversation happens, we would like to mimic it and actually have it in other states as well.

Another fun tour that we have planned, it’s a study tour to Denmark and it’s going to be in June. It’s to see industrial symbiosis in action. You may have heard of Kallenborg Symbiosis.

If you haven’t, Kallenborg Symbiosis…

Sheldon Young
Tell us what that is, because I don’t think a lot of people have.

Fidan Karimova
I would be happy to. It’s 12 different public and private companies or at this point, I think it’s even 17 public and private companies that they’re working together. They’re using each other’s waste as a resource.

One industry working with another industry. And it’s a closed loop system. And they have been working for the past, I mean, I think it’s the past six decades.

And to date, they have saved over 300 million dollars as a result of this industrial symbiosis that they have implemented. So the idea is it’s it’s mind blowing, to be honest. And the idea is to have people from our WEF member association take them to Denmark to visit the water resource recovery facilities there and see what they’re doing and to visit the industrial symbiosis location, Kallenborg Symbiosis, to get more ideas, to come back and implement them locally.

Sheldon Young
Now, that sounds great. Really cool.

Fidan Karimova
One last item that I definitely need to mention, Industrial Water Solutions Conference is happening in June, and we have a lot of different industries coming together from the AgCenter, from the data centers, from minerals and mining and talking to utilities, to water resource recovery facilities to see ideas that they may not have thought of that could be implemented at their industry level. And they could work together and form public-private partnership opportunities. That’s coming up in June as well.

Sheldon Young
Where’s that going to be?

Fidan Karimova
That’s going to be in Columbus, Ohio, June 23rd to 25th.

Sheldon Young
Perfect. Great. I think it sounds like a really interesting one to be a part of.

So, all right. So to move the circular water economy forward, you may run into barriers or the industry may run into barriers. If you could remove one barrier for success, that’s not money.

I always have to say that, that’s not money. That’s kind of my little caveat on that one, because money solves a lot of problems. I know.

But if you could remove one thing that’s in the way right now, what would it possibly be?

Fidan Karimova
It would be the silos, because water operates outside of silos. We should be operating outside of silos as well. One industry can talk to another industry and should, and a lot of industries should be collaborating, forming partnerships, because a lot can be learned just from simple conversations and sitting down to hear the other’s perspective, what the projects that they’re working on, and definitely it would be removing those silos.

Sheldon Young
All right. So last question. If people want to learn more about your efforts or Ref’s efforts, what can they do and how can they find out about it?

Fidan Karimova
Pretty easy. Go to ref.org slash circular water economy or circular water. Both lead the same place and you can learn more about our circular water economy initiatives.

You can browse through the website. You can sign up maybe for even the upcoming events. Big thank you for having me.

I really appreciated the conversation and being able to talk more about my passion for circular water economy and why it’s important for all industries.

Sheldon Young
Well, the pleasure is all ours. Thank you for joining us on here. And again, our goal is to share initiatives like this and make people aware of what’s happening to sustainability and people like yourself that are leading it.

So appreciate your time today and looking forward to seeing you in the future. I’m sure you’ll be at WEFTEC and things like that, which is the big event.

Fidan Karimova
Absolutely.

Sheldon Young
Hopefully I’ll see you there then. Thanks.

Fidan Karimova
Well, hopefully both of you can join the industrial water solutions conference.

Sheldon Young
I’ll take a look and see if we can make it work. All right.

Fidan Karimova
Thanks Shelton.

Sheldon Young
Absolutely. Bye-bye. What a great guest.

Um, Ferdinand was so fantastic. What an interesting story too. I mean, born on the water, you know, how water, uh, the whole concept of, you know, I found water versus water finding me, there’s a little both.

If you, you know, when I, when I hear the story, I’m like, yeah, you found water, but it did kind of find her too.

Jason Moreau
It did have that sense of I’m embracing my destiny though, which is really kind of cool, right? Like she’s already doing some, some really pretty amazing work, but to feel like it’s almost a calling, you know, is kind of that frosting on top of that cake.

Sheldon Young
Yeah, absolutely. And, and, uh, what a, what a great way to find it. And the work she’s doing is really pretty amazing.

Um, so she talked about water circularity, right. And, uh, taking care of water and then lots of ways to do that. I mean, I work with it every day and it’s such a, it’s so interesting to find how do we find ways to just not use this resources as much or to make sure it gets put back into the cycle and circle.

I’ll ask you, Jason, you know, how do you take care of water in your life? What do you, what do you do to reduce, to improve your water circularity?

Jason Moreau
I would say probably not as much as I could be doing. I think I do the basics, right? Like, um, I, I try not to take long showers, uh, basic maintenance.

I think, you know, as a homeowner, you know, there’s always that, like the, the toilet starts running. Right. Like when stuff wears out and taking care of that quickly, sinks that start dripping.

Um, so yeah, I think it’s the basics, but I honestly feel like I could be doing a bit more, um, trying to explore that a little bit more.

Sheldon Young
Well, good. If nothing else, I think, uh, when we do discussions like this, I hope it, it brings it to people’s kind of forefront of their brain. So they start thinking about it.

Like if you’re working in a facility that uses a lot of water, you know, okay. Maybe I need to think about that. And, you know, hopefully we jar a little memory or a little thought to say, yeah, you know, we should look at our water use.

You know, that’s the goal of this podcast is like, I want to create a, we want to create kind of impact and the ability to, for people to just think a little bit. About how they can improve their footprints, um, and not leave them. So I, you know, hence the name of the podcast, but, uh, yeah, I mean, for myself, it’s like, you know, I definitely, you know, I built my house, you know, just a few years ago, so not too, too long ago.

And so, uh, a lot of this stuff here is designed to be more efficient. Uh, and so looking, making sure I keep, again, like you said, the upkeep I do, and I don’t have a yard. Uh, you know, I, I went to the townhouse right now, our community does do.

Uh, some irrigation. I have talked to them about making sure that that is optimized, uh, to not, uh, not waste water, uh, and that, you know, it’s using it appropriately and that the timings are set, right. And, you know, so it’s not blaring in the middle of the day and getting just evaporating immediately, that kind of stuff.

Jason Moreau
Uh, but personally, yeah, I mean, I see that all the time and see you for actually going and having that conversation. The other one that I adore saying sarcastically is when you see the, um, the irrigation system going like during a rainstorm, right. Cause it’s just on a timer.

Yeah. So it’s just right. And nobody’s monitoring that.

And, uh, yeah, I mean, driving past, I’m like, yeah, it hurts.

Sheldon Young
It hurts to see. Yeah, I know. It’s just, it’s a, I, I, I call those kind of dumb sprinklers, right.

They just kind of do, they just kind of do as opposed to race to make it. So it doesn’t do that. Right.

So lots of things to think about there, but anyway, so back to our guest, I think, um, you know, I really liked how she talked about how water kind of connects everything and the importance, uh, to ensure that circularity exists there. Right. Uh, thinking of that whole circular economy concept, I really liked that story about that, that city in Denmark.

Uh, you know, the, um, the name of it is escaping me now, but Kallenborg Kallenborg. Yes. Thank you for, for jarring my memory on that.

What a cool, I mean, I really went and read up more. I’d heard of it before and I’d seen, I know I have seen the diagram of that city and the flows between it before. And so I went and just got, it jarred my memory around.

I’m like, Oh my gosh. Yeah. This, I don’t know why we don’t do more of those.

I, I, I can think of the hard, maybe that’s the only answer I have.

Jason Moreau
I, yes, I would imagine that I would imagine though, that if they can do it in a, in a place like Europe, I have to assume we can do it here in the U S where we have more land, we have more right. Like to, to sort of like do planning from ground up versus figuring out how to retrofit things. Um, but no, that, uh, I, I did go to the website as well and it’s, it’s fascinating and it’s also supremely impressing that it’s 50 years.

Sheldon Young
This isn’t some new thing.

Jason Moreau
Right.

Sheldon Young
Unproven concept.

Jason Moreau
No, they’ve been cooking for 50 years and continually refining. Um, you know, their, their efficiencies and circularity between, and I, well, in your question of, you know, we should be able to do it here. I think there’s that issue of public private, right.

And establishing more of the cooperation between the two types of entities.

Sheldon Young
Yeah. We don’t really district heating is not something that happens a lot here in the U S right. And this, the whole concept here, a lot of their energy district heating is a part of that.

And the utilities is for kind of shared. There’s a lot of sharing going on between different entities, frankly. Right.

And that I don’t know, again, I don’t know the reasons behind it all, but it’s like, I just find that a lot harder here. I’m sure there are good examples of it. Maybe we should look into that for another episode, but, uh, that just seemed to be like, it’s a, it’s a very perfect symbiosis.

And if you want to learn more about it, I recommend going, looking at it again. I hopefully it will jar some ideas like, Hey, look, you know, I have this factory here down the street, there’s another factory, is there a way we can work together to, to, you know, reduce waste and share resources that makes sense. Right.

Um, it’s called, uh, it’s, it’s Colin Borg symbiosis. And the address is obviously www symbiosis.dk and then slash EN. Cause I want an English, uh, slash the symbiosis dot.

Jason Moreau
You’re so needy. I know. Right.

Sheldon Young
English. I’m so needy. Um, but like I get my next duolingo, uh, uh, going for different languages here.

Uh, so symbiosis.dk slash EN slash, and that will get you the, the website, but, uh, uh, pretty cool to, if you want to see it yourself, how all these, I guess, 20 companies that work together and share whether this, the waste from here goes to here and it’s used to then generate energy or whatever it is really cool concept, and that is really the ultimate circularity, a little bit jealous of, but I’ll be able to be able to go see that.

That’s going to be awesome. Absolutely. Um, so again, um, other lessons, what else did you take away from it?

Uh, Jason, when you, when you, when you spoke with her.

Jason Moreau
Well, again, always sort of listening with my marketing hat on. I really appreciate it. And it was subtle, but she talked about instead of calling it a wastewater treatment plant, that it’s a water resource recovery facility.

And it seems like a small thing, but that’s a, that’s a huge mind shift to instead of thinking about something as waste, you’re, you’re looking at it as an input for how, how do we get clean water out of this? And, and, and I think it just, it’s one of those small little reminders of that, you know, this, the drive and why you’re, why you’re there and ultimately what you should be, uh, attempting to achieve with a facility like that.

Sheldon Young
Yeah. Great, great point. Yes.

And it’s funny. It’s like, you know, I work with that industry as well. And it’s like, I’ve seen what’s water reclamation center or whatever they call it, right.

I’m like, Oh, okay. So I guess it’s just another way of saying wastewater treatment, but you know, you’re right, it is a shift in mindset. If you go in with the attitude that we are reclaiming, right.

That again, hopefully generates and percolates some ideas because not one, not every wastewater treatment plant is like the other, some create biogas. Some I’ve seen some create fertilizers, you know, like full blown fertilizer from, from, from, uh, their product and, uh, you know, some are just treating wastewater, they call them the wastewater treatment plant. And it’s funny, you’re right.

They, if you change the attitude and change the goals, uh, to be more circular, there are certainly tremendous opportunities. I know we worked with one that, you know, they’re actually going to be making money on the, on their, uh, their waste product, the end of the day, you know, it’s not going to fund the whole facility, but it’s a return on actually have a return on investment for, uh, putting in certain products to do things. And it’s pretty, it’s a different way of thinking.

Uh, some of the posts, you know, we’re just a utility. We function, we do X and we put clean water out and that’s it. Right.

They’ve shifted the shift of the game. They, you know, they’re, they’re creating more resources from it. And it’s, you’re right.

It’s a really good, good takeaway.

Jason Moreau
Yeah. Well, and I think that speaks to, um, her, her other point of, um, working, working across vertical silos.

Sheldon Young
That was her, if she could remove one thing, that was what was it? Taking away the silos. You’ve talked about that before.

I mean, in terms of like, um, making sure that the, you know, things are talking and, and, and, you know, you’re a communicator and so it’s silos are bad, you know, I guess, unless you’re keeping grain in them, I suppose. Uh, they have some, some purposes, but mostly yeah. In business.

Yeah. That can be, they can definitely be a hindrance for sure. But, uh, all right.

So let’s, let’s say we wrap up here. Let’s move on. And, uh, uh, I want a few things.

I want to mention that, that, uh, she had talked about. I’m going to give you some details on those, uh, the nutrient trading workshop in Madison, Wisconsin on May 28th. Uh, she’s doing the study Denmark trip.

That’s industrial symbiosis in June. Uh, some great examples. I gave her the web address.

I give it one more time. Uh, www.symbiosis.dk. Uh, slash E N slash. Um, again, I think we’ll talk our next episode, I think is going to be around circulary.

So hopefully we’ll talk a little more about this. Uh, and then the industrial water solutions conference, June. Fifth, I think is, there was a couple of days there.

I wrote 25th to 25th. I don’t, that’s not right. But, uh, uh, in June, end of June, the industrial water solutions conference in Columbus, Ohio.

And then if you want to learn more about the things that Fidan is working on wef.org/circular water, we’ll get you there. So that’s about it, Jason. Uh, we’ll see you next episode where we’ll be talking around, uh, circularity.

Jason Moreau
Looking forward to it.

Sheldon Young
Absolutely. Our guests come from many industries and companies, as we’re talking about how the world makes sustainability real.

Our company, Alfa Laval is a global supplier of process solutions. So it’s very possible that the organizations our guests are with may use Alfa Laval or even our competitor’s products. This does not mean that we, the hosts or Alfa Laval are endorsing any of the guests or the specific ideas that we discuss.