Sunshine Coast Hinterland Times

The World Technology Network has nominated Dean Cameron, the inventor of the Biolytix Sewage System, to be eligible to win the 2009 World Technology Award for The Environment. The award is sponsored by Time Magazine and is for “doing the work of greatest likely long-term significance.”
Dean will attend the award night on July 16 in the historic Time & Life building in New York. (No doubt in his black tie and Blundstones.) But his journey really began
15 years ago, right here on the banks of the
Obi Obi River.
Dean studied how nature breaks down waste on the river edges. While thousands of scientists worldwide were in their laboratories trying to cut the energy needed to pump oxygen into sewage by just a few percent, Dean was drawing on the wisdom of nature.
He was about to turn conventional sewage treatment on its head.
“Nature has sophisticated answers to complex design problems”, Dean said. “It is just up to us to take the time to learn from it.”
The Biolytix ‘ecosystem in a tank’ copies the river edge by quickly taking the waste out of the water and exposing it to oxygen-rich air. This enables a wide range of organisms to move into the waste and convert it into humus. This humus then acts as a filter for the wastewater as it trickles through. It converts it into irrigation water for the garden.
This enables the initial problem (the sewage) to be converted into the solution (the humus to cleanse the wastewater as it filters through.)
This simple step eliminates the need for energy-guzzling aerators, cutting electricity use by up to 90%.
It is more than a decade after this discovery and Biolytix is still on the banks of the Obi (albeit now in the Maleny Butter Factory). It employs 60 people and has won 11 national and international awards. It won The Asian Innovation Award, from a field of of 260 companies from 16 countries, including leading global companies like Microsoft, HP and Shell. The award was for its “potential to solve world problems”.
And Dean is still a visionary, often working 16 hours a day to solve life’s problems. “I hate anything being wasted” he said “I see better ways of doing things and don’t stop until I have improved them significantly.”
Just like nature, nothing wasted.