SEIMA 2010 Business Expo and Linkages 2010

This week I attended the SEIMA Business Expo and Linkages in Saskatoon. SEIMA is an industry association for Saskatchewan environmental professionals, and runs events like these to support Saskatchewan environmental businesses. The presenters offered a wide variety of topics covering all parts of the environment. There was a mix of technical presentations, partnership pitches, financial how-to’s and government program education.
As I think of the show, I am left with a couple of impressions:
I believe that water will follow energy’s path in world importance. Before the recent run-up in energy prices, people used energy like it was cheap and endless. We saw the problems that this caused, including climate change. Now that people are treating energy like a valuable resource, we can look back and see how wasteful we were in the past. Although we are nowhere near sustainable, we now acknowledge the cost of energy. Water is the same. We currently expect limitless clean water for free or very cheap. With this mindset, we are quickly depleting our water supply. There are several areas in the world that are already suffering from the lack of water. Eventually the law of supply and demand will increase the price of clean water. How we deal with this will have a profound effect on the future of humans on this planet.
Whenever I go to these conferences, I’m impressed with the quality of Saskatchewan innovation. Maybe it’s due to our farming background, but the innovations always seem to be very practical and cost efficient. There were several examples of this on display, like a couple of ways to eliminate the high cost of providing water and treating sewage. There were also a number of solutions to the high expense of site cleanup through cutting edge testing techniques. These presentations lacked the flash and glitz you see elsewhere, but more than made up for it in substance.
Congratulations to SEIMA for putting on a high quality conference. To find out more about SEIMA, here’s the link.