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Water Quality in Healthy Buildings, CLEAR INC
88 Plays8 days ago
Welcome to episode 86 of the Green Healthy Places podcast in which we discuss the themes of wellbeing and sustainability real estate and hospitality. I’m your host, Mat Morley, and in this episode I’m in Toronto, Canada talking to Ron Blutrich, CEO of Clear Inc, a specialist in water purification for the real estate industry.
A scientist by trade, Ron is a passionate advocate for improved water quality after his own health scare caused by contaminated water.
In a nutshell, Clear Inc installs industrial-grade purification systems for whole buildings at the water pipe’s point of entry, and a smaller scale UV-LED solution for single family homes.
In this conversation we discuss the sources of water contamination, water filter technology, water quality testing, and the fundamental role of purified water in a healthy building concept.
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Transcript
Intro
The Genesis of Clear Inc.
00:01:18
Green Healthy Places
Ron, pleasure to have you here.
00:01:19
Ron
oh
00:01:20
Green Healthy Places
thanks for Thanks for joining us.
00:01:22
Ron
Thank you for having me, Matt. Appreciate it.
00:01:24
Green Healthy Places
it I think you know with many businesses, some of the best businesses at least, always set out to address a particular problem and solve a problem that an individual has experienced or an industry as a whole is experiencing. And I think there's something here that I'd like to dig into with you. So if you could summarize it, what is the primary pain point or problem that you set out to solve with ClearingC?
00:01:54
Ron
Yeah, so we have a very, very specific agenda, which is to try to provide the highest level of water quality we can to all levels of society. And I think that really starts with providing water quality directly to where people are living and working.
Water Quality Challenges Discovered
00:02:09
Ron
It's a very personal and you know passionate topic for me because I was doing my PhD in molecular genetics at U of T. I was thinking I was going to be a scientist and a professor.
00:02:22
Ron
Halfway through PhD, I got really sick from water. I contracted a parasite called Antamoeba histolytica, which is the cause of amoebic dysentery and kills more than 100,000 people globally every year.
00:02:34
Ron
and And it was just from one bad cup of water. And to me, it was shocking. I started to do a lot of research about water quality and how it's being managed, how it's being treated, and what are the actual risks related to water.
00:02:48
Ron
And what I found is that, to my surprise, that there was actually a lot, not just in remote communities, but also in our urban centers in developed countries,
00:02:59
Ron
ah where I was living in Toronto, where people are living in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles. There's tons of water quality issues that I don't think a lot of people are really aware about, ah but are actually growing problems, a significantly growing problems, and could actually be the the cause of a lot of chronic health issues that people are experiencing that they don't really know where exactly it's coming from.
00:03:26
Ron
So I think that it's something that you know we take for granted when it comes to the water that we drink. But I think we can all agree it's it's one of the most essential aspects of our health. It's one of the most essential aspects of, you know, you can go without food for several weeks, but without water, you can't for more than three days.
00:03:43
Ron
um And so I think that a focus on water is a focus on the foundations of our health and the and the essentials. And I think that it's a very basic aspect of what people should expect. I think clean, healthy, safe water they can trust coming from their taps, coming from their showers.
00:03:58
Ron
So that's ah that's, you know, from my own experiences, something that I realized was really important. I did the research. I wrote a bit of a white paper summarizing my research back in 2021.
00:04:10
Ron
and and And yeah, I think that there's there's a lot that people can learn to help to protect themselves and a lot that property managers and property owners can learn about what they can do to improve water quality and provide healthier spaces for people to live and work in.
Implementing Water Solutions in Buildings
00:04:28
Ron
And so what we're doing at Clear Inc. was we're taking a very particular view on water in real estate. We're jumping on that challenge and we're we're trying to provide affordable and effective solutions for whole buildings as as a way to to provide amenities like a developer can provide as a as an amenity, high water quality, but not just for the luxury, but it's got to be affordable and effective that it can work in affordable housing as well, and basically all levels of real estate.
00:05:01
Ron
So something that what I believe should really be standard infrastructure. it's water quality improvements at the at the base of a building. and And this includes monitoring and includes treatment.
00:05:14
Ron
And it's just a way that that the residents of a building can know that they're getting the highest quality of water, reducing sick days and and improving their quality of life in general.
00:05:26
Ron
So that's that's what what what I set out to do with Clear Ink. I started the company with my father, Gil Blutrich. and We come from a real estate development background, so we were really focused on what is the best technologies that we can provide right now to have a practical effect on improving water quality in this these kinds of buildings and high rises.
00:05:49
Ron
And we found that it's actually very difficult. It's not ah an easy problem, but we did find, I think, ah the really an incredible solution for it and something that nobody really knows yet. So we're sort of trying to break through into a new market. We're trying to educate the market on these kinds of technologies and capabilities.
00:06:09
Ron
But it's something that the technology has existed now for a long time. and And we have definitely what we need to to improve water quality to all levels of society.
00:06:20
Ron
And it's just about education and implementation.
Understanding Water Quality Risks
00:06:23
Green Healthy Places
So before we sort of double click on the product itself that you've developed, which I do want to get into, let's just establish some of the basic concepts because we're talking specifically about drinking water or all water that is coming out of taps and showers and faucets in buildings.
00:06:41
Ron
Yeah, so I mean, it's it's interesting, right? Because a lot of people think that water quality matters the most in what we drink, what we consume, right? um But actually, what about the showers that we have, the the water that that we shower and bathe in?
00:06:54
Ron
ah This is something that is very overlooked, but it's actually one of the more important aspects of water quality, especially in developed ah urban centers. So for instance, one of the major bacterial infections you can get from water that's been growing tremendously is that it's coming from a bacteria called Legionella.
00:07:13
Ron
ah Legionella, even if you drink water with Legionella, it's not going to harm you. But if you're sitting in the shower and you have contaminated water with Legionella, breathing it in is going to create, it gives you and ah gives an opportunity for a lung infection.
00:07:27
Ron
And so Legionella is actually one of the major concerns in urban buildings and high rises. It's something that's grown almost 10 times in the past couple decades in the US and continues to grow exponentially.
00:07:41
Ron
And what we know of Legionella right now in terms of how it's affecting the population, we believe that the reported cases of Legionella is just tip of the iceberg. And we're starting to understand through improved detection technologies that it's much more common aspect of our of our health and disease, and it's affecting public health in a very serious way.
00:08:02
Ron
And that's coming from the showers. That's coming from what you breathe in from the showers, from the hot tub, from the saunas, sometimes even the grocery misters that we don't even think about. But just walking through the aisle in a grocery store, ah those misters spraying aerosolized water could be contaminated and are actually one of the major causes of Legionella in New York, as an example.
00:08:24
Ron
So yeah, things that people don't know, but it's not just the taps, it's also the showers.
00:08:29
Green Healthy Places
And so we're concerned about germs, we're concerned about pathogens, viruses and bacteria, right? So we're then thinking about concepts like turbidity. So there's sort of like the sediment that's in the water itself, right? And then coliforms. Can you just help me understand how those two concepts work out without going too deep into the science?
Testing and Monitoring Advancements
00:08:49
Ron
Sure, sure. So, which I love to do, by the way. So stop me if i if I'm going too deep. Yeah, when it comes to water quality, there's many different aspects. There's physical aspects, which include just like sediment.
00:09:02
Ron
It could include metals in the water. There's chemicals that we have to consider. So we talk about things like PFAS, we talk about chlorine, and then there's the biological, which is the the parasites, pathogens, bacteria, viruses,
00:09:17
Ron
ah viruses being one that, again, it's very difficult for us to to measure and to observe it. And so it's actually something that is, we don't know exactly how much those viruses are affecting us. but Overall, there's significant concerns in all aspects and there's different solutions ah for physical, chemical and biological aspects of our water.
00:09:31
Green Healthy Places
Thank you.
00:09:38
Ron
um and and And yeah, they they need, you know, each building needs to take a look at those aspects, have a comprehensive understanding of what kind of water they're getting and then what they should be doing about it.
00:09:50
Green Healthy Places
And what would a typical sort of water quality test look like or involve from a, say, facilities management perspective?
00:09:57
Green Healthy Places
ah Something that might happen once a year, once a quarter? What would you recommend?
00:09:58
Ron
Yeah.
00:10:03
Ron
My philosophy is that water quality monitoring is one of the most important aspects. I think that you can put all the best filters, but if you don't monitor the water, then you don't really have the confidence or understanding of what's happening. And when filters need to be maintained, the water quality will start to go down. so It's not enough to drop a filter, it's not enough to drop a technology. I think that general monitoring is very important.
00:10:28
Ron
And then what's amazing is, and this is where I think ah this awareness in water quality is increasing, the detection technologies are getting cheaper and easier. So we can start to look at more and more contaminants for less cost. This is making it far more feasible to put regular monitoring as part of building management.
00:10:48
Ron
And then that's actually allowing us to see the kinds of problems that we're getting and therefore you know really pushing us to try to find those solutions. So when it comes to you know water testing, now there's a lot of these do-it-yourself home test kits that you can get. a great one that I would recommend is from Tapscore.
00:11:07
Ron
They have very comprehensive water quality testing that you can do depending on how much you want to pay for it. but they can look at basically every type of contaminant under the sun.
00:11:19
Ron
um We start with a basic you know comprehensive test that looks at some of the essential heavy metals. It looks at you know some of the the chemical aspects. and And coliforms, as you mentioned, is something that just gives you a general idea of bacterial amount.
00:11:36
Ron
but it's not anything specific. We take it a step further because we're coming from a biological side. I mean, I came from a biology background. We have a team of scientists at Clear ah that work with one of the leading environmental testing laboratories in North America. It's called EMSL.
00:11:56
Ron
And we develop custom protocols with them to do really high resolution specific ah bacterial testing because there's different types of bacteria, different types of viruses, different types of pathogens. And each one needs a bit of a different if you want to be at a high resolution, needs a bit of a different protocol.
00:12:14
Ron
So there's a bit of an environmental investigation involved with it. And so that becomes a little bit more complicated. But even those tests have become so much cheaper over time, so much higher at at a far higher resolution.
00:12:27
Ron
And it's allowing us to to monitor problems in buildings that before would have been just too expensive to see.
00:12:33
Green Healthy Places
There are some interesting parallels with the air quality, IAQ, indoor air quality, where we're thinking about not just the quality of the air that's coming into a building through the ducts, leading into where the duct intakes are and what's outside the building itself, and the quality of the filters in the ah ventilation system, and then being able to literally like see the air through ongoing monitoring, right?
00:12:37
Ron
Yeah.
00:12:46
Ron
Yeah. Mm-hmm.
00:12:56
Green Healthy Places
And those monitors are just getting better and cheaper and more accessible. and so I think there's some some parallels that can be that can help us to understand yeah the importance of not just monitoring the water, but also yeah measuring it for for quality and ensuring that the filters are in place, et cetera.
00:13:13
Green Healthy Places
So where are the...
00:13:14
Ron
i I just really want to underscore the importance of the monitoring because when I did my research, I understood that, and this was back in 2021, that um water quality, but in general, healthy real estate is going to increase in in popularity and and the market is just going to increase tremendously.
00:13:15
Green Healthy Places
Yeah. Hmm. Hmm.
00:13:33
Ron
and And the reason why is on the back of these detection technologies. The fact that they're getting so cheap, the fact that they're getting so easy and high resolution ah means that we're going to be able to monitor at a very, very low cost, many more contaminants in our air and in our water.
00:13:51
Ron
And that's going to push us to, you know, it's before it was difficult for an individual resident to test their water. And now for a couple of hundred bucks, they can go and see every single contaminant that's coming to their tap.
00:14:03
Ron
So developers are going to start to feel an increased burden to manage water quality or air quality because every one of the residents can, for very cheap, test it themselves.
00:14:14
Ron
and And actually, it's going to lead to regulation changes as well. So you're starting to see it with Legionella. I mean, now, that the testing is so cheap. You have municipalities and so and and you know governments that are actually pushing on building codes for property managers to be testing for you know bacteria that they've never had to test before.
00:14:34
Ron
And now they have to do it every year. And that data is now publicly available. and And if you do get bad results, it initiates remediation efforts that are expensive.
00:14:45
Ron
So it all of this, the detection technologies are increasing in in capability, they're getting cheaper, and that's a given. And based on that, there's going to be a burden that's increasing on property managers, on developers to manage the health status of their buildings.
00:15:05
Green Healthy Places
And what's the root cause of all this? is it Is it about big agriculture spitting nasty things out, nasty chemicals out into our land that then filters through into the water basin?
Filtration and Treatment Technologies
00:15:15
Green Healthy Places
Like what's at the at the root of?
00:15:16
Ron
i I think it's always been the case. I think that water and air quality has always been ah you know more complicated and difficult and affecting public health in ways that we didn't necessarily see.
00:15:28
Ron
But now there's actually, there's two aspects. One, now I can see what's happening in the building, water and air at at a cheap, in real time, I can see what's going on. But also when people get sick, the hospitals also have better detection technologies that allow them to see why somebody got sick.
00:15:46
Ron
So now we have much cheaper ways of, let's say somebody has a Legionella infection, they get pneumonia. The hospital will take a patient, they'll see if somebody that presents with pneumonia. But unless they do the test, they're not gonna know it came from Legionella, which is waterborne.
00:15:58
Ron
ah Instead, before it would just be somebody with pneumonia and maybe they died with pneumonia. but now they can do the specific urine antigen tests that have become very cheap and very effective.
00:16:09
Ron
And now we're ah able to connect the diseases people are coming into the hospitals with to our environmental quality. And before we weren't able to make those connections. So both on the detection in the building of what's in our environment and the detection in a patient who's presenting with a specific disease,
00:16:26
Ron
Now we're able to also connect that to the environment. So overall, the awareness is going to grow, but the problems were always there. So, you know, i don't I don't really think that the problems themselves, maybe in some ways they are growing because we're increasing in population density and everything.
00:16:40
Ron
But overall, I think that what's really going to be the one pushing healthy buildings and healthy real estate and and and and the burden to maintain a building is healthy, it's it's just on the back of detection. It's just on the back of we can see now problems that we were never able to see before.
00:16:58
Green Healthy Places
What about the filters themselves then? Because I think we've all, even for those perhaps not involved in and healthy buildings, we've all heard about activated carbon filters and and perhaps even sort of UV filters that are now, you know, there are domestic products available.
00:17:13
Green Healthy Places
What approach have you taken with Clearing in terms of, you know the filter itself, like the product that you're you're delivering that you would therefore recommend, I guess, is like the premium product?
00:17:22
Ron
Yeah, so filters themselves, I mean, there's many different types of filters. There's physical filters to deal with things like sediment. There's filters like ah activated carbon, which can remove chlorine for better and for worse.
00:17:38
Ron
There's RO systems, which are were usually initially invented to do desalination and to take ocean water and turn it into fresh water. um But now lots of people have those under the sinks.
00:17:50
Ron
At this point, I mean, the filter industry is is already quite quite large. 77% of Americans are using some kind of water filter, whether it's a Brita pitcher or under the sink system.
00:17:59
Green Healthy Places
Thank
00:18:00
Ron
People are paying to to get increased security in their water quality. And sometimes they're paying quite a lot. Some of those under the sink filters can go above $3,000 USD, which is quite significant for a single sink.
00:18:14
Ron
One aspect that I have seen is is very underappreciated in the in the water treatment for for the home ah is UV.
00:18:25
Ron
So you mentioned UV and and this is specifically to manage bacterial ah contaminants, right? UV is not a physical filter. It's not something that will block sediment. It's not something that will catch metals, but it's something that sterilizes the water.
00:18:39
Ron
It uses really high intensity UV radiation that targets anything with DNA in in the water. So that any virus, any pathogen, any bacteria, anything at all that has DNA, anything biology, it will destroy the DNA, deactivate that that cell and prevent it from growing in your pipes, prevent it from growing in your body and creating infections and essentially just sterilizing the water.
00:19:05
Ron
ah Some people think that when they do like an ah RO, ah it's a very tight membrane, it catches everything, even down to the salts. Technically, it also catches the bacteria and they might think to themselves, okay, I'm dealing with my biology as well through an RO, which is true to a point.
00:19:22
Ron
But what we've seen a lot with the testing that we've been doing and what a lot of other scientists have been pointing out is that um filters, physical filters are actually a great site of growth for bacteria.
00:19:34
Ron
So bacteria might get caught in a filter. It doesn't die in that filter. In fact, it begins to grow on that filter. So one, it actually reduces the filter lifetime. But then two, over time, it becomes a greater risk. So when we do our tests, we love to test after an RO under the sink system that hasn't been maintained when it's supposed to.
00:19:54
Ron
What we find is that the most dangerous bacteria and at the the highest concentrations of bacteria are found after a filter, not from the tap water itself. This is a part of education I really want to scream to the world because, again, most people are using filters, but they have a Brita picture that they haven't changed the filter in more than 12 months.
00:20:13
Ron
And now they're increasing the risk of getting an infection or having gastrointestinal problems because they're using what they think is supposed to help their water. Right. So they're trying to care for their health and they're actually drinking water that can actually harm them more than just the regular tap water.
00:20:29
Ron
So this is something people I really, really believe need to know. And that's why I think that UV is an essential aspect of any type of filtration that you do. UV before these filters sterilizes the water, prevents that bacteria from growing on the filters.
00:20:44
Ron
And it's really the only solution next to chlorine that is meant to disinfect. Every other solution, none of them actually kill the bacteria. So for biological contaminants, you really only have the choice of chlorine.
00:21:00
Ron
or UV. and And chlorine is the way that the government will will treat the municipal systems. But we also try to remove chlorine, right? When we take showers, people prefer to take showers without chlorine.
00:21:12
Ron
I'm sitting now in Miami. The chlorine ah content here is at least four times higher concentration than in New York. So when people come from the East Coast in New York and they travel to Miami, they notice the chlorine right away.
00:21:25
Ron
Their hair, their skin gets dry. They can smell it. ah People from Miami are used to it, so they don't really recognize it as much. but But it's true that it it ends up being an uphill battle. And so people will put carbon filters to remove the chlorine.
00:21:38
Ron
But what do they do? They remove the disinfectant. So we've seen so many cases where people put a carbon filter at the front of their house, an RO system under the sink, The carbon will remove all the chlorine and then the bacteria will build up in the RO under the sink without any chlorine to stop it from from growing.
00:21:56
Ron
this is And the studies show it, that this combination of a carbon before an RO is the worst thing you can do to increase the bacterial risks in your water.
00:22:09
Ron
Again, these are things that I didn't know about it until I started to do my research. I don't think the majority of people understand this, but yet they're buying these filters and they're putting it in in a way that actually really tremendously increases the risk of of being sick.
00:22:23
Ron
So this is something that that UV, I think, is ah is an essential aspect of any filtration. yeah There's always gonna be some level of bacteria in the water. We should always be considering how we're dealing with that.
00:22:37
Ron
And so what we've done at Clear specifically is that we were looking for the types of filters that we can put one filter for a whole building, basically when the city water enters the building,
00:22:48
Ron
And we looked at we looked at things like carbon filters, we looked at RO systems. The biggest issue in translating them to, let's say, a high rise is that those filters get so big so fast.
00:23:02
Ron
Like maybe for under the sink, you can get a nice carbon RO system. Maybe for at the point of entry of a house, it will cost a little bit more. The moment you're going for a medium rise building, 50 units, 100 units,
00:23:14
Ron
let alone two or three hundred units. Now your filters have to be, you have to build like a factory to the side of the building just to fit those filters. So this is why you don't see any high rises that have full building filtration solutions unless they've been developed ahead of time with that design in mind. And then they have a massive room with massive filters that take one cost a ton and take a lot to maintain.
00:23:41
Ron
But again, if people don't know what they're doing, even those buildings will start to create risks. The best example is the Kapinski, not the Kapitsky, sorry, the Epic Hotels in Miami and in New York wanted to provide purified water and filtration to the building. They installed big carbon filters at a huge cost.
00:24:01
Ron
But they removed the chlorine at the point of entry, which caused bacterial problems later on. And unfortunately, a couple of people died from Legionella. ah that This ended up in a massive lawsuit. It ended up in a huge problem.
00:24:14
Ron
And they actually had to to stop doing those filtration solutions. What we found is that really the best technology that we can provide to improve water quality for full buildings, it's not those really large carbon filters.
00:24:29
Ron
it's It's starting with the sterilization. Because you can provide a UV system, basically the one behind me here, this is an inline system, and it will sterilize at at industrial scale.
00:24:43
Ron
It will sterilize every drop of water entering the building. So what we did was when I was doing the research on what kind of technologies we can provide to improve water quality for whole buildings, we started to look at UV and we saw that these UV systems were being used already for all of our favorite beverages.
00:24:51
Green Healthy Places
Thank you.
00:25:01
Ron
Like this exact system has been used in Nestle factories, in Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Heineken, Fiji. All of these factories are already using these UV systems. So every time you open those bottles,
00:25:14
Ron
and you trust that there's no bacteria growing inside, you're really trusting this exact technology. Also biopharma, so even Pfizer is using it to sterilize their fluids during like in their factories.
00:25:31
Ron
And you know even places like the Hoover Dam is keeping itself clean from mollusks growing inside the pipes of the Hoover Dam using this exact UV technology. So UV has been around for more than 150 years. It's a very well understood technology.
00:25:45
Ron
um These systems that that we saw working in industry have been around for more than 20 years. And we looked at them, we said, why can't we bring this directly to where people are living?
00:25:56
Ron
I mean, why are we relying on our you know purified water to come in the plastic bottles? Why can't we bring it into every tap and every shower? So what we did at Clear is we did the translation.
00:26:07
Ron
We said, this is good enough for the industry for the past 20 years. this is This is good enough for our buildings. so and And so, yeah, we have these inline systems, super easy to install, flexible. We can do retrofits, we can do new developments.
00:26:21
Ron
It's at a very, very low cost for these high rises. And the system you see behind me, the six inch system, it can purify at the highest levels i up 2000 plus units high rise.
00:26:34
Ron
So it can, you know, the the the cost per unit for the system, it's a single system, single installation, single point of service, but you're now sterilizing the water coming into every single shower, every single sink, every single fountain, decorative water fountain, the drinking water fountain in the gym.
00:26:53
Ron
ah every drop of water, and it even protects the pipes because those pipes are now, you know, would normally be building biofilms. Now you're sterilizing that water. Those pipes are going last longer. That's a circulatory system of the building.
00:27:06
Ron
It reduces corrosion based on that. So overall, you're protecting for the long term, you're increasing the resiliency of the building itself while providing sterilized water into every single tap and shower using a system that's been around in the industry for 20 years.
00:27:21
Ron
and a system that will last there for more than 30. In my mind, ah this is the kind of stuff that should be standard infrastructure. I think that this is just should be expectation that we have sterilized water coming into our units.
00:27:32
Green Healthy Places
Does the product flex in any way according to whether it's ah implemented in, say, an affordable housing context or a high-end multifamily condo or a hotel, for example, or is the product a standard that's then applied in the same format to each type of real estate project?
00:27:49
Ron
we We do the same throughout. and And the reason why it works in affordable housing, for instance, is because again, it's a single point of service, single installation, it's the same machine, no matter the size of that building.
00:28:01
Ron
And so for the larger high rises, the denser high rises, it becomes increasingly cost effective to provide it. And in fact, it becomes a rounding error compared to the actual operational expenses of of these kinds of buildings. so So it is the most affordable way to improve water quality in a building.
00:28:19
Ron
And it also is an incredibly effective way.
00:28:21
Green Healthy Places
Thank
00:28:22
Ron
So, you know, there's this, if you wanted to provide a solution at every point of use and every sink in every shower, the cost of that will scale with every unit. And here by providing a centralized solution, not only are you providing a solution for every shower and and and faucet, you're also protecting the pipes and you're doing that from a single system with a single point of service. You don't have to enter anybody's units.
00:28:45
Ron
it just makes the most sense. So we call it the most sensible whole building water quality solution. and And it's the most effective and affordable way to do it. So it it now opens up the ability to improve water quality, not just in the luxury high rises who can maybe afford it the most,
00:29:03
Ron
but also in the affordable housing complexes that need it the most. And so, you know, this is this is what I really care about to see, you know, we're we're providing again to all levels of society, a solution on water quality and protecting the health of of everybody. It shouldn't just be a privilege, you know, improved water quality should be something that all levels of society should be expecting.
00:29:26
Ron
And we should be doing our best to provide those solutions to everyone. So that that's that's what I care about the most. So it wasn't just about developing the best, most expensive you know water treatment that just you know will fit in the luxury resorts and the luxury high rises.
00:29:45
Ron
It was about providing the most sensible, effective and affordable solution that can be generalized into all forms of real estate.
00:29:53
Green Healthy Places
So it's one small but hugely important detail that goes into making ah healthy building.
00:30:01
Ron
Exactly.
00:30:01
Green Healthy Places
You're involved both in the real estate game, with your family, with projects that you have, and then
Pioneering Healthy Buildings with Clear Inc.
00:30:06
Green Healthy Places
with clearing. So how is that connection between the world of a sort of micro component within a larger context of a healthy building and your bigger vision for developing a healthy building concept?
00:30:21
Ron
Yeah, so we have been doing real estate for several decades and and our real estate has focused a lot on hospitality, hotels and resorts, mostly around Ontario and Canada.
00:30:32
Ron
um And we've been expanding our our real estate into Miami as well. ah We know that it's you know what the market cares about. And I think that for a long time, ESG, understanding that you live in a sustainable building, accessing all the incentives related to providing sustainability.
00:30:49
Ron
This was a very important aspect of the past 10, 15 years in real estate. ah We're seeing the next trend, which is you know a building is not just a concrete envelope that consumes energy.
00:31:02
Ron
Building is where people live. and are spending 90% of their time in. right So the next step is to really consider how are we providing to real estate, to the market, a higher quality product that goes beyond just the aesthetics of a building, like aesthetic amenities or you know recreational amenities. It's nice to get a pickleball court. It's nice to get a movie theater.
00:31:25
Ron
Some people will use that some of the time, but something like you know the environmental quality of the building, the water quality, right? That's everybody is using in that building every single day, all the time, right? You can't get away from using the water, from using the air in the building, right?
00:31:41
Ron
So a focus on the foundations of what it means to be inside of a building. Imagine your building is actually promoting your longevity, it's promoting your wellness, it's promoting your health.
00:31:52
Ron
This is now something that in the past five years, especially since the pandemic, this is something that the awareness for and the and the desire for has been growing ah tremendously.
00:32:04
Ron
and And so, you know, i this is something that I think is really the the next big thing in real estate in general. And and we started to you know, we're not just talking about it like we're we're putting our own money and investment into it.
00:32:19
Ron
So I'll give you one example that we did is here in Miami downtown. We had we took an office space that was struggled to lease for five years ever since the pandemic.
00:32:31
Ron
and We took the office space, we renovated it, we added water quality amenity air quality amenities, we added you know relaxation rooms, we added you know a lot of aspects that make it into a health and wellness concept, and we branded it as a clear space. A clear space is what we call it.
00:32:48
Ron
ah Since the renovations and the and the branding, i less than ah five months later we were fully leased uh and we got you know tenants a very specific type of tenant that uh you know is a bit of a younger type uh you know we have one of the subsidiaries of live nation one of the leading event coordinators in north america here they took a whole floor we have a med spa here we have uh you know a designer brand here.
00:33:16
Ron
So we have like a very, very interesting type of clientele that we had attracted using this healthy concept. And we have, you know, Clear Ink's office in here as well. And definitely, you won't see a water bottle around here. We have, even though Miami doesn't have the best water, this whole building has our water quality solution.
00:33:35
Ron
And we have a dispenser that provides cold and hot water purified at the sinks. So we're very happy with the water quality here. When I'm in other offices here in in Miami, I'm not gonna touch the water there. And and you know I know that it's coming from the tap.
00:33:52
Ron
Without providing that kind of water quality solution, I would be bringing bottles every single day, or I would go parched and I just wouldn't drink, which is not good for my productivity or my mood or my health.
00:34:03
Ron
So in general, I think we've shown already as with with our own case study that a healthy office is something that we'll lease. And then taking it to the next level, we have we have a land here that we're about to develop in downtown Miami, where we're looking at creating a clear residence brand. So this is you know a' a condo building that we're going to produce here, 600 odd units.
00:34:27
Ron
and And we're trying to integrate everything that the market has learned in the past 10 to 15 years about ah how to provide healthy spaces, including down to the materials that we're using in the building, the water quality, the air quality, the acoustic quality, the thermal quality.
00:34:42
Ron
You know, it's not enough just to provide ESG solutions, which are great. We want to make sure that the experience inside the building is promoting your health, your longevity, your wellness,
00:34:55
Ron
your state of mind, um and all of that comes into what a healthy building should be. And so we're we've put together a very innovative board to help us to build out this concept.
00:35:06
Ron
We have about 12 different experts from different parts of a healthy building, including architects, building scientists, people that have worked in the industries and and scientists.
00:35:19
Ron
We've put them together and and we're working on not just providing a healthy building concept in general, we're we're doing that within the limitations of we want a concept that we can apply everywhere.
00:35:32
Ron
right So we don't want the concept that's going to cost a tremendous amount and be difficult to maintain and difficult to service. We're talking about a concept that we can actually start to bring into any type of buildings, not just luxury buildings, but also general developments and even like a lower lower income developments as well.
00:35:51
Ron
um so we're and And we believe now that the technology has gotten to a point where it is actually feasible to to do massive changes to a building's health without having to to spend a crazy amount of money and and therefore it's only available for luxury developments.
00:36:11
Ron
So we're really trying to generalize the concept and I think that this is with something like this, a prototype building like this, like we're gonna show it off to the world, we're gonna show we did it at a and you know without having to to to spend too much.
00:36:24
Ron
And then you know we'll we'll have like studies done to show health outcomes compared to other buildings of its type. and And we're really hoping that that's gonna help to influence other developers to jump into that.
00:36:38
Ron
I hope that they see that this sells, that this is what the market wants. People want higher quality housing. People want ones that affect their wellness and their health. um and uh and that it's doable and feasible without having to spend crazy amounts of money so yeah we're very excited about the development
00:36:55
Green Healthy Places
um I love it. You're you' are literally putting your money where your mouth is. it's ah You're on the front line and you're pushing the industry forward.
00:36:59
Ron
yeah sir
00:37:03
Green Healthy Places
that's It's great to see. I'll be really interested to follow and and keep track of of your progress. I wish you every success. Thank you for your time.
00:37:10
Ron
oh
00:37:10
Green Healthy Places
How can people follow along? What's the best? Are you more about LinkedIn? you on the socials? More from website updates? How do you keep in touch with the world?
00:37:18
Ron
Yeah, definitely you definitely find us on LinkedIn, Clear Inc. i Also go to our website, clear.inc. And then get in touch with me if you want to talk. Anybody that's pushing this along, healthy buildings, water quality, you know I'm willing to work with absolutely anybody on those movements. And I'm very passionate about it. So I really invite anybody that's also passionate in any aspect that they're doing to reach out to me.
00:37:45
Ron
And you can find my information on the website and the LinkedIn.
00:37:49
Green Healthy Places
Very cool. All right. Thanks again.
00:37:51
Ron
Thanks so much, man.