Pollution Control

by Debra Fiakas, CFA A reserve split is in the works to keep shares of Babcock & Wilcox Enterprises(B&W) listed under the symbol BW on the NYSE.  The stock price of this storied environmental engineering had slipped below the Exchange’s minimum price requirements.  Ten shares will be melded into one beginning July 23, 2019. Reverse merger math alone will not solve B&W’s problems.  One hundred and fifty two years in business, B&W has been providing environmental technologies and services for energy and industrial customers since the company’s first boiler was sold right after the American Civil War.  The company boasts that Thomas Edison was one of...

It is an irony that surrounded by the flood waters of Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, a drink of fresh, clean water may be hard to come by.  Of course, the all three levels of government make plans for stockpiling and deploying emergency bottled water well ahead of natural disasters.  Yet in the hours and days following the worst of both the recent storms, the media was filled with stories of people who lacked water. What if water could be made manufactured?  If such a technology existed, what a boon it might be to thirsty storm victims. Ambient Water Corporation (AWGI:  OTC/PK) has...

By Tom Konrad, Ph.D., CFA You don’t have to own mining companies to benefit from rising metals prices. This is a roundup of first quarter earnings notes shared with my Patreon supporters over the last week. Waste to energy operator Covanta and specialty metals recycler Umicore are both benefiting from skyrocketing metals prices. Just as renewable energy and energy efficiency stocks have long shown that investors don’t have to own fossil fuel companies to benefit from rising prices of fossil fuels, recyclers like Covanta and Umicore are showing that you don’t have to own environmentally damaging mining companies to benefit from rising...

After the worst of the wind and rain had died down from Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, and people began making their way back home, it became apparent that citizens of Texas and Florida would have more worries.  The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency disclosed that at least thirteen toxic waste sites in Texas were flooded and damaged by Hurricane Harvey and another forty-one Superfund sites were negatively affected.  Legacy contamination includes lead, arsenic, polychlorinated biphenyls, benzene and other carcinogenic compounds from historic industrial processes.  After Hurricane Irma over six million gallons of wastewater reportedly flowed out to the coast and...

by Debra Fiakas, CFA Last week waste water treatment developer OriginClear (OCLN:  OTC/QB) announced pilot projects for rental of its commercial water systems for pool cleaning.  The company has several patents to its credit, protecting its innovations.   OriginClear has developed a proprietary catalytic process to clean up solids from waste water as well as an oxidation technology to eliminate microtoxins in water.  Unfortunately, the company has struggled to extract value from its efforts.  OriginClear has yet to report profits.  Indeed in the most recently reported fiscal year ending December 2019, revenue of $3.588 million only barely covered cost of goods of $3.217 million, let alone operating expenses that...

Earlier this week Bion Environmental Technologies (BNET) received approval of a patent for its proprietary ammonia recovery process.  Bion’s technology converts livestock wastes into ammonium bicarbonate.  Patent protection in the U.S. paves the way for Bion to deliver an environmentally friendly chemical to the market at attractive profit margins. Ammonium bicarbonate is used for a variety of purposes from leavening to crop additives.   It is the fertilizer market that has caught Bion’s attention.  The company intends to ‘close the loop’ for the agricultural sector by helping livestock producers economically dispose of waste and then delivering a fertilizer for food crops that qualifies as organic. It is an attractive...