Kickstart: Water is a sustainable investing opportunity

It seems that there's always a need for more spending on infrastructure. Roads and bridges get the most attention, but what about drinking water?

No surprise, our water mains are falling apart and in desperate need of investment.

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. utilities will need to spend up to $200 billion on water systems over the next 20 years to upgrade transmission and distribution systems.

The problem prompted a rare mention of plastics last week from our sister publication Pensions & Investments. It quoted investment executives including Alex Loucopoulos, a partner at Sciens Capital Management LLC, in a story about how water infrastructure offers a promising, and sustainable, investment opportunity.

"There's no surprise in the U.S. that the infrastructure is aging," Loucopoulos said. "The water infrastructure is even more aging because fewer people, especially politicians, have paid as much attention to water infrastructure because oftentimes you can't see it. … It's not a bridge (or) airport. It's underground pipes and sewage."

One surprising plastics angle: the need to deal with microplastics in drinking water.

"The overarching goal of our water strategy is to back the companies that stand to benefit from the global need to improve the efficiency, quality and resilience of our global water networks," said Louis Veilleux, co-lead manager of the Pictet-Water Fund. "These water challenges include the (roughly) 2.2 billion people without access to safe drinking water today, the rapid rise in urbanization bringing 1.5 million people into urban areas each week and straining municipal water supply, and the alarming rise in contaminants such as microplastics within our existing water systems. These will all require massive investment to overcome and should — we believe — drive an addressable market opportunity that will grow well ahead of GDP for decades to come."

We've noted recently that plastics pipe sales are strong. Is infrastructure spending for real in 2023?

When you're in the news business, Earth Day is when you get dozens of pitches to do stories related to the environment. And when I say dozens, I'm probably underestimating the actual volume.

Most of the emails start like this: "If you're planning any coverage for Earth Day…"

As you can imagine, a lot of them are about replacements for plastics, or tips for using less plastic, or plastics and environmental justice, or plastics and ocean pollution. Topics that we see every day, not once a year. I also get lots of offers to interview people who know less about plastics issues than our own reporters.

I wonder sometimes if we should take the opportunity on Earth Day to pitch TV stations to interview our editors. It may be a good idea, if we had the time.

Meantime, I'm looking forward to April 23.

And if you missed it, the Biden White House and Environmental Protection Agency stole the biggest Earth Day headline this year, with the release of a draft strategy to reduce plastics pollution. Steve Toloken covered the news, got industry reaction and talked with the White House's first senior director of chemical safety and plastic pollution.

June is a great time to visit Erie, Pa. There's Presque Isle State Park, Waldameer amusement park, and Penn State Behrend's Innovation and Emerging Plastics Technologies Conference.

Brad Johnson, lecturer in engineering and conference chair, is planning the conference now, which typically draws 200 plastics professionals from 40-plus companies.

Attendees hear presentations by industry experts and take part in hands-on tutorials. Many of the tutorials are held in the college's 10,500-square-foot plastics processing lab, the largest, most comprehensive plastics training lab in the country.

Last year I had the honor of being a keynote speaker. I recommend this event, plus it's always nice to have a reason to visit Erie in the summer.