Locally-produced product uses bacteria to "eat" contaminants

THUNDER BAY — Two Thunder Bay women have found a niche in the marketplace with a product that uses microorganisms to get rid of pollutants at contaminated sites.

BioNorth Solutions manufactures and markets spill kits that contain naturally occurring bacteria which can bio-degrade a wide variety of hydrocarbons.

President Amber Kivisto says she and her partner, Miranda Lock, started the company four years ago after they met while each was working on a PhD in environmental biotechnology.

"There's no jobs in environmental biotechnology, especially in this area, so that's how the company came to be," Kivisto told Tbnewswatch in an interview Monday.

"Our soil and gravel oil spill kit, to our knowledge, is the only microbial commercial spill kit that's developed in Canada. It's developed from bacteria that are derived from the Thunder Bay area primarily, so (unlike similar products produced in the U.S.) they are a lot hardier and they are able to withstand our climate," she said.

"They are hydrocarbon-degrading, so essentially they eat oil, gas, diesel, and they turn it into carbon dioxide and water," Kivisto explained.

The bacteria are grown in the company's fully-equipped microbiology laboratory.

"Miranda, who's our chief scientific officer, developed a process that's proprietary, and makes the microbes work to the best possible standards," she said. "We grow them every day."

In applying the bacteria, Kivisto said, it's simply a matter of putting the material on the ground, raking it in, and adding some water. "The microbes then get to work eating," she said, and remediation within environmental standards is usually achieved within three months.

According to Kivisto, the traditional method requires digging up the ground where a spill has occurred, and trucking the soil to a landfill.

BioNorth's product has the Ontario Ministry of the Environment's environmental compliance approval.

The company received some Northern Ontario Heritage Fund support including $48,000 to help mass-produce its kits, but Kivisto said it is starting to become self-sufficient.

"It took a lot of education to promote our product to customers, because it's relatively new, especially in the northwest, this whole concept of bioremediation," she said.

The product has a wide range of potential customers, Kivisto said. "Anybody that uses any amounts of gas, diesel or oil. So the mining sector, forestry sector, different companies with fleets of equipment, such as municipalities."

Marketing began at the beginning of 2017 with an initial focus on northwestern Ontario, but is now being extended to northeastern Ontario and Manitoba. Southern Ontario and nearby states such as Minnesota are being eyed for future expansion.

The company, which employs six people in peak sales months, also has other environmentally-friendly products. Its consulting arm uses algae for wastewater cleaning and other purposes, and the company is looking to develop a new product that uses fungi and bacteria to promote plant growth.