A metro Orlando environmental tech firm won a 2023 Edison Award, which honors excellence in new product and service development, marketing, human-centered design and innovation.
Altamonte Springs-based ecoSPEARS won a bronze in the category of Sustainability – Green Remediation. It is the third time the company has won an Edison Award, with a silver in the Clean Water category in 2021 and a gold in the Environmental Impact Solutions category in 2020.
Awards were given to 153 companies at the 36th annual Edison Awards event, which was held in Fort Myers on April 19-21. The Edison Awards, inspired by American inventor and businessman Thomas A. Edison, were established in 1987.
EcoSPEARS' technology that won — called ecoĀINA — is a mobile system that can eliminate toxic environmental contaminants, including perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB). The technology can clean water and soil to help remediate toxic sites that are contaminated.
“ecoSPEARS stands out among the best new products and services launched in their category,” said Frank Bonafilia, executive director of the Edison Awards, in a prepared statement.
The PCBs and PFAS are known as forever chemicals and have been linked to negative health conditions from long-term exposure. “One of the No. 1 sources of exposure (to PFAS) is drinking water, but also our food,” said Carmen Messerlian, a professor of reproductive environmental epidemiology at Harvard's T.H. Chan School of Public Health, in a prepared statement.
EcoSPEARS was an Orlando Inno 2022 Fire Awards honoree and CEO Sergie Albino was one of Orlando Business Journal's CEOs of the Year in 2021.
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