PFAS Alternatives and Remediation Technologies: Emerging Solutions and Opportunities

Kristin Marshall: Welcome to the webinar, PFAS Alternatives and Remediation Technologies, Emerging Solutions and Opportunities. My name is Kristin Marshall, Associate Research Director here at Lux, and I will be moderating today’s session. Presenting today are my colleagues Abhirab Basu, Senior Analyst, and Tiffany Hua, Analyst here at Lux Research. Throughout the webinar, you can type any questions you have in the questions box on your screen. Time permitting, we will answer all the questions that we can. If your question does not get answered, please do not hesitate to email it to questions at luxresearchinc.com and we will respond. If at any point you experience any technical difficulties, such as a frozen screen, simply refresh your browser and check that your internet connection is strong. Before we start the webinar, a quick word about who we are. Lux Research helps organizations make more confident innovation decisions about what matters next. As an independent research and advisory firm, we work with many of the world’s leading companies to identify emerging opportunities, evaluate technologies, and make high-impact innovation decisions. Our scientists, engineers, analysts, and industry experts combine original research and methodologies with practical decision frameworks to help organizations separate signal from noise. Every day, we help clients answer three questions: Where should we focus innovation efforts? Which technologies deserve investment? And which partners can accelerate innovation? Today’s webinar is an opportunity to share some of that thinking with you. Now, without further ado, let’s jump into the discussion. Over to you, Abhirabh and Tiffany.

Abhirabh Basu: Thank you, Kristin. Every generation has had its wonder material, something that is a breakthrough at the time. If you walk into a building site in the 1950s, asbestos was everywhere. It didn’t burn. It insulated heat. It was cheap, durable, and very easy to incorporate in almost everything from our homes to factories, even consumer products. At the time, asbestos wasn’t controversial. It solved problems other materials couldn’t, enabling construction and industrial growth. The downside of asbestos didn’t appear until decades later, when it was deeply embedded in everyday life, in infrastructure, and supply chains, creating undeniable health risks. Regulations didn’t just have us phase it out, but triggered massive cleanup costs, creating liabilities and long-term consequences to communities and organizations. Similar to asbestos, PFAS chemicals deliver exceptional performance: strong chemical resistance, durability, low friction, and excellent water repellency—properties that few other chemistries can match individually. Just like asbestos, the challenge was not its performance, but its persistence. PFAS does not break down easily; it accumulates in the environment. And the impacts of PFAS only became clearer years after its widespread use. So today, after billion-dollar settlements that have set a clear precedent, contamination isn’t just a reputational issue anymore. It’s a financial one for organizations. And the liability doesn’t just stop at companies that manufacture the chemistry. It flows downstream, affecting brand owners, manufacturers, utilities, and anyone actually connected within the value chain itself. At the same time, not all PFAS use is equal. Industries that depend on PFAS for extreme performance are pushing back on blanket bans, arguing for essential use exemptions when no viable alternative exists today. So we’re clearly at an inflection point where regulators, corporations, and innovators have to decide whether they need to be proactive in addressing the challenges PFAS poses or face the consequence of acting too late. This webinar is about what adapting early or acting early actually looks like. We’re going to cover the implications of PFAS policy across different regions. We will discuss future alternative materials for PFAS chemicals and manufacturers. And finally, we will look at remediation of legacy PFAS in water and wastewater. I’ll now pass it on to my colleague, Tiffany Hua, to talk about the broader regulatory impact and the alternatives to PFAS materials.

Tiffany Hua: Thank you, Abhirabh. So just an overview of PFAS regulations. Regulatory pressure on PFAS has been building up for decades, but it did not accelerate until about five to seven years ago. We first saw the Stockholm Convention in 2019 add PFOA to its growing list of regulated PFAS. We saw this happen again in 2021 and again a few years later. Another major turning point came in 2023 when five European countries proposed a broad EU restriction broadly covering PFAS across industries. This marks a major expansion in the scope and ambition of PFAS policy. We have seen similar developments in the U.S. In 2024, we saw the EPA set drinking water limits of just four parts per trillion for PFOA and PFOS. More recently, we have also seen revisions that ease some of those restrictions. So specifically in 2025, we saw the EU revise certain PFAS restrictions in areas where it’s extremely hard to find replacements and alternatives, such as, let’s say, the energy industry. In May 2026, the EPA revised some federal limits for several PFAS and extended the compliance deadline to 2031. Over the past five years of PFAS regulation, we have seen policymakers work toward a balance, and that process is still ongoing. And just to kind of understand how we view PFAS regulations, let’s break it down into four levels of PFAS elimination. And then we’ll look at regionally how we are seeing regulations move forward. We see regulations acting at four levels: manufacturing, products, public health, and the environment. First, at the manufacturing level, this is where regulators are focused on where PFAS is being used during production and exactly how much is being released through effluent. The second level is at the product. These regulations look at how much PFAS is actually in the finished product, so in concentrations of, let’s say, 25 parts per billion or something equivalent. So at the manufacturing and product level, this is where we look at alternative replacements. I’ll revisit this a little bit later, but some examples are alternatives in packaging, coatings, polymers, lubricants, heat transfer fluids. The third level is public health. So these regulations look at specifically drinking water limits. So looking at four parts per trillion, even lower concentrations and how to reduce that in drinking water and in the environment. The fourth is environmental regulation in other areas like waterways, soil, other contaminated environments. And this is where we’re really looking at government grants and funding that support remediation of, let’s say, firefighting foams. And so for public health and environmental levels, this is where we look at remediation solutions, which Abhirab will discuss later on, including measurement, removal, and destruction. So using these four levels of PFAS elimination, we’re going to take this framework and help organize the rest of this presentation. First, looking at regionally where we see PFAS regulations move forward. Specifically, we looked at four areas: the global landscape, including the Stockholm Convention; the U.S.; the EU; and Asia-Pacific. And specifically in the U.S., this is where we see the strongest activity when we look at the regulatory levels at product. This is where we see categories like food packaging, cosmetics, and textiles really ramp up at the state level. And we actually recently downgraded our public health impact in the U.S. given that revision that we saw earlier from the EPA extending to 2031 and rescinding a few limits for some shorter-chain PFAS. In contrast, in the EU, this is where we’re seeing the impact really remain strong in manufacturing and product, particularly because of that blanket ban that we’ve mentioned before proposed in 2023. Now we are seeing revisions occur here, looking at specific applications such as energy or manufacturing and some automotive applications that really still have not found an alternative. So we’ll visit that later. We’re still seeing strong impacts there despite these revisions. And in Asia Pacific, this is where regulatory activity is really aligned mostly with the global standards set by the Stockholm Convention. As a result, the impacts are somewhat more moderate. Now, all of these impacts are not uniform. There are going to be certain regions where remediation may be more of an opportunity, whereas finding alternatives may be more of an opportunity, let’s say, in regions like the EU. So we’ll go over that in this presentation. So first up is looking at alternatives. So the question here is, what do you actually do if, let’s say, you’re a developer and you have PFAS in your product or process? PFAS is embedded in a wide range of applications. It’s embedded in consumer products such as cosmetics, food packaging, cookware, all the way down to industrial settings such as aerospace components, fluoropolymer seals, batteries, and fuel cells. And this range matters because the substitution can be very different depending on if you’re looking at just water repellency or chemical resistance and thermal resistance. It’s going to depend all on what properties you’re looking for. An additional point is regulations like the EU PFAS restriction are organized by application. We categorize these applications according to performance requirements and exposure risk. And so today there is no catch-all PFAS alternative. When we look at regulations, we see three pathways moving forward. One is a full ban on more consumer-facing applications. We see phase-outs for applications that look more into the industrial applications, but they potentially can’t be controlled otherwise. And there are also controlled scenarios under the revisions that we’ve mentioned previously, where take-back programs and recycling allow continued use under the EU proposal. So we’ll take a look at three examples of those three scenarios of a full ban, looking at food-packaging barrier coatings, looking at a phaseout for lubricants, and looking at heat transfer fluids as a potential controlled regulatory pathway. So the first scenario we look at is a full ban scenario. For example, barrier coatings for paper packaging. This is an area that has already been phased out and we’re already seeing alternatives being proposed and on the market. And this has been kind of generating momentum for a couple of years now. Specifically, we’ve seen mentions of relevant PFASs under the Stockholm Convention. In the U.S., we’ve seen PFAS grease barriers be banned in 2024. And in Europe, we’ve seen this ban also. And so for food packaging, the regulatory pressure is very high here, and this is where we’re seeing not only PFAS-free options move into the market, but also the requirements of recycling. And so it’s not just necessary to be PFAS-free, but also it’s necessary to be recyclable and have the performance requirements for long shelf life, and this is where we’re seeing the market move forward. And when we look at solutions, this is where we’re still moving forward in this direction for PFAS-free barrier solutions, recyclability, and then trying to move forward to longer-term use or shelf life. And so among these solutions, we see natural biopolymers like polysaccharides or protein coatings. And they can provide good grease resistance, but they’re sensitive to moisture, which makes long-term stability a challenge. PHAs are another option. They deliver both water and grease resistance, but performance tends to drop under high heat and humidity. And so they’re also a little bit more difficult to kind of match existing solutions. But there are other solutions such as integrated solutions that use chemical treatments, additives that can also impart water and grease resistance, and then also cellulosic and lignin formulations into that paper packaging can also improve properties by tightening that fiber bonding and reducing porosity. So among these, there are solutions that can work for short-term single-use paper packaging. The challenge comes when combining all of that for long-term stability, which is something where we’re still relying on plastic laminates and, let’s say, metal-based packaging. But an example that we’re seeing move forward is from a company called Xampla. So this is a company that has developed Morro, which is a PFAS-free protein-based coating. And they have partnered in 2024 with Huhtamaki to coat food service containers using these protein-based coatings. And they’re avoiding the use of plastic lamination so that they can be in line with the EU’s recyclability requirements. And so they’ve developed this where it can also be suitable for hot fill conditions and higher humidities for about six months or so. They’re not quite suitable for longer shelf life, but this is where for maintaining use in single-use packaging, it’s suitable. And so the takeaway here is that they’ve hit a couple of marks. They’re moving towards longer use. They’re recyclable, and also, of course, they have to be PFAS-free. But in general, there are emerging solutions that are already on the market aside from plastic lamination that are options here. Moving on to a phase-out regulatory pathway would be in lubricants. When we look at lubricants, there’s a wide range of types of lubricants from, let’s say, consumer-facing applications towards industrial performance. And so lubricants kind of stretch that middle ground of where we see phase out really fit in. For, let’s say, the high-performance PFPE-based oils or PTFE additives added to lubricants, this is where they do offer excellent temperature resistance, chemical resistance, and durability, but that really is only used in crucial or extreme applications where you really need it. For applications such as bicycle chains or home appliances, however, they are not as necessary because alternatives are already available. And so the focus here should not be on targeting, let’s say, the critical 1% or 10% of applications that need PTFE or PFPE lubricants, but also trying to switch away from non-PFAS formulations for the majority of lubricant applications. And there are already alternatives that exist. For example, silicone oils and synthetic hydrocarbon oils, including polyalphaolefin oils, they’re already established options and they can work across a wide range of temperature ranges and conditions. Of course, they’re not going to be as suitable in terms of performance as PFPE, in terms of durability in extreme conditions, but there are solutions that are pushing this, including some of the micropowders and additives, ionic liquids that are pushing the bounds for what we see for high-performance lubricants. But at the end of the day, a lot of the PFAS-free lubricants are good enough for many of the applications. The biggest area that we could see more work on is that extreme performance use cases that still need innovation. And an example of innovation that we’re seeing in the space is from Fuchs. So, Fuchs is a lubricants company, and they are actually developing PFAS-free lubricants using next-generation additives. So, for example, molybdenum disulfide, those are additives that can increase the lubricity of the lubricant. And so, in 2024, Fuchs developed a RENOLIT 460 P lubricant. And it’s based on a PAO, a poly-alpha olefin oil thickened with lithium soaps and some of these next-generation additives that I mentioned. And they’re designed to work as well as PTFE-containing lubricants at low temperatures, so suitable for HVAC and freezing applications where it can reduce friction and prevent any oil separation. And so here’s where Fuchs has been able to develop this and replace even moderately higher performing applications. The issue still remains that high-temperature environments and high chemical environments will still need innovation in this space. And so this is where when we talk about phase out, we do see some applications, especially in consumer-facing or lower performing environments, be suitable for some of these non-PFAS solutions. But when we look at higher-need or high-performing applications, this is where some of the lubricants are still not going to be as high performing as what we need and innovation is still necessary. And our last scenario here where we want to paint what control looks like is going to be heat transfer fluids. This is going to be at the far end of the spectrum where there’s going to be a high-performance requirement where replacing PFAS might not be realistic at this point. So we have seen some phase outs of some companies such as 3M phasing out its Novec heat transfer fluids, but the remaining players in the space, they are still developing PFAS-based fluids. And this is where we’re also moving towards systems like two-phase immersion cooling systems, and they still rely heavily on fluorinated fluids, including HFCs and HFOs. And so by definition, they are PFAS. You know, we’re at this point where the majority of high-performance heat transfer fluids are PFAS-based. We haven’t quite seen a fully PFAS-free solution emerge. But if there were to be, it could be disruptive and pave the way for this space to move actually away from control towards phase out. But at this point, we’re still in the control phase. When we look at the alternatives, they do exist, but they are primarily for single-phase systems. So solutions such as silicone oils, bio-based fluids, mineral oils, they do exist, but the issue is at high temperatures, they can be susceptible to sediments or they aren’t very good at extremely high temperatures. And so this is where some of the fluorinated heat transfer fluids are much better for the two-phase immersion cooling and for long-term stability, where there’s still a gap in terms of alternatives today. There are some other ionic-liquid solutions that are being developed because of their thermal stability, low vapor pressure, but they are at a very early stage, expensive, and underdeveloped. And so for the most part today, two-phase immersion systems are still reliant on fluorinated heat transfer fluids. And just to illustrate that is an example of a recent development by Chemours. They developed Opteon 2P50, which specifically is focused on two-phase immersion cooling. And they’ve worked with a wide range of partners, LiquidStack, to build the system, but they’ve also worked with NTT Data and Samsung to pilot inside some of their centers. And so this fluid is still PFAS-based. It is potentially shorter-chain PFAS and really the value proposition is that it’s lower global warming potential. And so this shows where the market is today. There are solutions moving towards lower PFAS or shorter chain PFASs and lower global warming potential, but they have not yet eliminated fluorinated chemistries. For situations like this, this is where controlled scenarios where ensuring that these fluids are recycled, similar to, let’s say, some of our home appliances with some of these HFOs, this is going to be necessary to actually sustain or move forward in light of regulations that are emerging. And so that wraps up our section on alternatives, painting what a full ban, phaseout, and a controlled scenario would look like. I’m going to pass it over to Abhirab now. Before that, we’re going to take a look at this one last framework, which actually paints exactly what I just mentioned of full ban, phaseout, and control. I want to emphasize that you should think about it in terms of exposure risk and performance needs. As we mentioned for the consumer-facing applications, this is where a lot of them are going to be in contact with humans or the environment where the lower performance need and higher exposure risk necessitates a full ban. Whereas some of the applications I mentioned, such as industrial applications, that’s going to be phase out. And then as I mentioned with heat transfer fluids, that’s going to be high performance, low exposure risk, where there is potential for control scenarios. And now I will pass it over to Abhirab. Thank you, Abhirabh.

Abhirabh Basu: Yeah, excellent. Thanks, Tiffany. I’m going to transition away now from what Tiffany was talking about, which is the future of the PFAS space in terms of materials. But I’m going to talk about PFAS of the present and the past. And we’re going to talk about it through the topic of PFAS remediation. So the first thing to understand about remediation is that PFAS doesn’t show up in just one place or in the same concentration everywhere. At one end of the spectrum is drinking water. Here, PFAS typically shows up in low concentrations. We’re talking about parts per billion, even parts per trillion. The regulatory bar is pretty high here because of the direct exposure to humans. So treatment is driven by tightly regulated public health standards and requires defensible and reliable solutions that operate at scale. Then there are legacy plumes and their leachates—contamination left behind from historical use, specifically firefighting foams, landfill leachate disposal, et cetera. And finally, we have industrial effluents. These streams come directly from ongoing operations. So I’m talking about chemical plants, pulp and paper, metal finishing, textiles, wastewaters with PFAS concentrations, which can be orders of magnitude higher in the parts per thousand and at high volumes. The choice of remediation technology must align with the contamination source and the regulatory target that you’re trying to meet. So I’m going to be talking about a remediation stack here. So once you know where PFAS is coming from, the important thing is to measure how much PFAS you’re dealing with. So that first tool in your remediation stack should be detection and measurement. Today, regulatory compliance relies on accredited lab-based instruments: liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry. These incredibly powerful analytical tools serve as the gold standard for PFAS profiling, especially for low-concentration detection. But that precision comes at a cost: limited lab capacity, long turnaround times, testing costs that are routinely going into the hundreds of dollars per sample. As monitoring requirements expand, especially for municipal entry points and when you’re doing site mapping for remediation of an asset, those bottlenecks are only getting worse. So that pressure for timely, low-cost results is driving interest in faster and cheaper screening tools that are field-deployable. But there’s a catch. These new screening tools have fundamental trade-offs. They can tell you where PFAS is present, but often can’t reliably tell you how much PFAS there is. What’s the molecule? And what is the regulatory relevance? The result is a two-tier detection landscape today. Screening tools are most valuable in non-compliance operational use cases, helping operators decide where to sample, where to treat, and how the treatment system is performing. And then definitive profiling remains lab-based, which is slow and expensive. And unfortunately, today there are limited alternatives to provide that fast and reliable solution to highly sensitive PFAS sensing. Techniques like total organic fluorine, combustion ion chromatography, which are EPA-approved, can provide that bulk PFAS signal and the costs are coming down as compared to LC-MS. On the flip side, we’re seeing a small but growing list of providers qualifying field-deployable optical and electrochemical sensors that provide faster feedback during site assessment, water treatment pilots, although these detection companies and their tools remain at a very early stage. I’m going to show you one example of what a field-deployable technology looks like. Here’s the example of FredSense. They offer a PFAS field instrument that uses a functionalized polymer that, when in contact with PFAS molecules, triggers fluorescence, which you can measure using a fluorimetric device. However, its detection mechanism targets the carbon–fluorine backbone. It can’t necessarily differentiate individual species. Now, it has its own separate lab services, which it deploys for that. But for its field-deployed tools, it limits the applications to remediation projects or environmental monitoring rather than very tight, specific drinking water treatment mandates. That said, FredSense has found partners in engineering remediation consulting, water treatment players like Kurita Water. So you can engage a player like FredSense today or some of the other rapid detection tool providers if you want to establish that first-mover advantage in non-compliance field testing for a faster turnaround. For almost everything else, especially speciation chemistry at low concentrations, LC-MS and accredited labs are still your best bet. Now, once you know the PFAS levels you’re dealing with, the next part of the remediation stack is removal and concentration from water-based streams. PFAS removal is one of the most mature parts of that remediation stack. Most removal technologies were designed to help utilities meet drinking water limits, and thus shaped by regulations targeting only those long-chain legacy PFAS chemistries. They were not built to manage short-chain, high-strength, complex industrial waste streams that contain not just the PFAS chemistry, but oils, surfactants, other chemicals, salts that often overwhelm systems designed for municipal polishing. So innovators are trying to overcome these challenges of those first-generation removal and concentration technologies and improve PFAS concentration here. They’re now targeting industrial discharges where the biggest technical and performance gaps lie. This is where we are seeing incremental innovations, particularly around getting better concentration efficiency and modularity to deliver cost reductions. For drinking water, granular activated carbon, that’s going to be the workhorse for the industry. It’s been in operation for years for PFAS treatment. But it struggles with short-chain PFAS. So here we are seeing companies working on ion exchange resins, bio-based sorbents that drastically improve short-chain removal efficacy. For industrial effluents, membrane technologies, particularly reverse osmosis and nanofiltration, are playing a bigger role. They are effective across all PFAS types, but they come at a higher capital and energy cost. And they generate a secondary PFAS stream, which is your PFAS brine, that is often hard to manage. The more emergent category over here is foam fractionation, often in combination with a chemical additive that will help you capture even short-chain, ultra-short-chain PFAS chemistries. So the example that I’m going to use here is of a company developing a foam fractionation process, the Australian company EPOC Enviro, that’s doing a surface-activated foam fractionation process. Essentially, it’s bubbling air through PFAS-laden streams, where the hydrophobic tail adheres to the bubbles, concentrating PFAS into a foam up to 1,000-fold, making it slightly easier for downstream destruction. EPOC treats high-strength PFAS chains, but it’s now coupling the technology with cationic surfactants. Now, that helps you target the shorter-chain PFAS molecules. So the real innovation here isn’t just the removal. It’s the concentration that makes destruction feasible downstream. While SAF isn’t a novel technology, there’s a lot of competition in foam fractionation today. It could provide a launching pad, especially for chemical players developing new alternatives—sorry, new additives for short-chain, ultra-short-chain PFAS removal. So far, we’ve talked about detecting PFAS, removing it from water. But none of that eliminates the risk unless PFAS is permanently destroyed. And that brings me to the third tool in your remediation stack. PFAS destruction is still the least mature part of that stack, not because of a lack of ideas, but because regulations have yet to catch up, and there are technical barriers to overcome here. Today, there’s no formal regulatory definition of what qualifies as PFAS destruction. It is unclear what constitutes complete destruction. Do short-chain PFAS, precursors, or breakdown products like TFA count in that destruction definition? That creates risk not only for technology developers but end users alike. We’re seeing more and more chemical producers and end users demanding destruction certificates to mitigate future liability. As a result, incineration remains the default option, especially when you’re dealing with solid waste, spent GAC, ion exchange resins, maybe even biosolids. Incineration comes at a high cost. It also produces concerning byproducts, including fluorine emissions. And there’s growing scrutiny worldwide. Some places have outright bans on using incineration for PFAS-laden streams. So PFAS destruction isn’t solved today, but new approaches are gradually becoming more investable. And that’s where we are seeing the most opportunity. A lack of regulatory guidance has opened the door for alternative destruction pathways that promise to improve on incineration. Most innovation today falls into three or four buckets: UV-based reduction, electrochemical and plasma oxidation, and thermal approaches like supercritical water oxidation, hydrothermal alkaline treatment, and even high-temperature plasma. These approaches can achieve meaningful PFAS breakdown, but they work best at high concentrations and at small scales. Dilute streams are simply uneconomical to destroy directly. And this is why that upstream concentration step really matters. Scaling up a cost-effective destruction technology remains one of the most attractive opportunities in the PFAS landscape today, especially when we’re looking at industrial waste streams and defense-related applications. My final case study here is going to be about one of those destruction opportunities. I’m going to talk about a company called Claros Technologies. Claros builds and supplies photochemical systems that destroy PFAS in industrial wastewaters. It uses a combination of UV light and chemical reagents. The process is known as reductive defluorination, and that essentially is a pathway to offer higher destruction efficiency and complete PFAS mineralization. I want you to focus on that. That’s a rare combination compared to the other emerging destruction approaches we see. Claros recently raised funding and has demonstrated a sizable installation with the Japanese company Daikin. It’s targeting ultra-short-chain destruction within minutes. It’s now progressed into a full-scale industrial destruction deployment with Daikin. So if you’re dealing with high concentrations, we’re talking about parts per million, at a high throughput, a solution like Claros can be deployed today, and it will help you limit future liability. All right, so if you’ve been listening for that one technology that solves PFAS, both on the alternative side and remediation, you’re not going to find it. That’s exactly the point we’re trying to make in this webinar. Just like on the alternative side, PFAS remediation doesn’t have a single remediation problem. Its contamination source, concentration, and regulatory target determine which technologies you need to deploy and point to where the biggest gaps and opportunities lie today. The winners will integrate detection, separation, and destruction, not just optimize those in isolation. And that’s how you turn that liability into an opportunity today. So let me take a couple of minutes to summarize the key takeaways from the remediation segment of our presentation. It’s important to measure what you’re treating. Compliance-driven testing might be constrained today. You need more sensitive, faster screening tools to close that gap. You’re likely to see a lot more investment activity in that space. Removal and concentration is mature, but there are innovation gaps specifically in high industrial waste streams, high solid waste streams, and also trying to minimize that secondary waste generation. And finally, destruction, 100% destruction, will limit future liability. If you are going to continue producing these chemicals and materials in the U.S. or the EU, expect end-of-life handling costs to increase and drive you toward new destruction opportunities. So I’m going to pass it back to Tiffany to wrap up our webinar and leave you with a few key takeaways.

Tiffany Hua: Thanks, Abhirabh. So after looking at both alternatives and remediation, the question here is where do you act first? So the first step that we’d say is to prepare by mapping out the regulatory risks in your portfolios and conducting a scenario analysis. So I mentioned earlier in the presentation those regulatory pathways of full ban, phaseout, and controlled pathways. Can your portfolio withstand each of those scenarios? So try to understand that through the multiple regions where you do business and try to understand where regulatory risks require action. Second, if you do produce products or your portfolio contains PFAS, make sure to substitute if that exposure risk is high. And if it is high and important for, let’s say, industries such as automotive or aerospace where it’s very hard to substitute, lean into stewardship and look at how to actually take action in a controlled environment, whether that’s recycling or take-back programs, and try to understand the next course of action there. Third, consider investing in PFAS. As Abhirab has mentioned, investing in PFAS remediation really hedges against future litigation. Even when PFAS was legal at the time, companies have still faced a lot of retroactive liability for issues with environmental contamination. And so removal and destruction technologies are therefore important tools for mitigating that long-term risk. And the broader takeaway here is that PFAS risk requires action, spanning the full lifecycle, understanding if it’s in your portfolio, how to replace or control it, and within the environment, trying to understand remediation pathways moving forward. And with that, we come to the end of the presentation. If you’re interested in learning more, please take a look at our full report on the member site. And thank you for tuning in. Pass back over to Kristin.

Kristin Marshall: Great. Thank you so much, Abhirabh and Tiffany. We will now be taking questions from the audience. So if you haven’t already, you can type your questions into the question box on the screen. We’re a little bit short on time today. So if we don’t get to your questions, someone from Lux will be in touch after the webinar. Okay, so this first question, Tiff, this is something that you mentioned in your presentation. Could you elaborate a little bit more about some of the approaches that you’re seeing for PFAS take-back, recycling, and management?

Tiffany Hua: Yeah, so there are current regulatory initiatives that account for PFAS. For example, consider batteries. In the EU, there are currently regulations governing battery recycling. That also includes the control of PFAS. One approach is to look for alternatives while also trying to figure out ways to make them easier to recycle. So that’s one active initiative. Another approach applies to industries that already have recycling programs or products that are easier to recycle, such as electronics and automotive products. Those are areas where we are seeing companies actively addressing this issue. And so we will have to see specifically for the EU how those alternative restriction options really play out and what that looks like. But we’re already seeing industries acting proactively to shape what that looks like.

Kristin Marshall: Okay, great. And this final question, Abhirabh, we’ve seen US PFAS regulations somewhat easing under the Trump administration’s EPA. And at the same time, no clear destruction mandates have emerged. So for you, what, if any, is the business case for companies to invest in emerging PFAS destruction technologies today?

Abhirabh Basu: Yeah, that’s a good question and something we’ve been getting asked by clients quite regularly. I think there are two questions there, right? One on timing and the other on what’s going to happen from a regulatory perspective in the future. Let me address the second part of it first. So for the US specifically, there’s no broad regulatory mandate requiring companies to destroy PFAS. Even at the federal level, the focus is on removal and containment, and even then, the focus is mostly on legacy PFAS; next-generation PFAS are being pulled back on. I don’t think that will stop the adoption of new technology, though. We’re seeing states such as California, Minnesota, Florida, and Maine continue to advance their own PFAS restrictions, just like on the consumer side you’ve got requirements over there on alternatives. Similarly, there’s pressure on the removal and destruction side. So you’re going to see that compliance pressure independent of federal policy. There’s going to be state-level pressure. We also need to remember that PFAS is not a U.S.-only regulatory issue. Europe is advancing tighter controls. Australia’s already implementing significant remediation approaches. Japan is likely to follow these regions. So these markets could create an earlier commercial opportunity for destruction technologies. So even without that explicit mandate, you will have traction. Now, our view is we don’t expect there to be a widespread deployment of PFAS destruction in the next two to three years. As I kind of highlighted, there are still scaling and economic issues, particularly when you’re targeting large volumes and dilute wastewaters. So there are two ways I like to think about this and what we’ve been telling clients is look for the business case, right? That’s inherently in that question. If you’re servicing a municipal utility that’s treating relatively low concentrations of PFAS, conventional removal technologies are likely to be the preferred approach. So if you’re an adsorbent manufacturer, continue to service those markets, limit your liability by being able to make the adsorbent or whatever solution you’re using reusable, look at destruction certificates. Now, for chemical manufacturers, industrial facilities, especially military sites, wherever there’s firefighting foams, operators over there are already managing highly concentrated PFAS waste. So destruction today already makes sense. And that’s especially when you think of disposal costs and the legal liabilities in the future. Secondly, we need to distinguish between investing in the technology and scaling, right? Companies don’t necessarily need to commit to a full-scale destruction system today. What you should be doing is evaluating the technologies, validating them in your wastewater streams, because it’s going to be very specific to that, and understanding how that destruction could integrate with your existing separation processes. Five years from now, we’re likely going to see commercially proven, integrated separation-and-destruction combinations. At the end of the day, it’ll still come down to how expensive it is, what the performance is, and eventually, yes, how regulations drive adoption.

Kristin Marshall: Great. Thank you so much. There were a lot of good thoughts in there. And if you like what you heard, please feel free to reach out. We could always set up conversations with Tiffany and Abhirabh. And thanks again to you both for your presentation. That concludes our webinar for today. The slides and recording will be sent to all attendees via email. After leaving the webinar, you will be prompted to complete a survey on the presentation, and we would very much appreciate any feedback you may have. It helps inform and improve future webinars. And take a moment to check out our upcoming webinars. Thanks so much for joining, and have a great rest of your day.