In 2009, famed actor and environmentalist Kevin Costner and Eric Hoek, then a professor of engineering at UCLA, joined forces to develop a system aimed at cleaning up oil and gas produced water. In 2010, this system was put to a different kind of test when it was used to clean up the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Throughout this process, Costner and Hoek forged a strong alliance that continues to this day with Water Planet, Inc., a Los Angeles-based company that sells the world's first smart membrane products.
Just a year after the BP spill, Hoek and his colleague Subir Bhattarcharjee, now Water Planet's Chief Technology Officer, co-founded the company, with Costner and his long time business partner Rod Lake as the company's founding investors. In just over five years, Water Planet has achieved remarkable and rapid success in commercialising two leading-edge water treatment technologies.
