Success story overview

Water, food and resource scarcity, alongside increasing waste are among the main challenges humanity will face in the years to come. To take advantage of the waste, European researchers have come up with a novel nutrient management solution.

Every single minute a truck's worth of plastic enters our oceans, and this waste doesn't just stay in our water, it goes into seafood, our salt, it is even found in melting Arctic ice. And this does not even consider the plastic buried in landfills and other disposal sites. It is clear that businesses must go further and faster to tackle the plastics crisis. And yes, we have seen some major progress with the use of alternative materials, biodegradability and recycling in lowering our domestic environmental footprint.

Wastewater treatment and reuse is not new, and knowledge on this topic has evolved and advanced throughout the human history. Since prehistoric civilisations have been capable of reusing untreated municipal wastewater, especially for the land application, wastewater treatment became a common practice within all human settlements. The process has been optimised due to a growing understanding of the issue and the development of treatment technologies. Since industrial advancement occurred, waste production from industries has deeply affected our society. 

How can we use agricultural and food-processing waste to create useful products for a sustainable Europe?