Key water-smart challenges

Need for reuse and recovery schemes for wastewater & sludge; limitations to reuse and recovery due to low acceptance; water scarcity; untapped efficiency potential (water and resources valorization).

Key water-smart opportunities

New negotiations, approaches, logics, and use of technologies, to enable the reuse of treated wastewater, nutrient recovery, and sewage sludge valorization.

Special Focus

Enable and complete the water reuse (industrial, agricultural and urban) goal of a regional/national plan for lagoon protection; apply nutrient recovery technologies to wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) and develop shared evaluation model tools for the sustainability of WWTP effluents and sludge valorization.

Current status and ambition

Venice (Italy) and nearby lagoon zones are sensitive areas, with 1 million citizens and 42 million tourists per year. Due to intensive human activities and climate changes the environmental equilibrium of the region is at risk: the application of Resource Recovery (RR) and Circular Economy (CE) logics for resources valorization is strategic to improve and maintain it. A regional/national plan for lagoon protection [PIF] has introduced technologies and NBS solutions to foster the reuse of treated municipal wastewater at the industrial level, but several barriers have hindered its implementation. B-WaterSmart is aiming to remove these barriers.

Ambition until the end of the project:
The water services provider (Veritas) aims to, directly and indirectly, promote the application of RR and CE logics by:
i) boosting the reuse at multiple levels (industrial/urban and agricultural) of the available treated municipal wastewater;
ii) fostering the best practices of nutrient/energy recovery from wastewater treatment and sludge management in a logic of low environmental impact and economic sustainability;
iii) developing Integrated Evaluation Digital Strategic Platform, to support concerted governance/stakeholders evaluations for objective, replicable, and updatable sustainability assessments of reuse/recovery opportunities.

Ambition beyond project (upscaling/transferability):
i) Achieving the extensive reuse of the treated municipal wastewater: a) at industrial level – upscaling demonstrated pilot technology and; b) at urban/agricultural level – pushing the concerted sustainability assessment and planning for structural investments enabling the exploitation of the resource (potential financing by industries/stakeholder/regional or national funds).
ii) Extending at the National/EU level the use of the Strategic Platforms for evaluation of water reuse sustainability and the choice of best sludge management process, to promote RR and CE opportunities even by contributing to overcome cultural, knowledge, and regulatory barriers.
iii) Achieving significant nutrient recovery from the WWTP concentrated streams upscaling the pilot technology demonstrated during the project and boosting market opportunities for the product obtained àCE business models (potential financing by industries/stakeholders).