Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain
Reusing wastewater could be the solution to Europe’s growing water scarcity problem.
The 34 dairy cows chewing the cud on a floating platform in the port of Rotterdam probably aren’t thinking about water scarcity—a major challenge in the world today—but they are participating in a Europe-wide effort to find solutions to this modern-day dilemma.
The cows’ home, the Floating Farm, is part of a broader project called WATER-MINING which received funding from the EU to investigate ways to address the increasing stress on Europe’s water systems.
Getting water wise
With global water demand set to exceed sustainable water supply by 2030, according to the 2030 Water Resources Group of the World Bank, finding ways to safely and efficiently reuse water is a matter of urgency.
Water resilience is also the theme of this year’s European Green Week which has launched the Europe-wide #WaterWiseEU campaign to stimulate an EU-wide conversation around water use today and in the future.
“We have a water management problem in the world in general,” said Dr. Patricia Osseweijer, professor in biotechnology and society at Delft University of Technology and coordinator of WATER-MINING, which began in 2020 and will conclude at the end of this year.
“The droughts we have had in recent years show that we need to treat our wastewater in such a way that it can be reused. Water is much more of a commodity now than it was before.”
Closing the circle
The Floating Farm is based on the principles of the circular economy in which resources are reused rather than discarded, aiming for self-sufficiency in both energy and water consumption.
It is experimenting with a low-energy technique to desalinate water from the port for use on the farm, and even a method of purifying the cows’ urine so it can be reused as pure water for the cows to drink and for irrigation and cleaning. The urine will also be “mined” in the process to recover […]
Full article: phys.org