WIDER UPTAKE took a holistic approach and defined water-smart symbiotic circular economy solutions as package including:
• The partners and stakeholders collaborating to implement the solution,
• the resources to be recovered and the required technologies,
• the products and their applications,
• and the business models for these in circular economy value chains.
Symbiotic circular economy solutions were demonstrated in five countries:
• In Sicily, technical processes for reuse of wastewater for irrigation and production of slow-release fertilizers in agricultural industry has been demonstrated successfully, but regular supply of reclaimed wastewater to farmers has not been started due to maintenance needs of infrastructure.
• In Ghana, treated wastewater for irrigation of urban agriculture has been demonstrated during the project, but governance and policy barriers remain. The solution will therefore not be continued after the project. The solution with biochar from wastewater sludge and sawdust as alternative to wood-based charcoal has, however, arrived at the market.
• In Norway, the activities in Stavanger have enabled a total annual P-recovery of approximately 12 tonnes, and the organic fertiliser products from the demonstration case in Stavanger continue to be marketed in Vietnam. At Hamar, a market outlet for struvite has been found to market it as a fertilizer for the 2025 growth season. The activity to produce soil products with treated sludge as ingredients have been delayed consequently. The peat free soil products are in continued development but are part of the soil commercially available products in the market.
• In the Czech Republic, the applicability of reclaimed wastewater for urban irrigation has been demonstrated and widely disseminated, but a feasible alternative for implementation has not been found and will require more effort.
• In the Netherlands the demonstration case has proved the effectiveness of industrial symbiosis in upcycling residual flows from the water cycle into marketable products and provided tangible demonstrations of circular use of those residuals in bio-composite applications.
Successful development, implementation and upscaling of such solutions require assessments of: Governance and regulations; Health and quality aspects; Circularity and resource efficiency; and Sustainability of the solutions. Assessment tools and how to combine the results in an overall index for water smartness and sustainability were co-developed with stakeholders and validated by testing on demonstrated solutions. The WIDER UPTAKE roadmap guide was developed as a planning aid with step-by-step methods and tools in a manual to organise transition planning for the wider uptake of water-smart solutions and symbiotic circular economy solutions. The WIDER UPTAKE roadmap guide is accompanied recommendations that summarises the experiences from the demonstration cases and development work in the project for the application areas for Water recovery, Nutrient recovery, Material recovery, and Energy recovery.
The tools from WIDER UPTAKE are openly available through the Water Europe Market Place, where they can be accessed as stand-alone tools or via the WIDER UPTAKE roadmap guide. Further, the results from WIDER UPTAKE have been disseminated in scientific journals, in books, and at conferences including the final conference for the project: “The International Conference on Wider-Uptake of Water Resource Recovery from Wastewater Treatment – ICWRR2024”.
