Specialist Group on Use of Macrophytes in Water Pollution ... - IWA

Or even better: why not search for materials that – in the end – will be excellent new building
material? In this line of thinking, ‗waste‘ simply doesn‘t exist. Materials simply are in
transition, from one state to another, from one goal to another... Isn‘t that a beautiful thought?
And if you now think: OK, tell me how! I‘m going to disappoint you: I cannot tell you yet …
We‘ve just started the journey, I can only invite you to join us, let‘s find out together!
Having a heart for the environment... Let me also invite you to dive into the idea of designing
systems that do not simply try to eliminate the ‗dangerous substances‘ in our ‗waste‘ water.
That basically, is what we have been doing so far, do you understand what I‘m saying? We
try to eliminate BOD and COD and in the same line of thinking, we are used to trying to
eliminate nitrogen and phosphorus.
Recently we come to think that we have to invest (time and money) in winning back nitrogen
and phosphorus. New sanitation, digesting faeces, making struvite … I do not yet know how
Treatment Wetlands will play a role in that process. But we need to adjust our way of
thinking into that direction. So we can reuse the nutrients which we now mainly manage to
transform in nitrates, or bind to iron or calcium ... Collect it and give it a ‗second life‘ in
agriculture, for which activity we now still mine these elements, knowing that it will come to
a halt. In this line of thinking, ‗waste‘ simply doesn‘t exist. Materials simply are in transition,
from one state to another, from one goal to another ... Isn‘t that a beautiful thought?
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16 IWA <strong>Specialist</strong> <strong>Group</strong> on Use of Macrophytes in Water Pollution Control: Newsletter No. 37