Wastewater

Sewer systems and centralised treatment plants are not a sustainable solution for managing the world’s wastewater. Environmental engineers at ETH Zurich and Eawag have been helping to develop decentralised, closed-loop modular systems.

In urban water management, the system used for treating wastewater has always been straightforward: wastewater is conveyed through the sewage system to centralised treatment plants, where it is treated. An interdisciplinary research project at Eawag led by Professors Bernhard Truffer and Max Maurer is now challenging this principle, advocating instead a hybrid system with decentralised treatment plants – for use worldwide, but also with potential for Switzerland.

In urban India, rising water scarcity and increasing pressure on water supply utilities have prompted the use of treated wastewater as an alternative source. A study of Eawag together with Indian partners explains how the use of sensors and automated chlorination can improve microbial water quality in on-site water reuse systems for increased user safety.

Mining repeatedly causes water pollution. In the Global South, polluters often get away with it because the waters are seldom monitored. Satellite data can provide evidence of the origin, spread and extent of environmental disasters.