May nanoTalks: Water

Talk 1: Wastewater as a Resource

Presented by Céline Jacquin, Postdoctoral Researcher at the Department of Process Engineering at Eawag

What is the link between opening the tap to drink a glass of water and flushing the toilet? This idea might turn your mind upside down, but from now on and in a near future, we will have to use wastewater as a resource to produce drinking water. This not so glamorous concept is a relevant solution to tackle worldwide water scarcity and waterbodies contamination. Tomorrow’s cities and next generation buildings will be designed to close the water loop. However, the list of contaminants in wastewater is long: bacteria and genes resistant to antibiotics, viruses, pharmaceutical, cosmetics, nanoplastics. The longer the list the higher the complexity and energy required for the treatment. This talks aims to give a picture of the next water management strategies and technologies to ultimately allow to you making a good action when you flush the toilet!


Talk 2: From Burden to Benefit – Stormwater in our Cities

Presented by Martijn Kuller, Postdoctoral Researcher at the Department of Environmental Social Sciences at Eawag

Around the world, cities are expanding to provide habitat to increasing populations. Thus increasing impervious areas cause numerous problems to us and our environment: deteriorating quality of our creeks, lakes and bays; increasing occurrence and severity of floods and draughts; and decreasing biodiversity, to list just a few. Adding the exacerbating effects of climate change to this equation, most of our cities are faced with serious water challenges. Nature-Based Solutions (NBS) are intended to curb this trend by returning the urban water cycle to a more natural one. Using green infrastructure – such as urban wetlands, raingardens and green roofs – water is retained, infiltrated, purified and evapo-transpirated before it is slowly released to our rivers. These distributed green features are proven to increase our resilience to the effects of climate change, while making our cities greener, healthier and more liveable.