The WOW! project has an Advisory Board with senior representatives from governments and businesses who advise on policies around resource recovery from waste water (click to read about the first meeting). Because of COVID-19, the June meeting was a well-attend digital get-together. The National policy action plans were the one of the main calendar items.
The WOW! team had drafted a National policy action plan for The Netherlands. The point of departure is the Dutch circular economy program that aims for at a 100% circular economy in 2050. Dutch water authorities are frontrunners in circular economy in the sewage water chain, producing useful products in the Energy and Resources Factory. The legal framework is the end of waste legislation and the Guideline Waste or Product (Leidraad Afvalstof of Product, Ministry of I&W, July 2018). The National policy action plan states the five main obstacles or challenges initiators face and proposes five actions to overcome these hurdles. Members of the Advisory Board advised to focus on what can be achieved if hurdles are overcome, what the focus should be in countries such as Luxembourg, Belgium (Flanders) and Germany and via which channels these proposed actions can be best presented to maximise our impact. With this valuable input, the WOW! team is well set to draft the National Policy Action Plans for the other partner countries.
Next to the National policy action plans, the final version of the State of the Art report and a draft version of the report Critical success factors for valorisation routes were discussed, with a focus on legal and policy items. For the critical success factors, practical examples and lessons learnt in other European subsidy programmes are an indispensable source of information.
If you know a European subsidy programme or are initiator of a resource recovery project, please contact us at wow@cirtec.nl.
We have already received input from the initiators of struvite recovery projects in Germany and the Netherlands, phosphorus recovery in Germany (PYREG and Reinighof), cellulose recovery in the Netherlands (Cellvation) and production of a biobased polymer in the Netherlands (Kaumera).
