Launch of the EU Green Deal Project, PROMISCES, for a zero pollution circular economy

Water Reuse Europe is proud to support the recently launched EU Green Deal project “PROMISCES – Preventing Recalcitrant Organic Mobile Industrial chemicalS for Circular Economy in the Soil-sediment-water system” led by the Bureau de Recherche Géologique et Minières -BRGM (France) and featuring three members of Water Reuse Europe, KWB (Germany), Eurecat (Spain) and Università Politecnica delle Marche (Italy).
The project was proposed in response to the Horizon 2020 Green Deal call “Innovative, systemic zero-pollution solutions to protect health, environment and natural resources from persistent and mobile chemicals” (LC-GD-8-1-2020). PROMISCES aims to enable a safe circular economy for the soil-sediment-water cycle in Europe by:
- Developing new analytical methods and toxicological tools to provide information on PFAS and other industrial Mobile and Toxic chemicals iPM(T) compounds contamination in complex environmental matrices. This will be investigated through five specific circular economy pathways including (i) semi-closed water cycles for drinking water supply at urban and catchment scale; (ii) wastewater reuse for irrigation in agriculture; (iii) nutrient recovery from sewage sludge; (iv) material recovery from dredged sediment and (v) land remediation for safe reuse in urban areas.
- Contributing to the creation of a favourable environment/society for a safe circular economy across Europe, by developing innovative tools/policy/support decision tools to improve the monitoring, control and remediation of PMT chemicals.
Water Reuse Europe appreciates the importance of further investigating the potential presence and behaviour of PFAS and iPMT chemicals in water that is treated for reuse purposes. Understanding better their fate and the potential risks associated with them is crucial to guaranty the safe reuse of water within the soil-sediment-water system. This should indeed allow for the development of innovative analytical methods to quantify them, the design of removal technologies and improve PMT chemicals fate models for regulatory purposes and management as proposed by the PROMISCES consortium of 27 partners from across Europe.
Water Reuse Europe believes this will be of utmost importance for the improvement and/or development of water reuse schemes and we are confident that PROMISCES will provide the scientific knowledge base, as well as efficient solutions, for this purpose.
Learn more about the PROMISCES project: