Every last drop: zero-waste water builds water resilience

“The ULTIMATE project is another of the cluster’s projects. Started in 2020 and running until October this year, it is focusing on the effective reuse of industrial wastewater through a framework it calls Water Smart Industrial Symbiosis (WSIS). It has nine large-scale industrial demonstration sites across Europe and beyond in the agro-food, heavy chemical, beverages and biotech industries. ‘What we’ve seen over the last couple of years is that there are quite a lot of local water reuse initiatives,’ said Dr Gerard van den Berg, ULTIMATE’s coordinator and international programme manager at the Netherlands-based KWR Water Research Institute. ‘But there’s still a huge challenge in bringing together the water sector and the industrial sector.’ The idea behind the project is to stimulate cooperation between different industrial sectors and the water sector to create economic value and increase sustainability.”

(Citation: Massy-Beresford, H. – Every last drop: zero-waste water builds water resilience – European Commission (2024)4 July)