Water4Reuse
aims to integrate, in an interdisciplinary and intersectorial approach, the
entire wastewater treatment chain to improve water management and promote the
recycling and reuse of treated wastewater and by-products, under territorial,
health, social, economic, and environmental constraints. By adopting a
multi-actor approach, the action aims to develop tools and methods, such as
innovative biorefineries to satisfy all potential water uses and finally
contribute to the improvement of water reuse within the circular economy
paradigm. To this end, it advocates an integrated and multi-disciplinary vision
of wastewater reuse, a major lever in the water-energy-food nexus, particularly
in urban and peri-urban areas. Water4reuse mobilises many complementary skills:
starting not from a technical and technological inventory but from the needs
expressed by the key actors and end-users (farmers, local authorities,
industrialists, service providers, etc.). In particular, it mobilises modelling
to assess and control the associated risks and to overcome obstacles for
mainstreaming water reuse. It will contribute to preserving resources, meeting
the challenges of treatment costs, reducing conflicts of uses, and, through the
involvement of all stakeholders, improving the lives of citizens by promoting
human development, social interaction taking into account all climate change
effects. Ultimately, it will contribute to the paradigm shift that accompanies
the change in status of wastewater from a waste product treated for discharge
into the environment, to « new » resources to be processed following the new
“water on demand” concept.