Domestic Waste Water Systems - Legislation?

On the list of climate actions any home with a garden can “easily” engage in, we’d like to see the topic of Domestic Waste Watershow to avoid them and how to reuse them in our immediate landscapes; for food resilience, for wildfire prevention, for shelterbelts for biodiversity and so on.

The NBS of reedbeds or other phytopurifying installations are well known solutions already for working with grey waters. WET-lands or leeching fields can also take higher levels of “contamination”. Vermicomposting toilets work, and in combination with a secondary and terciary purifying process (aquatic plants in gravel beds + woodchip bowls or channels in combination with vegetation) provide a nutrient rich water source for our foodscapes, firebelts and biodiversity hedges.

Project Aims

We feel there is a need for awareness raising of these Nature Based Solutions on a domestic scale as well as a lack of transparency in legislation in these matters.

Therefore we would like to take time to list European and maybe also global legal frameworks that allow to reuse domestic waste waters in our gardens and under which circumstances.

We want to identify and document case studies and free up funds to conduct proper research such as laboratory tests on effluents of maturing and mature systems and/or soil irrigated with these effluents.

Ideally we can give anyone working with water professionally the jumping board they need to back up their often innovative (to the ears of some) solutions in front of administrations or their clients, especially now that we are living a general time of droughts and floods in many areas of the globe.

Team

Aline VaMo, Kinga Milankovics

Reporting Officer: Aline VaMo

Area

Prototyping, Emergent festival, Next Steps project 

Objectives

April 2023


1. Survey
:

    1. During the 2 months survey we gather information about already existing material online in the form of infographics, articles, documents, professional services and projects in favour of using the NBS mentioned above and document the resources found in a NextCloud folder and spreadsheet with links.
    2. During this stage we also search for legislation and list interesting resources or research papers mentioning such legislation in a spreadsheet and NextCloud folder.
  1. Analysis: During this 2 months’ phase we go through the materials found and identify the top 3 case studies, the top 3 legal frameworks to work within and the top 3 habits to adopt for optimal reuse of your domestic waste waters
  2. Design: In the last phase of again 2 months we will edit the data and the raw material, and pour it into an informative, professional looking, educational slideshow presentation that can be shared online.

OUTCOMEs

September 2023 Update

So far we have started a database that is open to the public and which we hope you can can add resources to: https://cloud.perma.earth/s/Xx4ZWSZ9ReoTMDD

We are working on pouring the key findings and case studies of this Emergent Festival funded project into a shareable presentation format, which should be ready by the end of October, as per the “Next Steps Project” outline for this edition of the festival.

resources created

1/ Database of Resources (legislation in different languages, case studies, forums, information, books, training and more) – https://cloud.perma.earth/s/i7LjJdRpicqN3CE (hoping this link works as a collaborative document for anyone visiting the project webpage)

2/ Presentation of findings, as per objectives – 3 legal frameworks in the spotlight (EU in the end), 3 case studies, 3 top recommendations for the home – https://cloud.perma.earth/s/LXYWndyXcnDQHZb

contact links