DOI: 10.12688/openreseurope.24474.1 ISSN: 2732-5121

Identified barriers and solutions for sustainable water in Europe: an analysis of seawater and wastewater mining

Carlos Picon, Wytze van der Gaast
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Background This paper presents an analysis of six case studies and two replication studies across Europe exploring sustainable and circular water solutions, focusing on desalination and urban-industrial wastewater mining. Methods The findings are based on the results of co-creation workshops hosted for each case study, where experts from a range of relevant fields provided their vision of the barriers and potential solutions for each specific technology and location. The workshops were conducted according to a common methodology, enabling inter-comparability. Results and Conclusions The study concluded that industry and policymaking conservatism, lack of pilot and demonstration projects, insufficient public-private collaboration, bureaucratic inefficiencies, misconceptions and general lack of awareness about resulting products and processes, and policy challenges for the valorisation of recovered products constitute cross-cutting barriers across case studies. Public awareness campaigns, policy reforms and institutional support were consistently considered key factors to trigger the upscaling of sustainable water circularity solutions in Europe.

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