Circular Economy

All over the world we are increasingly aware of the need to embrace action to reduce emissions, adapt to climate change, and work together to deliver on our goals to meet the challenges of our changing planet. Our Circular Economy research projects are designed by our members to reduce the water industry’s reliance on natural resources or optimise the use of existing products. Working in collaboration with our members, our research contributes to the transition to a zero carbon economy by:

  • Minimising disposal to landfill or recovering waste for re-use from water and wastewater treatment processes;
  • Removing pollutants from existing water and wastewater processes through their extraction for re-use;
  • Creating new energy sources – either for use by existing processes or for export to complementary industries;
  • Identifying new resources for use in existing water and wastewater treatment processes or that can be exported to other industries;
  • Improving resilience of existing processes through re-use, recovery, or recycling of a resource;
  • Improving the efficiency of existing processes through re-use, recovery, or recycling of a resource;
  • Restoring or preserving the state of a natural system through re-use, recovery, or recycling of a resource.

WaterRA is dedicated to helping our member organisations shift to a circular economy by bringing together the experience within our Big Team with innovation providers, to establish the science that will underpin future policy decisions.

Featured project

Harmful pathogens and compounds must be removed from wastewater before it can be discharged to the environment or used for irrigation, and many source waters need salts removed to make them potable…

Related projects

The project quantified the direct fugitive greenhouse gas emissions of the Canberra’s sewage treatment at Lower Molonglo Water Quality Control Centre (LMWQCC), identified potential fugitive emission reduction initiatives, and advised on the implementation of mitigation strategies…