Wastewater - Turning Problem to Solution

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Box 8: The EU Green Deal and wastewater management for reuse

Wastewater sits in multiple policy areas. The EU Member States have adopted the European Green Deal – a cross-sectoral plan for sustainable economic transformation. With regards to water policy, wastewater recovery and reuse appears in several strategies, including the Zero Pollution Action Plan (COM/2021/400) (EU 2021) and the Circular Economy Action Plan (COM/2020/98) (EU 2020). In 2015, only 2.4 per cent of treated urban wastewater was reused. The new EU Green Deal will increase the ambition of water reuse in Europe. As part of the EU Green Deal package, a new water reuse regulation (2020/741) came into force on 26 June 2023 with the progress in implementation due to be reviewed in 2028. The principal aim of this regulation is to address water scarcity and drought by encouraging circular approaches to water reuse in agriculture and industry. The ambition is to increase water reuse to

6 billion m 3 /year by 2025 (up from 1.1 billion m 3 /year reused in 2015).

Of the total volume of recycled water, 52 per cent is used for irrigation, with 32 per cent for agricultural irrigation and 20 per cent for landscape irrigation. If the entire volume of treated wastewater in Europe was reused, it would ensure 44 per cent of agricultural irrigation needs (Ungureanu, Vlăduț and Voicu 2020). To ensure cross-sectoral coherence, related regulations, including the Urban Waste Water Treatment Directive 91/271/EEC, Sewage Sludge Directive 86/278/EEC and the Industrial Emissions Directive 2010/75/EU will be reviewed and revised as required to ensure they are coherent with the Green Deal.

Source: Water reuse and the European Green Deal, Webinar March 2021

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