Resource recycling from sanitation to farming systems to regenerate soil and land: identifying approaches that are feasible and preferable

Research Project, 2017 – 2020

Recent years have seen increased efforts to improve resource recycling from sanitation to farming systems, notably through phosphorus recovery in the existing wastewater infrastructure. But the future desirability of water-borne sanitation has been challenged, and new sanitation concepts and system components are being developed. Furthermore, future farming systems need to regenerate agricultural soil and land rather than impoverish it.

This research project asks how future sanitation systems might best support farming systems that seek to regenerate soil and land. The research aims to enable key actors shaping future sanitation systems to better understand: (a) the preferences and assumptions underlying different technical solutions to resource recycling from sanitation to farming systems, (b) different assessment tools used to choose appropriate strategies towards better resource recycling, and (c) the perspectives on the relationships between sanitation and farming systems associated with these solutions and tools.

The project is carried out in close collaboration with researchers at the University of British Columbia (UBC) and the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology (Eawag).