My paper will soon be presented at Sweden :)

I'm quite thrilled that the paper I co-authored with Henry Veldhuizen (Strategic Advisor Water Chain, Strategy and Policy Division at the Dutch Water Board) and others has been  accepted as a full paper for the HSM 2013 conference. The conference is the 1st International IWA conference on Holistic Sludge Management. Our paper is entitled 'Wastewater treatment plants in the Netherlands as production facilities of raw materials'. The paper highlights how the current system of sewage disposal is a unidirectional one that needs to be converted into a closed loop system as part of a circular economy. More importantly, it goes beyond mere rhetoric and provides real-life examples of how the Netherlands is demonstrating pioneering efforts to recover materials and other resources from what was considered mere waste until now. Since it is about a real example, the paper shares the vision, the methodology adopted, the challenges and the way forward so that any enterprising municipality / water company can learn from it and replicate the process.  It is a radical concept and I'm so happy to work with individuals who dare to change the system.