ZERI Foundation

What would be interesting for me, or the group I am working with at AEE INTEC, is the development of a new approach to substance flow management in towns/cities. Presently almost all supplies are brought into town and all waste are transported out, either on roads, rails, or in pipes. This generates a lot of problems: energy, space consumption, air pollution, water pollution, noise... and is very inefficient. It leads to so inattractive cities, that all those who can afford it live outside and add to the confusion, consumption, pollution and inefficiency with their commuting.

The question is how to make the system more efficient. My perspective starts from water. That is what I am working at. Water first appears in agglomerations as rainwater. Presently rainwater is at best evacuated without causing any dammage. How to make use of it? The UK is leading in what they call SUDS or sustainable urban drainage systems. Then we pipe potable water into towns, we use it once and subsequently evacuate it again. The water evacuated contains nutrients and energy, which are not only lost, but cause either high cost to be removed in a wastewater treatment plant or dammage to the environment and actually most often both. Seems extremly inefficient. How to reuse the water several times locally? How to use the nutrients on site in urban agriculture instead of letting them out into the sea? How to extract the energy, or organic matter as such, and make use of it without creating a transport problem?

There are a few solutions already available, which are worth dissemination and a lot of research to be done (e.g. see here). What I described above needs the integration of water and agriculture and probably also housing, urban planning. Next integrations could be solid waste management. Other sectors will follow.

In Australia architects have developed the concept of restaurative buildings. In Austria we are working at energy plus buildings, i.e. buildings not consuming but generating extra energy. Another sector to be integrated.

In a first step this will need a lot of people from different disciplines sitting together and reinventing our built environment and how substance flows are managed. Looking forward to inputs in this direction.

Best regards, Martin

PS: There is more biomass in ants than in humans. Nevertheless nobody has yet identified an environmental problem related to ants. But humans are intelligent, aren't they?