The Mediterranean library of knowledge
Explore the ENI CBC Med Programme's library of deliverables: a comprehensive digital repository of diverse resources tailored for the Mediterranean region. Discover in-depth studies, innovative strategies, and practical tools spanning tools addressing key environmental, economic, and social issues. The library is your go-to source to find valuable knowledge to inspire new collaborative projects driving fair, sustainable and inclusive development across the Mediterranean.
Guidelines on Eco-Innovation for the Mediterranean Hotel Industry
Towards a more sustainable tourism for the Mediterranean
Catalogue of solutions available for the hospitality industry - Water and Energy saving technologies
The project partners have jointly defined a common transnational service to analyze innovative technologies/services/products that combine water and energy for the hotel industry that have great potential and that can be easily replicated in the smallest SMEs.
The GreeninMed project has selected a list of technologies, services and products to
support savings in water and energy consumption in the Mediterranean touristic
SMEs. The structure of the Benchmark presenting each technology is the following
one:
• Technology general description,
• Advantages &disadvantage to estimate the feasibility installing the technology.
• The “potential use in hotel industry”
• Performance and savings potentially achievable applying the technology.
• References about manufacturers/providers of the technology
GREENinMED-subgrantees video in Israel
In its final stage, seven grants with up to 22,500 Euro were given to Start-Ups or SMEs in Israel that produce eco-innovative products or services that advance more efficient water and energy management in tourism to advance sustainable tourism in the Mediterranean.
GREENinMED-subgrantees video in Spain
In its final stage, three grants with up to 25,000 Euro were given to Start-Ups or SMEs in Spain that produce eco-innovative products or services that advance more efficient water and energy management in tourism to advance sustainable tourism in the Mediterranean.
GREENinMED-subgrantees video in France
In its final stage, four grants with up to 25,000 Euro were given to Start-Ups or SMEs in France that produce eco-innovative products or services that advance more efficient water and energy management in tourism to advance sustainable tourism in the Mediterranean.
AQUACYCLE My Autobiography - Part 2 Exceeding on expectations
The manuscript “AQUACYCLE My Autobiography” brings an account of the project’s journey through the ‘eyes’ of the project’s eco-innovative wastewater treatment system.
It is foremost intended to share the project’s aims and objectives and the progress towards achieving these objectives in an easy-to-understand manner. It is hoped that readers, including society at large will thus gain access into the functioning and purpose of the components that make up the treatment system: an anaerobic digester, one or more constructed wetlands and a solar raceway pond reactor.
Along the project’s journey, AQUACYCLE meets up not only with his ‘creators’, i.e. the research teams in the ENI CBC Med funded project but also with water stakeholders, including farmers from around the Mediterranean Region who are alerting to the dire water situation they are facing and how junior high school students amaze their teachers with their intimate knowledge also of EU regulations concerning treated wastewater reuse and more.
This second tome, published in October 2023 brings the sequel to My Autobiography: Anxiously waiting to make my physical appearance, published in February 2022. The latter collects the chapters prior to the construction of a first pilot demonstration unit of the treatment system in Spain, hence the title ‘Anxiously waiting to make my physical appearance’.
In this sequel, the reader is informed how the project reached all of its originally foreseen objectives ... and much more ! ... hence the title ‘Exceeding on expectations’.
AQUACYCLE My Autobiography - Part 1 Anxiously waiting to make my physical appearance
The manuscript “AQUACYCLE My Autobiography” brings an account of the project’s journey through the ‘eyes’ of the project’s eco-innovative wastewater treatment system.
It is foremost intended to share the project’s aims and objectives and the progress towards achieving these objectives in an easy-to-understand manner. It is hoped that readers, including society at large will thus gain access into the functioning and purpose of the components that make up the treatment system: an anaerobic digester, one or more constructed wetlands and a solar raceway pond reactor.
Along the project’s journey, AQUACYCLE meets up not only with his ‘creators’, i.e. the research teams in the ENI CBC Med funded project but also with water stakeholders, including farmers from around the Mediterranean Region who are alerting to the dire water situation they are facing.
This first tome, published in February 2022 collects the chapters prior to the construction of a first pilot demonstration unit of the treatment system in Spain, hence the title ‘Anxiously waiting to make my physical appearance’.
AQUACYCLE Capitalization Plan
The AQUACYCLE Capitalization Plan takes stock of the ENI CBC Med funded project’s achievements from two complementary perspectives.
The first chapter collects the Project Legacies – which have been aggregated under no less than 10 different headers – together with the targeted recipients and informs on how public access to these legacies will be ensured beyond the project lifetime. Consequently, further details are presented on each of these respective project legacies.
The second chapter informs about the project’s Capacity Building Achievements, the recipients and the quantified targets reached in terms of the number of Certified APOC users, i.e. the number of persons who received training of the project’s eco-innovative wastewater treatment system, abbreviated to APOC system; the number of tertiary degree awards to women in Tunisia for their research related to the project’s eco-innovative wastewater treatment system, and a multitude of women researchers who have been highly instrumental in the successful outcomes of the project’s research activities and for making the outcomes accessible to a wider public, including society at large.
The final, third chapter reiterates on the Project Key Performance Indicators, which sustains the subtitle of the second volume of AQUACYCLE My Autobiography: Exceeding on Expectations.
AQUACYCLE In-depth analysis of local water and sanitation governance framework
The present document brings the analysis of the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) of the local Governance Framework in the three countries where pilot demonstration units of the project’s eco-innovative wastewater treatment system have been constructed, i.e. Lebanon, Spain and Tunisia.
The first chapter places the scope of the present SWOT analysis in the context of the overall aim and the specific objectives of ‘Preparing for participatory decision-making’.
Chapter 2 elaborates briefly on the rationale for the SWOT analysis to be based on a desk review of available reports and assessment studies and interviews with representatives of the public authorities involved at the national, regional and local level. This is followed by a detailed description of the roles and involvement of the main stakeholders’ groups in Chapter 3, while Chapter 4 brings an overview of the regulatory framework for sanitation, wastewater treatment and reuse in agriculture in the respective countries. Chapter 5 informs on the semi-structured questionnaire that was elaborated for the purpose of interviewing the main stakeholders in each country and reports on the outcomes of the 15 stakeholder interviews that were conducted.
Chapter 6 presents the outcomes of the SWOT analysis of the eco-innovative wastewater treatment technology brought by AQUACYCLE, (for technical details on the technology see Output APOC technical guide). In turn, these outcomes provided a solid basis for the elaboration in Chapter 7 of forward looking strategies for the Mediterranean Region as a whole and for the targeted case study countries in particular. Finally, overall conclusions and recommendations are provided in Chapter 8.
AQUACYCLE Technical guide on project's eco-innovative wastewater treatment system
This technical guide has been designed to provide guidance to staff of public and private entities needing info on the project’s eco-innovative wastewater treatment system (abbreviated to APOC system) design, operation and maintenance.
The acronym APOC stands for “Anaerobic digestion”, “Photocatalytic Oxidation” and “Constructed wetland”, the three components of the eco-innovative wastewater treatment system promoted by the AQUACYCLE project. Anaerobic treatment and constructed wetlands are two mature and commercialized technologies with wide applications in the wastewater treatment market, that are combined with a novel solar disinfection/photocatalytic oxidation process towards the treatment of municipal wastewater at a level that satisfies the most stringent standards for reuse. The distinctive features of APOC technology make it eco-friendly, efficient and cost-effective as it is based on natural systems, it uses less chemicals, runs on renewable energy (solar irradiation), produces biogas, fertiliser and a clean water for reuse in agriculture, in domestic, industrial or other applications, and the constructed wetland thrives as a habitant, an ecological tourist attraction aside from being a climate change mitigation measure.
This guide has been prepared by a cross-border multidisciplinary scientific interaction. Specifically, AQUACYCLE partners which hold expertise in the three different components of the APOC system have provided the necessary technical information and data sheets for the scope of this manual.
AQUACYCLE Pilot Demonstration Units of an Eco-Innovative Wastewater Treatment System
Three pilot demonstration units of AQUACYCLE’s low-cost, eco-innovative wastewater treatment system, abbreviated to APOC system, have been constructed at the following locations: 1) a site owned by the real estate company SANABEL in Deddeh, south of Tripoli in North Lebanon; (2) at the existing anaerobic wastewater treatment facility of Blanca in the Murcia Region of Spain; and (3) at the existing wastewater treatment facility of Bent Saidane in the Zaghouan Governorate of Tunisia. The three sites have in common that they represent small to medium sized communities whose livelihoods depend primarily on agriculture.
The present Output explains the entire construction process from contract award to commissioning, including plant performance. The details of the construction are presented to provide the next developers of other APOC facilities with a visual guide to help them replicate the APOC eco-innovative system for municipal wastewater treatment and reuse in small to medium-size communities.
This activity has been split into three parts, one for each demo site, as there are differences between the designs. It will enrich knowledge even more as it can help to compare the different variants of APOC systems.
AQUACYCLE Local communities take an active part in the drawing up of actions plans for the reuse of treated wastewater
how the bottom-up inputs towards the drawing up of action plans for the reuse of treated domestic effluent was achieved through the successful organization of the second series of stakeholder workshops in Lebanon and Tunisia.
The first chapter reiterates on the scope of the Participatory GIS (PGIS) in AQUACYCLE, the motivation for targeting local communities around the pilot demonstration sites of the project’s eco-innovative domestic wastewater treatment system (APOC) and the logistics that were put in place ahead of the workshops. The second chapter informs on how the PGIS practice was introduced to the participants and its outcomes in both Lebanon and Tunisia. An appraisal on the PGIS practice sessions is provided both on the part of the organizers and on the part of the participants who joined in the event in the third chapter. Concluding remarks and a look ahead at the next steps make up the final, fourth chapter.
For the reasons explained in this report, the venue of the workshop in Spain was moved to a farmer community outside the Murcia Region. In lieu of the PGIS practice session, the participants in Spain were shown the actual reuse action plans in the Murcia Region where the reuse of treated effluent continues to be among the highest in Europe.