Pesticide residue contamination in waters is a critical issue, especially in agricultural areas. Pesticide wastes are a serious environmental concern due to irreversible damages they can cause. The EU-funded RECYCLE project aims at developing methods and approaches to trap pesticide components in drained agricultural areas and in sediments of eutrophic streams. This new approach facilitates recycling of pesticide components for reuse in agricultural practices. Research activities are based on strong collaborations and will be developed through secondments between world-leading teams from academic and private sectors across the EU and beyond.
RECYCLE
Removal and Mitigation of Pollution from the Use of Pesticides: Prevention, Recycling and Resource Management
RECYCLE’s core mission is to establish a new strategy for water remediation and a sustainable pesticide cycle for the future, in line with the European principle of circular economy.
RECYLE pursues this goal by implementing three overarching scientific objectives which shape the fundamental concept at the basis of three corresponding work packages:
- RO1: Develop, test, and optimize original approaches for capturing pesticides in agricultural drainage systems and to convert the trapped pesticides into new marketable pesticides (WP1).
- RO2: Establish an innovative method for mitigating eutrophication in natural water systems including lakes, rivers by adding iron-containing by-products from water treatment (WP2).
- RO3: Development of mechanistic and quantitative models for processes and mechanisms controlling the behavior of pesticides during the coupling with sorbent minerals (WP3).
Project keywords
- Pesticides contamination
- Water streams protection/restoration/remediation
- Agricultural pollution
- Adsorption dynamics
- Environmental risk mitigation/assessment
- Eutrophication mitigation
- Process-based (stochastic) modeling
- Hydro-geochemical modeling
Achievement of these scientific objectives is complemented by implementation of management activities (WP5), training events (WP4), as well as networking and dissemination tasks (WP6).
6 work packages
RECYCLE is a H2020 project
The main objective of RECYCLE is to enhance international and European collaborations in research, entrepreneurial development and innovation within the area of water and environmental engineering through knowledge transfer among research institutions, private companies and policy making agencies about physical, chemical and biological processes, to develop reliable protocols for protecting natural water ecosystems.