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The Future Street

By Dr.ir. Wei-Shan Chen

This is the report of The Future Street. The Future Street is a project that was conducted in collaboration between Wageningen University & Research and Amsterdam Institute for Metropolitan Solutions. The programme was developed for the Gemeente Almere and for future use of the city of Amsterdam.

The project had the following goals:

1) Realizing the production of food in Almere locally for 20%. By systematically integrating existing, proven urban environmental technologies for food, water and energy.
2) Closing the knowledge gaps relevant to the systematic integration, about subjects such as the efficiency and safety of reusing nutrients recovered from local waste water.
3) Designing the urban unit in a way that is sufficiently flexible to adopt future urban innovations.
4) Establishing a long-term monitoring programme to guarantee the resilience and safety of the implementation, which may provide valuable data for future research.

A circular sanitation-food production system for Almere

In this project, a circular sanitation-food production system is proposed for Almere. The connection to the local food production is a necessity if a more circular and efficient sanitation system is aimed for. In the project report, the conventional sanitation system and the new sanitation system that was tried out in Sneek, the Netherlands, are used to systematically and scientifically elaborate the proposition for Almere.

Using every-day waste

The inorganic waste such as plastic and glasses are not yet included in this scheme, as this research at this stage primarily focuses on the food, nutrients, water and energy. Two waste streams are collected form households on a daily basis. These waste streams come from the organic solid waste and waste water, which contain organics and nutrients (nitrogen and phosphorus). The organic solid waste consists mainly out of residues from the kitchen and garden, while the waste water contains mainly human excreta from toilets, organics from the kitchen sink (and dishwasher in some cases) and light waste water from the shower and washing machine. The light waste water from the shower and washing machine can be categorized as grey water, and the other waste water streams (toilet, kitchen sink, etc) which contain more nutrients, organics and pathogens are categorized as black water.

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Header afbeelding: Future street banner_Canva.png

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