On November 15, 2019, Prof. Huub Rijnaarts and Dr. Weishan Chen from the Environmental Technology Group（ETE） of WUR visited LAD in Shanghai to discussed the application and development of the DESA(Decentralised Sanitation) system in China. Mr. Weihua Dong, chair of the board of LAD, together with colleagues from LAD, attended the meeting.

China is going through a rapid urbanisation; cities are expanding, and urban population has increased substantially in the past decades. The problem of domestic wastewater (DWW) and organic solid waste (OSW)  treatment becomes an urgent issue. At the same time, with the implementation of China's rural revitalization strategy, effective DWW and OSW  treatment in rural area should be taken into account seriously as well. In 2015, China produced 55 billion tones domestic wastewater which accounted for 71.4% of the total annual wastewater produced in China. This number is still growing every year.

Can we convert DWW and OSW into fertilizer for agricultural production? With this question, LAD European Research Center invited ETE Group of WUR to further discuss the possibility and feasibility in August 2019.

ETE group from WUR has worked on a new and more circular DWW and OSW management concept since 1990’s. ETE has strong scientific research strength, it is chaired by Prof. Huub Rijnaarts and Prof. Cees Buisman with 69 doctors and 85 masters working in the group. Prof. Huub Rijnaarts is leading the largest resource recovery project in the Netherlands, facilitating water reuse between urban, industrial and ag-ricultural area. Dr. Weishan Chen, has several ongoing pro-jects on implementing DESA system in different countries and reuse of resources for local food and energy application.

During this meeting, ETE and LAD discussed indepth on the issues of converting domestic wastewater into greenhouse fertilizer, urban and rural domestic wastewater system, circular agriculture and etc.. ETE and LAD reached a number of collabration intentions in the related technology devleopment and application in China. The R&D and application collabration will be carried out based on the expertise and project experiences of ETE, together with the expertise on plant nutrition and data possession of LAD.