Objectives
- To evaluate the environmental impact and sustainability of the developed technologies and/or platforms in relation to the carbon footprint with the aim when possible of reaching carbon neutrality.
- To assess the potential economic gains for the EU public health from the application of the developed technologies and/or platforms and those derived from potential savings from other sources. The economic gains for the water and food industry considering different scenarios (related to size of the companies and the development status of the countries) will also be determined.
- To evaluate cost-benefit and feasibility of applying specific technologies and/or platforms in developing country settings.
- To strengthen Europe’s global leadership on the health water related risk by engaging EU institutions (EU Commission) and a wider range of international players such as WHO, IWA etc. and other stakeholders, who can directly benefit from the key deliverables of the project.
Deliverable Report due Sept 2017, and Jan 2018
As part of the objectives of the AQUAVALENS project, the environmental impact from the point of view of sustainability is evaluated through the analysis of the Carbon Footprint (CFP) of the newly developed technologies/platforms for waterborne pathogens detection.
The Carbon Footprint accounts for the total emissions of greenhouse gases caused directly or indirectly by an activity or product in its whole Life Cycle. Therefore, it is a measure of Climate Change impact since it is expressed in kg of CO2 equivalents, so it indicates the warming effect of all the set of GHG emitted taking as reference the potential impact of the carbon dioxide. The CFP is calculated using internationally recognized standards (PAS 2050:2011, ISO 14067:2013, Greenhouse Gas Protocol). The life cycle of the novel platforms is divided in two main stages: production and use.
Regarding the first stage, the platforms production entails the raw materials extraction, transport and manufacturing of the platforms by cluster 2 partners. The evaluation of this phase is based on the information gathered from three AQUAVALENS partners that develop three different platforms: two real time PCR kits (GPS and Ceeram) and one on-line detection platform (MicroLAN).
To evaluate the CFP of the second stage, the use phase, we are gathering information from end-users partners that are testing these platforms in field (cluster 3 partners), including: sampling campaign, with particular reference to the transport; consumption of materials and consumables and use of equipment during laboratory work; and management of the wastes produced in all these tasks. Once this stage had been finished, the total CFP of the AQUAVALENS novel technologies can be computed and the environmental implications of their use can be evaluated and compared to conventional methodologies. ***this part is still underway***
