NBRACER visit the education center Mercantec Viborg, which this week has a theme about wastewater management in the open country.
For decades, we have solved challenges with water and climate by building our way out of them with concrete, pipes and traditional systems.
But this approach is both expensive, resource-intensive and often inflexible when the climate changes faster than the systems can keep up. At the same time, the traditional grey infrastructure rarely contributes to biodiversity or recreational values, on the contrary. Therefore, it is becoming increasingly clear that we cannot build our way out of the challenges of the future with the solutions we know alone.
The craftsmen of the future are already building with nature
Nature-based wastewater treatment NbS solutions are no longer something we talk about as a future – they are already here. And they are on their way to becoming central to the green transition.
How do you solve climate change with plants, soil and water?
At Mercantec in Viborg, students in the structural engineering programme are already working with exactly this approach. Nature-based solutions are a real part of the answer to wastewater management in the open country – and it is both inspiring and crucial that a new generation is ready to take on the task.
Root zone systems and planted filter systems are not new in themselves.
What is new is the role they play.
What used to be one solution among many is now becoming part of the answer to some of the biggest societal challenges: climate adaptation of our wastewater systems, better resource utilisation and strengthened biodiversity.
The students work with the installation of, among other things, planted and aerated filter systems as well as root zone systems – collectively referred to as NBS for water purification in the open country. Solutions that not only work, but also make sense:
• can be deployed at around one third of the cost of traditional grey infrastructure;
• Is cheaper to operate and maintain
• Are more robust and sustainable in the long term
At Mercantec, students learn to:
• install nature-based plants and establish ecosystems that can treat wastewater
• work with the interaction between soil, plants and water
• understand how the solutions are installed, operated and maintained
• use nature’s own processes as an active part of the solution
It’s not about inventing something completely new – it’s about rediscovering and scaling up what we already know works.
The craftsmen of the future are already at work. And they build with nature.
