Resource Recovery Toolbox

Background

In many cities across the globe, planners and sanitation, waste management and recycling professionals are interested in recovering resources including water, energy and nutrients from urban waste streams such as wastewater, sludge and other organic wastes. However, they have inadequate access to decision support tools for planning and implementing resource recovery initiatives. Such tools include software, assessment frameworks, design tools, datasets, manuals and guidelines, as well as articles and audio-visual content from case studies (collectively referred to as “tools” in this project). Moreover, tools developed by researchers and consultants are often spread across diverse disconnected locations, leading to limited use since potential users typically don’t know where and how to access them.

Urban planners, sanitation, waste management and recycling professionals have no time to scour through multiple online sources and the vast academic literature to find available tools, and hence need guidance on which tools are relevant and useable for their context. This has created the need for a platform where these tools can be collated and curated in an accessible manner, hence the project’s aim to address this through the ‘Resource Recovery Toolbox’.

Aims

The project’s overarching goal is to improve the discoverability and accessibility of tools used for planning and implementing resource recovery from organic waste streams. These tools will be readily available to sanitation, waste management and recycling professionals through a website platform known as the Resource Recovery Toolbox. The platform will effectively gather and curate tools aimed for planning and implementing resource recovery from organic waste streams in urban areas.

The Toolbox is intended for use by sanitation, waste management and recycling professionals at utilities and municipalities, environmental services companies and consultancies that work in the sanitation, waste management and recycling sector. It is also intended for students who study topics related to sanitation, waste management, circular economy, and resource management; as well as the teachers and researchers who train these students.

Activities & Outputs

While the Toolbox has global relevance, the communication activities in this project focuses on Sweden and Kenya. The activities include:

Preparatory work of collating the tools and categorising them.

Designing and building the Toolbox web platform.

Promotion of the platform to the target audiences to create awareness about the Toolbox and its use.

Resource Recovery Toolbox

Tool / The Resource Recovery Toolbox is an online platform that enhances planning and implementation of resource recovery from sanitation and organic waste streams.

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