Category: English

Nutrient stocks, flows and balances for the Bolivian agri-food system: Can recycling human excreta close the nutrient circularity gap?

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Availability of nutrients from human excreta in Bolivia in 2018.

In our latest article in #Frontiers in Environmental Sciences, Luis Fernando Perez Mercado, Cesar Ariel Perez Mercado, Bjorn Vinneras and Prithvi Simha analyse the current state of nutrient stocks, flows, and balances of the agri-food system in #bolivia. Their findings show that there is sufficient stock of #nitrogen and #phosphorus in human excreta to meet the deficit of nutrients in the food system, as well as regional nutrient surpluses that are not recirculated today. Today, Bolivia recirculates 44% of nitrogen and 74% of phosphorus used in agriculture. But we believe that circularity is going to decrease considerably over the coming years, as the national strategy to address nutrient deficits has been to increase the domestic production of synthetic fertilisers (See shorturl.at/abNQV).

Calculating mass balances always seems simple on paper. But it is difficult in practice, especially when you perform it at national, regional, and municipal levels, as we have done in this article. They usually don’t add up. Here, they also suggest how deforestation and depletion of forest nutrient stocks could be a reason why our national-level balance does not add up.

The full artile is available here: https://lnkd.in/d5dt42Qf

Continue reading Nutrient stocks, flows and balances for the Bolivian agri-food system: Can recycling human excreta close the nutrient circularity gap?

Prithvi co-authored a paper on degumming of Ramie Fiber with group from ICT India

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In a new study that was published in the journal Environmental Technology and Innovation, Prithvi along with his co-authors describe a novel process to degum ramie (Boehmeria nivea L.) is one of the oldest known fiber crops and one of the strongest natural fibers. For textile processing industry, the fiber needs to be degummed to a gum content below 6%. Conventionally, ramie is degummed by using chemicals like hot alkali solutions (sodium sulfate,​ sodium hydroxide or combination of both) followed by hydrogen peroxide treatment for bleaching or by water retting, both of which generate significant amount of effluent.

Continue reading Prithvi co-authored a paper on degumming of Ramie Fiber with group from ICT India

Almedalen 2022 Presentations by Jenna Senecal

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On July 3rd Jenna Senecal presented at Almedalen 2022. The first presentation was about our urine treatment technology (link to the video presentation found here https://youtu.be/h0L8WeJIACw). The second was a panel discussion about youth and sustainable food systems hosted by SIANI, World Food Program, and Agroforestry Network (link to the video presentation found here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_ue8_ttYws).

 

Barley plant trial on Gotland is growing well

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On Gotland, we have a 350 m2 field trial growing barley that has been fertilized with dried urine (collected on Gotland in summer 2021 with TouchDown), mineral fertilizer or no fertilizer. This summer, we complemented the urine fertilizer with mineral phosphorus to match the recommended fertilizer needs of malting barley. The fertilized plants are growing well, while the none fertilized plants are shorter. We will harvest in late August and test the grain quality.

  • Jenna Senecal inspecting the barley plants, July 2nd ;
Photo: Samuel Blyth

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  • Barley plants (day 54) fertilized with urine (left), mineral fertilizer (right) or no fertilizer (middle) ;
Photo: Samuel Blyth

Congratulations to Dr Alice Isibika!

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On the 8th of June, Alice Isibika successfully defended her thesis Use of pre-treatments and substrate blending to enhance process efficiency in black soldier fly larvae composting of food industry waste. External reviewer was Professor Sven Gjedde Sommer from Aarhus University (Denmark). The evaluation committee was Associate Professor Lara Maistrello from University of Modena and Reggio Emilia Area San Lazzaro (Italy), Dr Chrysantus Tanga from International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology (Kenya) and Docent Maria Westerholm from SLU here in Uppsala. The reserve in the committee was Docent Åke Nordberg from our own department. Alice got a lot of questions from both the opponent and the committee members, and the defense lasted from 1 pm till 4:30 pm. We think Alice did a great job and congratulate her on this achievement. We wish Alice the best of luck in her future endeavors, and hope that she will be able to apply what she studied in her thesis work also in practice when she returns home to Tanzania.

Continue reading Congratulations to Dr Alice Isibika!

How to evaluate the effectiveness of game-based interventions in decision-making process?

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In this latest publication on game-based approaches for planning and decision-making for sanitation, we have collaborated with researchers at EAWAG. The study aimed to answer the question: how effective are game-based interventions specifically designed to support decision-making processes? We used an illustrative case to reflect on this question. We simultaneously designed a card game to support sanitation decision-making and an evaluation procedure.

We found that it is possible to address the dual challenge of game-based interventions for participatory decision-making processes:

(1) designing an informative and engaging game-based intervention without telling participants what to think and

(2) designing a tailored evaluation procedure. Designing the game-based intervention and its evaluation simultaneously is valuable both to improve the quality of the game, but also the opportunity provided a structured assessment of the results.

We encourage others to follow this approach and use the evaluation framework proposed in this paper.

 

 

 

Congratulaitons to Urankhaich Batsukh for winning the Global sustainability award!

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Urankhaich Batsukh, MSc student of Environmental Economics and Management, won the Global sustainability award at SLU Ultuna’s Thesis Day 2022, with the title “The role of business intermediaries to advance circular bioeconomy”.

The aim of the study was to investigate the role of business intermediaries in recycling plant-essential nutrients from wastewater. The empirical context is the implementation of nutrient recycling from wastewater for agricultural applications in Sweden. Since many firms specialized in the field, a multi-case study approach was conducted on Biototal, C-Green, Easymining, Ekobalans, Lantmännen, and LRF. The data was collected from six-semi structured interviews with secondary data.

Continue reading Congratulaitons to Urankhaich Batsukh for winning the Global sustainability award!

Is it time to flush the water closet?

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Hear Björn Vinnerås together with other researchers talk about the future water systems in program 1 at Swedish national radio. The focus of the program is the water closet, its function today and if it is possible to have different solutions in the future. Björn presents the research the group perform regarding the production of a dry urine based fertilizer.

Click here to access the talk (in Swedish).