Henrik Bregnhøj

Technical, economic and environmental feasibility of recycling nutrients in waste in Southern Thailand.

Technical, economic and environmental criteria were used to evaluate the feasibility of recycling plant nutrients in kitchen waste, human excreta and sullage from households in Phattalung (urban), Kuan Lang (peri urban) and Prik (rural) in Southern Thailand. The difference in situation and context of the three areas called for individual solutions, and for each area three sanitation systems were evaluated. However, in all three areas recycling human excreta and kitchen waste via composting latrines was found to be more environmental feasible than human excreta managed in septic tanks or sub surface trickle irrigation and kitchen waste disposed of at landfill sites or treated at composting plants. Sullage should in Kuan Lang and Prik be used directly on garden crops, but in Phattalung be treated in waste stabilisation ponds before discharge, to be environmentally feasible. The economic feasibility results varied among the three areas and among the involved stakeholders: farmers and Kuan Lang administration benefited from recycling waste, at the expense of other private users, Phattalung municipality and Prik municipality. The main cause of these conflicting interests was lack of cost recovery and public participation, which should therefore serve as the fundament of any future environmental and economic feasible sanitation system.

Water Education: An e-learning platform for water-related competence development

The Danish water sector needs competence development as a response to changing water management structures and implementation of European legislation, and the number of international students enrolled in at DTU Environment is increasing. Based on their different backgrounds there is a clear need for adaptation and development of the existing courses. To accommodate this, DTU Environment has created an e-learning platform called Water Education, based on the software platform Moodle. It is scheduled to be operational in 2011. Based on the experiences so far, it can be concluded that in some areas major time savings can be obtained during the course execution and increased learning has been documented compared to a traditional classroom teaching on the same topic, but the students’ backgrounds affect their attitude towards e-learning. More recorded lectures are sought and presents a potentially positive way forward.