Sewage contains valuable substances that can be used as raw materials for biobased products. In North-West Europe, the potential is hardly exploited yet.  Conventional sewage treatments result in the loss of valuable materials and increased  CO2 emissions. There are market opportunities for raw materials from sewage, but for this, the sewage treatment plants and the industry need an alignment. This calls for a transition: sewage treatment plants need to switch from treating sewage to producing valuable materials.

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The Interreg North-West Europe project WOW! – Wider business Opportunities for raw materials from waste water (sewage) – aims to make the transition to a more circular approach by matching supply and demand of cellulose, lipids and PHA bioplastics from sewage. The international consortium consists of partners from the UK, France, Belgium, Germany, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. To seize these opportunities, the consortium aims to develop value chains for three different raw materials from sewage: cellulose, PHA bioplastics and lipids. Cellvaiton  as a part of the WOW! project, is dedicated to upcycling cellulose from sewage and to transforming recovered cellulose into marketable materials with a wide range of applications. This project is supported by the Interreg North-West Europe program and CirTec has received co-financing from the Province of Noord-Holland.