Nutrient recycling
Closing nutrient cycles is essential to develop a more efficient and sustainable food and feed production systems and protect the environment. At the moment, nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus, essential to life, are lost along the entire food chain.
The transition to a more circular economy by means of resource recovery can change this and boost the bio-economy efforts in the EU. However we need more action to develop a holistic approach to nutrient management.
From the Nutrient Recycling Community to the European Sustainable Nutrient Initiative
In 2022, the Biorefine Cluster Europe, coordinated by Ghent University (Belgium), and the H2020 FERTIMANURE project, led by the BETA Tech Center (Spain), launched the Nutrient Recycling Community (NRC), a platform aimed to exchange knowledge and good practices and foster collaboration between initiatives and projects around nutrient recycling in Europe.
The NRC has recently been re-branded into the European Sustainable Nutrient Initiative (ESNI) to acknowledge the interconnection with the annual ESNI Conference, launched by the BCE in 2019 to bring together EU projects, stakeholders and EU officials with the ambition to keep nutrient management high on the EU agenda!
As core part of this initiative, the ESNI community set up 4 Working groups, led by European projects, discussing major challenges with an impact on the nutrient recycling and recovery. At present, the following working groups are active:
- Technologies for nutrient recycling coordinated by FERTIMANURE;
- Agronomic performance of fertilising products coordinated by LEX4BIO;
- Sustainability assessment coordinated by NOVAFERT;
- Policy coordinated first by NUTRI2CYCLE and currently led by RENU2CYCLE.
ESNI Mission and Vision
ESNI aims to foster collaboration among European entities engaged in nutrient recycling, facilitating the exchange of valuable experiences and identifying knowledge gaps to guide future research
Why join us?
The ESNI Community is a platform that offers EU projects, companies, research institutes and experts the opportunity to share knowledge, achieve common objectives and raise their voice towards EU policy makers.
Contact us at info@biorefine.eu to know more.