News archive

November 26, 2021In the latest episode of the Papers to Practice Podcast, Dorothee Spuhler talks with Charles Niwagaba about his published article on the microbe-associated health risks involved in using faecal sludge in Ugandan agriculture. This is the second part of the podcast series, which she started with Laura Kohler.

November 17, 2021The separation toilet save! has won the Design Award Switzerland 2021. This is also a milestone for Tove Larsen. She is a member of the Eawag Directorate and has been researching for almost 30 years how the nutrients in wastewater can be recovered in a useful way. In this interview on the occasion of World Toilet Day 2021, she explains how crucial our handling of wastewater is for climate change and for achieving the SDGs sustainability goals.

November 17, 2021Together with a team of researchers and designers, Kai Udert has designed a toilet system that makes it possible to recycle nutrients from wastewater on-site. As a result, valuable nutrients can be recovered and used as fertilisers so that they no longer end up in lakes and oceans where they do a lot of damage. Now he wants to make the system ready for market together with industry partners.

November 4, 2021Changing temperatures and varying winds over the seasons cause great fluctuations in Lake Geneva. The LéXPLORE research platform monitored the movement of water within the lake for a year to learn more about how natural factors influence the lake’s mixing. The resulting analysis now paints a fuller picture of mixing in large lakes, which had previously only been studied over shorter time periods.

September 28, 2021Eawag scientist and EPFL professor Urs von Gunten is to receive the prestigious ACS Award for Creative Advances in Environmental Science and Technology. His research on oxidative processes in water has led to practical applications and improvements in both drinking water and wastewater treatment.

September 16, 2021It is well known that Legionella bacteria can contaminate drinking water systems in buildings. A case study published in Aqua & Gas by Eawag and the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts now shows how they can be controlled by different temperature strategies.

September 15, 2021Making decisions about what sanitation infrastructure to implement in emergency and humanitarian crises is challenging. Research on how to support this decision-making has led to the online platform: emersan-compendium.org.

August 26, 2021There has been a floating laboratory on Lake Geneva called LéXPLORE since 2019. Natacha Tofield-Pasche, limnologist at EPFL and project leader of LéXPLORE, and Damien Bouffard, researcher at Eawag and member of the LéXPLORE steering committee, tell us what is being studied there and why this research platform is unique.

June 29, 2021Groundwater is also an ecosystem, but little is known about the biodiversity underground. Eawag researchers have now documented the diversity of life in Swiss groundwater in a pilot study – and discovered previously unknown species of amphipods in the process. Here they relied on a citizen science approach.

June 11, 2021In the Water Hub, our scientists are researching sustainable and decentralised wastewater treatment. Here, wastewater is not regarded as waste, but as a resource. Now the research platform in NEST can be visited virtually at any time.