A pilot-project designed to treat and recycle wastewater generated from hotels in Malta aims to save significant amounts of water through effective and efficient reuse.
The proposed project is to develop and apply innovative technology that would make it possible to recycle as much as 70 to 80 per cent of the water being bought in by a hotel.
The research project, the first of its kind, was launched a year ago and the pilot plant has been in operation at Għajn Tuffieha since July.
Testing will come to an end in April by which time verification and certification of the quality of the water produced by the plant would be made available.
If the aims of the project are reached, it would offer environmental and social benefits as well as substantial economic benefits to large commercial establishments, according to the local company that conceived and formulated the project - Sustech Consulting.
Hotels are big consumers of water. It is calculated that each guest in a hotel consumes at least three times as much water as a Maltese resident calculated on an annual consumption of around three million cubic metres of water a year.
Marco Cremona of Sustech Consulting said that in an effort to keep operating costs low, numerous hotels have resorted to the purchase of 'bowser' water, which is usually sourced from groundwater of dubious quality.
"The use of this water presents a high risk of legionella proliferation in the hotels' water system. Furthermore, the increasing demand for cheap groundwater puts additional pressure on the country's limited groundwater resources, which in turn necessitates an increase in desalination output so as to keep the quality of mains water to potable water standards," he said.
Irrespective of its source, almost all the water consumed by a hotel ends up as sewage, which is discharged into the sewerage system for further treatment/disposal.
Some hotels in Malta have installed small sewage treatment plants to provide water for landscaping and, in some cases, for the flushing of toilets. "Although this is commendable, there is limited application for second class water in a hotel, because the bulk consumption (showers, baths and wash-hand basins) has to be of better quality".
Mr Cremona said that he can achieve that with the new system developed by his company. "The preliminary findings are very satisfactory," he said.
Sustech Consulting claims that the water recycling system will provide for an extremely efficient and cost-effective way of reducing wastewater discharges from the hospitality sector.
An additional benefit of the process is that hotels using this system will not discharge wastewater into the sewerage system, thus making them eligible for exemption from any future sewerage charges.
For the project to be successful, however, samples need to be taken and rigorously tested by the Public Health Department, which is also one of the partners in project.