A Maltese hydrologist has scooped an environmental prize in France thanks to his water self-sufficient house in Mosta.
Marco Cremona's home beat 39 other entries from each of the 27 EU states since it makes extremely efficient use of resources like water and energy through simple, low-tech systems.
Mr Cremona and his wife Jo were unaware that their home was in the running for the prize. Some months ago, however, he was contacted by a French journalist who wanted to document his home. A team turned up and they quizzed him on how the water system works, how much water is saved, on the economic savings of such a system, and so on.
He designed and built a water self-sufficient home in Mosta that has hardly consumed any mains water in the last five years.
Mr Cremona need not worry about hefty electricity bills either. His house consumes just four units of electricity a day, 1.7 units of which are consumed by the refrigerator.
The converted 500-year-old house makes full use of natural lighting. Yet it does not heat up in summer because of its thick insulating walls, solar reflective film on windows and reflective roofs.
A home-built innovative cooling system sprinkles second class water every evening in summer to cool down the roofs and underlying ceilings. A solar water heater provides free hot water all year round.
A month ago, out of the blue, Mr Cremona was contacted by the French producer who informed him that he had made it to the first stage of a competition. The TV crew that filmed his house were taking part in a TV series called Les Report - Terre broadcast on France 5.
The final programme, which features Mr Cremona, will be aired on France 5 TV on September 8.
The projects documented and filmed by each team were shown on TV every week and the public voted for the best project. Mr Cremona was named winner last Sunday.
"I am extremely flattered that our modest eco-home has been chosen as the most sustainable project in the EU, which is exactly what I had intended it to be when I conceived the idea," he said.
Mr Cremona is a mechanical engineer and specialises in water studies and hydrology. Among other things, he designed and built a biogas plant in Kenya to provide cooking gas from manure in 2001 and developed the world's first storm water to potable water treatment process in 2005.