Each season the fashion industry surprises with new fabrics in a myriad of colours. Producing multi-coloured textile, however, has an environmental cost. Indeed, heavy polluting dyes find their way to the textile industry’s waste water .

The process was developed by the Water Research Institute (WRI) of the Italian National Research Council and tested and scaled-up as part the EU-funded Innowatech project We know that biological processes offer the cheapest way to treat industrial wastewater.

Climate change predictions for Europe indicate considerable changes in the water balance throughout the continent, with an increased likelihood for summer droughts in the Mediterranean, Central and South Eastern Europe.

By 2100 oceans, which are the largest store of carbon dioxide on the planet, are likely to be more acidic than at any time during the last 20 million years.

“ Water and Sanitation Services in Europe.

ACQWA (Assessing Climate Impacts on the Quantity and quality of WAter) is an ongoing large-scale integrating project with 35 partners, funded under the EU seventh Framework Programme, which began in 2008 and is expected to be concluded by 2013.

Dr. Christian Mittermayr from Lambda GmbH is the Coordinator of the EU research project DINAMICS, involving major European stakeholders from the relevant branches, end users and production system suppliers, ICT providers, SMEs and academic and research institutes.

Membranes for water purification are used in many applications and different types of membranes are being developed at the moment. No membrane can filter and purify water entirely, but improvements using novel kinds of membranes are made.

In the 21st century several countries have suffered great losses after terrorist attacks. Although the risk of bioterrorist attacks or accidental contamination of our water supply network is low, the consequences could be fatal.

The technology uses several nano-biological sensors to monitor the presence of several bioterrorism agents in drinking water.

The filter could be used to recycle sewage on a space station, but the main focus is the use of ultra pure water in the fabrication of semiconductors.

Worldwide the water supply sector is facing tremendous challenges due to global warming and climate change, urbanisation, and increasing water stress and pollution of raw water sources.