Adnkronos (Adnkronos) – "We must extract the maximum possible value from every cubic meter of water, moving from linear consumption to a virtuous cycle of efficiency and reuse." This was stated by Francesco Mascolo, CEO of MM Spa, Milan's water utility and vice president of Aqua Publica Europea (Ape), the association representing Europe's leading public water utilities, at the workshop "Water Efficiency First: Transforming Industry, Agriculture, and Circular Water Reuse" at Ecomondo.
Mascolo emphasized the need for a shift in water management, starting with its reuse. In this regard, he recalled the experience of Milan, where the purification system managed by MM, a wholly owned subsidiary of the City of Milan, returns all of the treated water to agriculture every year during the irrigation season.
"This experience demonstrates how properly treated wastewater becomes a resource for the local area and represents a concrete contribution to the circular economy," explained MM's CEO. Hence the call to not consider the water cycle complete with purification, because that same water can have a second life. The practice of reuse, however, gains value when it becomes an integral part of water resource planning and is not limited to isolated projects.
For this reason, Mascolo emphasizes, "reuse must be a permanent feature of river basin management plans" so we know how much water we have, how much we withdraw, for what uses, how much we return to the environment, and how much more we can recover. This necessary shift requires a change in the very role of managers. According to Mascolo, the European Water Resilience Strategy itself, by setting the goal of improving water efficiency by at least 10% by 2030, requires managers to think in terms of resources, necessitating a shift from service provider to resource manager, with broader responsibilities across the entire water cycle.
In a water-smart economy, it's essential to distinguish between uses and "manage both quality and quantity": drinking water requires the highest sanitary standards, while many industrial and agricultural processes, as well as some urban uses, can be fueled by reclaimed water. "This is where reuse also becomes industrial policy," Mascolo explained, citing increasingly relevant areas of application such as data centers, hydrogen production, batteries, and semiconductors. The Water Resilience Strategy recognizes that investment and infrastructure are one of the strategy's five priority areas, along with governance, digitalization and artificial intelligence, research and innovation, security, and preparedness. "Resilience," Mascolo emphasized, "requires long-term, planned investments and cannot be based solely on water tariffs. Aqua Publica Europea is pushing for the identification of new financial instruments and greater involvement of the EIB to transform strategies into truly feasible projects."
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