IRES Seminar Series
Time: 12:30pm to 1:30pm (every Thursday)
Location: AERL Theatre (room 120), 2202 Main Mall
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Five often overlooked aspects of closing nutrient cycles from human excreta to food and farming systems
Abstract:
Concerns about eutrophication and future fertilizer availability have emphasized the need for better nutrient management along the entire food chain from agriculture and food processing to consumers and waste management. This includes comprehensive recycling of nutrients contained in human excreta to agriculture. With the shift from perceiving human excreta and sewage as waste to recognizing their value as resource, a wealth of treatment options has unfolded over the last decades. Although treatment renders a range of fertilizer products for use in agricultural production, technology development has rarely been informed by the needs of specific forms of agricultural production. I will explore what it means for the design and evaluation of future human excreta management to integrate considerations from food and farming systems, by outlining five aspects that are at risk of being overlooked and would deserve more attention.
Robin Harder
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Bio:
Robin Harder is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at The University of British Columbia and Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden. His current research interest is how future human excreta management might best support farming systems that seek to maintain long-term soil health, and which quantitative assessment tools are adequate to guide nutrient recycling towards best supporting soil and food security. Robin has a background in urban water management and environmental systems analysis. He received his doctoral degree from Chalmers University of Technology, with a MSc in Sanitary Engineering from TU Delft and a BSc in Civil Engineering from ETH Zurich.
Chalmers: https://www.chalmers.se/en/staff/Pages/robin-harder.aspx
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robinharder/
ResearchGate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Robin_Harder
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Photo Credits: Susanna Klassen, IRES PhD Candidate