Archive News

January 22, 20193 billion people worldwide live in cities without sewers or wastewater treatment plant infrastructure. This forces them to dump their waste into open waters, contaminating the drinking water for others downstream. Christoph Lüthi shows how we could harness nutrients in wastewater instead of harming human and environmental health.

January 15, 2019Climate factors determine the carbon cycles of river ecosystems. These factors are increasingly influenced by humans. A large-scale study is now for the first time showing globally comparable patterns and thus providing a basis for future assessment of the consequences of climate change. 

January 10, 2019On 10 January 2019, the Swiss Federal Office of Energy (SFOE) will award the renowned Swiss "Watt d'Or" energy prize for the twelfth time. Among the five winners is the NEST research and innovation building by Empa and Eawag. In its decision, the jury put a particular emphasis on the "Solar Fitness & Wellness" unit.

December 19, 2018Making environment-related decisions can be a complex business. A wide range of stakeholders need to be co-opted, different options need to be assessed and the impacts and consequences estimated. In order to also include the opinions of the wider public, Eawag has developed a new app that features elements of gaming.

December 14, 2018Eawag is taking part in the SRF and Swiss Solidarity’s (Glückskette) fundraising campaign “Jeder Rappen zählt”. The Water Wall – a self-sufficient handwashing unit and part of Eawag’s Blue Diversion Autarky project, will be stationed in the grounds of the University of Lucerne (HSLU) between 16 and 21 December.

December 13, 2018Michael Berg, Stephan Hug, Annette Johnson (in memoriam), Andreas Voegelin and Lenny Winkel from the Department of Water Resources and Drinking Water (W +T) at Eawag have been selected for the “Sandmeyer Award” from the Swiss Chemical Society (SCG) for their many years of work researching contamination of drinking water resources with geogenic elements.

December 12, 2018Antibiotic resistance genes are not completely eliminated by wastewater treatment. While some resistance genes are present in the influent, many others are found in activated sludge bacteria. A recent Eawag study shows that, rather than merely passing through, resistance genes are active and evolve within treatment plants.

December 3, 2018Amphipods in Swiss waters are exposed to insecticides, pharmaceutical residues and other trace substances, and accumulate these in their bodies. However, when water-treatment plants are upgraded, practically no trace substances are found in these organisms according to a new study carried out by Eawag researchers.

November 26, 2018When a population grows quickly and farms intensively, the environment often suffers. This is not only true today, but was also the case as early as Roman times. Evidence of this has been found by Eawag researchers in sediments in Lake Murten.

November 21, 2018Once again, an Eawag doctoral candidate is awarded the Otto-Jaag Water Protection Prize: Wenfeng Liu was honoured for his dissertation "Modelling Global Water-Food-Environment-Trade Nexus in the Context of Agricultural Intensification". The Otto Jaag Water Protection Prize honours outstanding dissertations and master's theses at ETH Zurich in the field of water protection and hydrology.