Last night in Birmingham, UK, the 2018 Annual Water Industry
Awards were held. Now in their 12th year
and organized by WWT, they mark the beginning of Utility Week Live. It was a
big swanky event; posh food, black ties, loud music….you get the picture. After
years of never quite making it onto the podium, last night Isle walked away
with our first ever award. After years of being the bridesmaid, we finally
became the bride.
We won in the category of ‘Sludge and Resource Recovery’. If this
were the Oscars it would probably rank alongside the Oscar for Best Lighting
but I am not complaining. An Oscar winner is an Oscar winner, whether they are Best
Director or something a little more obscure. The same logic applies here. We
are a winner. At last.
What made our win all the more glorious was that our entry was for
the INCOVER project. INCOVER is a collaborative
project funded by the European Commission under the Horizon 2020 programme. It
has developed innovative and sustainable technologies for resource recovery,
working at demonstration (as opposed to laboratory) scale. It is an awesome
project (see http://incover-project.eu/). It has involved testing at scale a wide range of ground
breaking sustainable technologies, from hydrothermal carbonization (to generate
household fuel from sludge) to algal farms for bioplastics. It was a worthy
winner, even if I say so myself.
If Isle was the bride then the groom has to be our fellow European
partners. There are (at least) 18 different organisations from across the EU
involved in INCOVER, from big utilities to small tech firms, from consultancies
to universities. INCOVER is an example of the EU working at its best. As the UK
continues on its determined path towards exiting the EU, in all likelihood
crashing out without any deal, it is nice to remind ourselves that not
everything about the EU was broken. Collaborative, smooth running partnerships
do exist. Like-minded, civilised organisations from across Europe are able to
work together harmoniously. Who would have thought?
My role was that of father of the bride. I had next to no direct involvement
in the award winning project yet, unlike Meghan’s dad, I dug deep and found
within myself the ability to take some of the glory from last night. After all,
it has taken 8 years for Isle to make it onto the winners podium. It might
never happen again.
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