Today’s wastewater as fertilizer of tomorrow? Politicizing fertilizer regulation through nutrient recovery technology

As part of the European Green Deal, the New Circular Economy Action Plan encourages circular approaches to water reuse in agriculture, promotes more sustainable application of nutrients and the stimulation of markets for recovered nutrients. Innovative nutrient recovery technologies pave the way for visions of circular and high-tech agricultural systems that enable the reuse of nutrients in food production. At the same time, nutrient recovery technologies raise new cross-sectoral policy issues and challenge existing agri-food policy frameworks (Schwindenhammer/Gonglach 2021). The paper discusses the impact of an emerging technological approach to nutrient recovery from wastewater in Germany on the politicization of fertilizer regulation. The technological approach envisions the connection of the wastewater treatment system and the agricultural production system. It projects the transformation of a conventional sewage treatment plant into a ‘NEWtrient®-Center’, which draws the essential resources for urban hydroponic plant cultivation from municipal wastewater. Building on research of agri-food technology innovation, agri-food issue politicization (Feindt et al. 2021) and standardization in agri-food policy (Schwindenhammer 2017), we conceptualize nutrient recovery technology as a potential driver of politicization of fertilizer regulation. Building on qualitative research (document analysis and interviews), the paper shows that nutrient recovery technology fuels new policy debates on the scope of fertilizer regulation, approaches to quality assessment and related indicators and limit values for contaminants. As yet, existing component material categories (CMCs) defined in EU Fertilizing Products Regulation (FPR) (EU) 2019/1009, determining which materials EU fertilizer products may exclusively consist of, do not cover wastewater as a resource. Pointing to the opportunities provided by wastewater nutrient recovery technologies, different policy actors criticize regulatory gaps in fertilizer regulation and demand extension of the list of CMCs by wastewater to ensure more extensive reuse of nutrients in fertilizer production and related market developments. Critics stress risks related to contaminants of emerging concern, such as pharmaceuticals, pesticides, or biocides and question the potential of nutrient recovery from wastewater for reuse as fertilizer in agriculture. The paper is written in the context of the collaborative transdisciplinary research project “SUSKULT – Development of a Sustainable Cultivation System for Food in Resilient Metropolitan Regions, Project F” (FKZ: 031B0728F), funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (2019-2022). References Feindt, P. H., Schwindenhammer, S., Tosun, J. (2021). Politicization, Depoliticization and Policy Change: A Comparative Theoretical Perspective on Agri-food Policy, Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis: Research and Practice, 23: 5-6, 509–525. Schwindenhammer, S., Gonglach, D. (2021). SDG Implementation through Technology? Governing Food-Water-Technology Nexus Challenges in Urban Agriculture, in: Politics and Governance, 9: 1, DOI: 10.17645/pag.v9i1.3590. Schwindenhammer, S. (2017). Global Organic Agriculture Policy-Making through Standards as an Organizational Field: When Institutional Dynamics meet Entrepreneurs, Journal of European Public Policy, 24: 11, 1678–1697.