Award for LIFE project targeting micropollutants flushed down the drain

Cleaning up drugs and preventing the spread of antibiotic resistance in the water we flush down our drains and that flows into our sewers is a growing challenge. But one LIFE project helping wastewater treatment plants tackle this problem has been given an award for its innovative approach.

The LIFE Fitting project won the research, development and innovation category at the PT Global Water Awards in November 2025, which recognise outstanding Portuguese projects in the water sector. It highlighted the project team's work to combat micropollutants and the spread of antimicrobial resistance in Portugal's waterways.

The team spent two years evaluating the operational strategies at three large wastewater treatment plants in Portugal, providing them with smart digital tools so they could improve how they dealt with these difficult contaminants.

'Wastewater treatment plants are on the frontline of protecting Europe's rivers and water bodies,' says Maria João Rosa, principal researcher and head of the urban water unit at the National Laboratory for Civil Engineering in Portugal, which is coordinating the LIFE Fitting project. 'Yet many were not designed to remove micropollutants such as pharmaceuticals and industrial chemicals, or to effectively control antimicrobial resistance.'

Some of these medications are particularly difficult to remove and require extra treatment steps. If they are not removed, however, they can pose a risk to aquatic ecosystems and to human health through drinking water.

Compounding the problem is climate change, which can cause river flows to vary wildly due to drought or sudden intense rainfall, making it harder still to clean up wastewater adequately before it is released into the environment. Discharge treated water during a period of low river flow, for example, and any remaining contamination could still exceed safe levels.

Between 2023 and 2024, the LIFE Fitting team conducted 80 monitoring campaigns at the three wastewater treatment plants - each of which serves more than 100,000 people and receives waste from industrial textile factories and hospitals. They analysed more than 120 different parameters, including 60 micropollutants and indicators of anti-biotic resistance.

Using the data they gathered, the team delivered a digital toolbox - called the PLAN-DO toolbox - that consisted of five practical tools. The first helped wastewater plants predict how much micropollutants were being removed in varying conditions, while another assessed treatment performance allowing it to be optimsed. Others provided smart monitoring of the contamination levels in the wastewater each plant received, while another set water quality limits on what was being discharged into rivers based on how great their flow was.

By helping the treatment plants optimise their operations , the project allowed them to reduce the amount of chemicals needed to treat the wastewater by 19.4 tonnes a year and to cut their greenhouse gas emissions by 779 tCO2eq per year - roughly equivalent to the annual carbon emissions of about 170 passenger cars. They also trained 50 water professionals, regulators and policy makers on the use of the digital toolbox.

The team say the PLAN-DO toolbox and operational strategies they developed during the project could be used to support wastewater treatment plants across Europe in controlling micropollutants and antimicrobial resistance, especially as they implement the revised Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive.

'We believe the outputs can be replicated across the EU, accelerating the transition to more resilient, climate-neutral, and resource-efficient wastewater services," says Rosa.

The LIFE Fitting project contributes to the EU's revised Urban Waste Water Treatment Directive, regulations on the minimum requirements for water reuse and amendments to directives on priority substances in water policy.