Nowadays, we are living a new trend that is making us to rethink, as a society, the unsustainability of the current model of production and management of resources, goods and services. Until now, the aim was to foster short-term consumption, which is leading the planet to an extreme situation.

For this reason, it has arisen a new model called: circular economy, whose principles are: reduction, reuse and recycling of elements.

The previous economic model, where the economic aspect prevails over the social or environmental one, is now obsolete comoared with the circular economy, which has supposed an improvement both for the companies and the consumers or final users.

The companies that have implemented this system are finding that reusing resources is much more profitable than creating them. As a result, production prices have reduced, so that the selling price also decreasing, thus benefiting the consumer, not only economically, but also socially and environmentally. The implementation of this system also improves the image projected by the company in its environment.

One of the Sacyr Group’s priorities in each of its activities is the promotion of a circular economy, which seeks to optimise the consumption of resources and reduce the generation of waste. Therefore, the lines of action followed by the Group in this regard are the promotion of the use of recycled materials, from both internal and external sources, and the selection of products and processes that are more respectful of the environment.

As a result of this commitment, the project was born: Reuse of agricultural water drainage, the aim of which is to reuse used water for irrigation through a drainage system.

With this, two great benefits are achieved: on the one hand, preventing these waters with a high nutrient content from filtering into the aquifers, which could contaminate them; and on the other hand, it achieves the reuse of these waters for the irrigation of other crops, thus reducing the consumption of such a scarce good.

This plan is included in the DESEACROP project, in which the Polytechnic University of Cartagena, the University of Almeria, the Community of Water Users of the region of Níjar and Valoriza agua collaborate.

This project is financed by the LIFE call of the European Union.