“Greening the agro-tourism business in Romania”

Heifer Romania, together with NIBIO (the Norwegian Institute of Bioeconomy Research) and the OVR Agro-Tur-Art Foundation as local partner implemented a project aiming at improving the wastewater and manure management systems in the rural area, i.e. educating the rural population as concerns the importance of responsible waste management. 

Two wastewater treatment plants were built as practicable models. The systems use the biological treatment of wastewaters, through vegetal biological filters (reed-bed) for agro-touristic entities and adjacent households. The wastewater management system using reed-bed filters is unique in Romania, being developed with the support of BioForsk (Norwegian Institute for Agricultural and Environmental Research). After the completion of the project, Bioforsk will carry out a comparative research on the efficiency of the two models, both in the hot and in the cold season, making recommendations in favour of the most efficient system.

Waste management systems were created for 60 households as follows: 50 for vegetal compost and 10 for manure. The transformation of organic wastes into compost and its use as fertilizer is both a new and an old technique, which has some advantages for those living in rural areas.

These project has a strong multiplication effect for the entire Romania, as the water and sewage management systems, especially in the rural areas, are characterized by insufficient protection of the water resources, a very small part of the population being connected to sewage and wastewater treatment systems, by the poor performance of the existing treatment plants and by generally inadequate waste management. The manure waste management systems are rare in Romania and the implementation of such units will prevent the contamination of the underground waters and make it possible to efficiently use manure as fertilizer.

The project entitled “Greening the agro-tourism business in Romania” was financed under the Programme RO17 – “Green industry innovation”, EEA and Norwegian Grants 2009-2014. For more information, see here.