GIDA purification plant: PPP providing high-quality water for the textile industry while limiting water consumption
The Italian city of Prato is known for its centuries-old textile tradition. The fashion industry is the second most polluting in the world. It requires around 93 billion cubic metres of water a year.
In this sense, Prato with its Bisenzio river, its intricate system of canals and its underground water supply, has managed to provide the necessary quantities, or at least it did so until the 1970s. This is the moment when the GIDA plant specialising in waste water purification was born in Prato.
GIDA was created as a public-private partnership between the Municipality of Prato and the Regional Industrial Confederation, where the majority of the shares of GIDA are today publicly owned. Through its 5 different plants, GIDA manages all the wastewater from both industry and the public. This amounts to up to 50 million cubic metres of liquid a year, or the equivalent of
Currently GIDA manages treatment plants for the municipalities of Prato, Vaiano, Vernio and Cantagallo, the Calice sewage treatment plant and the industrial aqueduct network. Now more than ever, GIDA is prepared to welcome the new challenges stemming from its role in research and the application of innovative and energy-efficient technologies such as:
- the development of wastewater recycling through the industrial aqueduct;
- the strengthening of a liquid waste disposal platform;
- the harnessing of the energy potential of sludge resulting from treatment, and finally
- active cooperation in the creation of a separate sewer for industrial wastewater.