Online course exploring reedbeds as an environmentally friendly wastewater treatment solution.

If you’re living or working in a remote location or need low impact, eco-friendly options for wastewater management, reedbeds offer a great solution. On this course you’ll explore how wetland systems such as reedbeds treat black and grey water through biophysical means, including what kind of effluents they can treat, what scale they are suitable to, and what their comparative ecological footprint is.

Key information

• Duration: one day
• Upcoming dates: Saturday 3rd December 2022
• Start and finish times: starts at 10am (online meeting room open from 9:45am) and ends at 4.30pm
• Fee: £65
• Includes: tuition, course materials, Q&A session, opportunity to discuss your project
• Terms and Conditions:
  • you must be 18 years or over to attend our courses.
  • For full list of terms and conditions click here

What you will learn

On this new online course, we’ll explore complete wastewater treatment through a mix of live presentations and virtual tours of CAT’s onsite systems. Starting with standard approaches, we’ll move through to alternative systems including constructed wetlands and ponds, percolating willow filters and gravel beds and horizontal and vertical flow reed beds.

We will discuss location and site assessments, construction and design features, planning permission, maintenance aspects and environmental considerations.

You’ll also have the chance to join other participants in discussing your projects in themed breakout rooms and Q&A sessions.

The course is suitable for anyone with a practical interest in water quality, or anyone wishing to replace or upgrade a current system such as a septic tank to a more environmentally friendly solution.

Tutor profile

Fin has a BSc in Marine Biology and MSc in Human Ecology and has worked on water resources and services to ecosystems at CAT since 2011, teaching and developing short courses, lectures, tours and workshops to engage people in critical conversations on human-waste-place relations.

Beyond CAT Fin collaborates on co-design and installation of low impact sanitation solutions for off grid homes, allotments, small holders, festivals and camp sites in Wales, Scotland and Europe. A recent project is Phytology’s accessible composting toilet for the nature reserve in Bethnal Green and the ongoing ecological sanitation solution for the RNLI lookout hut in Aberdyfi. They live in a self-build small house in a Welsh village near CAT.