It was twelve years ago now that Maltese hydrologist Marco Cremona developed an innovative system to filter fresh drinking water from sewage, a project he believed would make hotels 80% self-sufficient. 

The ‘HOTER’ project was one of three finalists for the prestigious CNBC/Allianz award for the best green business idea in Europe in 2009 , was nominated for the 2010 Stockholm Water Prize, and was featured on the BBC, Al Jazeera, France 24 and other international news stations. It also saw Cremona receive the Ġieħ ir-Repubblika award for his “work in the field of water, in Malta and internationally”. 

The sky seemed to be the limit, but fate had other, more frustrating plans, for the Maltese hydrologist. 

In a lengthy Facebook status, Cremona recounted how a hotel (db Seabank) had told him in 2011 that it was willing to buy his recycled water. Cremona built and installed a full scale sewage treatment plant in the hotel, with financial aid from Malta Enterprise, and applied for a license from the Superintendence of Public Health. 

“And that’s when the problems started,” Cremona said. “The Public Health had assumed that the project would never be commercialised and that I would stop at writing an academic paper.”

Marco Cremona’s project was featured on the BBC

Seven years later and Cremona, frustrated by Maltese bureaucracy, has officially given up. 

“After a successful independent certification of the process and numerous water tests which all confirmed the water’s safety as bottled water, two judicial protests, declarations by the EU Commission that there is nothing in the EU that prohibits this activity (indeed it encourages it), meetings with at least three Health Ministers and I don’t know how many Superintendents of Public Health, (useless) presentations to the Public Health Council and the Food Safety Commission, I have now given up,” Cremona said. 

“Despite declarations of wanting to become ‘the Best in Europe’ I can only conclude that Malta is not ready for such ground-breaking innovative ideas. Indeed, they are considered an inconvenience, a problem. The authorities clearly prefer that these ideas be developed elsewhere. One public health superintendent once asked me why I’m not taking my project to Germany, to which I replied “Because I am Maltese, I live in Malta, and Malta needs this process more than any other country in Europe”. 

“Despite my abandoning the summit attempt, I still believe that HOTER will be the way buildings will manage water in future, but I will not be the one to make it happen. I may have shook the ball, but I wasn’t able to make it roll. I will channel my energies into something where a (Maltese) authority’s permission is not required.”

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Tim Diacono

Tim is interested in the rapid evolution of human society and is passionate about justice, human rights and cutting-edge political debates. You can follow him on Instagram or Twitter/X at @timdiacono or reach out to him at [email protected]