Published 2026-07-03
Dhia Madhurya Fawwaz (Environmental Engineering, class of 2025), Muhammad Denry Aliislami Brawijaya (Civil Engineering, class of 2025), and Ghefira Syakira Mumtaz (Environmental Infrastructure Engineering, class of 2025) represented ITB at the World Innovation for Sustainability Essay Competition (WISEC) 2026 in Yogyakarta on 27–28 June 2026.
Competing as Team 3 Ay’am, the students won eight awards for the AquaLoop Tower System (ATS), a compact greywater treatment system based on membrane bioreactor (MBR) technology and designed for high-rise buildings.
A Compact Approach to Greywater Reuse
The concept addresses land subsidence in Jakarta, to which excessive groundwater extraction by high-rise buildings contributes. The source article notes that limits on groundwater use face implementation challenges, including the substantial space required by conventional treatment installations in dense urban settings.
ATS integrates biological treatment, in which microorganisms break down organic pollutants, with fine membrane filtration using microfiltration or ultrafiltration to retain suspended solids and microbial biomass in a modular unit.
According to the team’s concept as described in the source article, this integration replaces the need for conventional sedimentation tanks and could reduce installation space by approximately 60%, while producing clearer and more stable reclaimed water. These are reported project claims, rather than independently verified performance results.
The compact design is intended for mechanical rooms or building basements, preserving commercial floor space. Treated water could be reused for non-potable purposes such as toilet flushing, cooling towers, cleaning, and landscape irrigation, reducing reliance on groundwater.
Eight Awards at WISEC 2026
- Grand Champion, 2nd Sustainable Innovation National Essay Competition & WISEC 2026
- Winner (1st Place), WISEC 2026
- Gold Medal, Sustainable Cities and Disaster Resilience subtheme
- Favourite Poster, Sustainable Cities and Disaster Resilience subtheme
- Best Presentation, Sustainable Cities and Disaster Resilience subtheme
- Best Booth Decoration, Sustainable Cities and Disaster Resilience subtheme
- Best Essay, Sustainable Cities and Disaster Resilience subtheme
- Best Sustainable Idea, Student Category
The team hopes its space-efficient treatment concept can contribute to reduced groundwater extraction and more sustainable urban water management in Indonesia and beyond.