The Gran Via venue of Fira de Barcelona hosts the Piscina&Wellness exhibition from this Monday until Thursday. It will bring together 360 exhibitors from 30 countries, in an edition that has registered 68% international participation. More than 40,000 square meters will showcase facilities, solutions, and technologies for the pool and wellness sector, which places sustainability at its core.
With this objective, the exhibition will for the first time use treated seawater to fill the facilities, and then collect it for other uses, such as fire extinguishing ponds. Sustainability is one of the key axes in the future of this sector, as is advancing connectivity and digitalization of pools. This is explained by the president of the exhibition and executive president of Fluidra, Eloi Planes, in an interview with The New Barcelona Post.
—How is the sector advancing towards sustainability?
—Work has been ongoing for years, but this year we wanted to take it to an extreme at the exhibition. One example is the seawater we will use and return to the system. Beyond that, the exhibition will feature innovations from exhibitors that go in this direction, and we will hold the first edition of the Pool Horizons Summit. Sustainability will be a transversal and key element of the exhibition.
—Can a pool be sustainable in a context of drought?
—The pool always carries this stigma and perception, and the reaction is understandable: it's a large basin full of water. But if we put it in perspective, a pool is a closed element with very reduced water consumption. When one looks up, I believe what is truly needed is comprehensive water planning. There are two major issues that need to be addressed: water infrastructure, and the regulatory framework.
—Regulatory, in what areas?
—In all aspects. One can also go down to pools specifically, but regulation is necessary. For example, there are technologies for more efficient irrigation, or for industrializing processes with lower water consumption. Also for reusing rainwater and greywater, and so that, if a pool already consumes little, it consumes even less. What needs to be done is to regulate with positive common sense, and not with negative common sense.
—Should regulation be implemented now to combat the effects of drought?
—When you are in crisis, it is very difficult to regulate. But you have to look up and see what needs to be done, because surely this elevation of the gaze is what has failed us. Structural measures were already proposed to be promoted with the 2009 drought and, when it rained, it was forgotten.
—And this should not happen again.
—We must regulate in a coherent and conscious way. That is why the sector takes a step forward, with the Pool Horizons Summit, which wants to highlight the positive impact of swimming pools. They are the best climate refuge and it is essential to have places to cool off due to climate change.
—Is the contribution of the swimming pool sector to act as this refuge from the heat?
—And not only that. The swimming pool has a contribution to the social challenges that we have to value, also from health, integration and survival issues, in a world with more floods and with places where people do not know how to swim. The summit wants to focus on this role of the swimming pool in social and environmental challenges.
—And how can they contribute to these challenges?
—There are two phases. The first is that the swimming pool, consuming little, can consume less and we can take it to zero consumption. But there is a second with a higher ambition: the swimming pool can become an element of positive impact. It can be a water reserve, for rainwater collection or for the use of gray water.
—Is the technology at that level?
—Technology is not there yet today, but, if we work with this concept, we can get there. With the objective no longer of converting it into a zero-consumption element, but into an element that helps with environmental challenges, in areas such as water and energy.
—Also energy?
—The swimming pool could contribute in the energy field; we have to think about how we are part of this solution. We are still far from this point, because everyone is still in the phase that it is necessary to achieve less consumption. The great paradigm that must be broken is this, and move on to it contributing to the system being more positive.
"In ten years, the swimming pool will be a more integrated digital and automated element in every sense"—The evolution of the sector has led to this point. How has it changed since the first exhibition was held, almost two decades ago?
—There have been four major trends: alternative water treatments to direct chlorination, the rehabilitation of the pool park, sustainability, and digitalization.
—What should we expect when we talk about a digitalized pool?
—Connectivity allows for measuring parameters and automating processes of maintenance systems and improving water quality. These two trends, sustainability and connectivity, are not unrelated: connectivity and digitalization will lead to more efficient pools, with lower water consumption and fewer chemical products.
—The pools of the future.
—If I close my eyes, I have no doubt that within ten years the pool will be a digital and automated element more integrated in every sense. In the case of residential pools, they will be more integrated into the house from a visual point of view, but also from the energetic interrelation and the water system.