Concerns grow over tainted sewage sludge spread on croplands

For more than 20 years, the eastern Michigan town of Lapeer sent leftover sludge from its sewage treatment plant to area farms, supplying them with high-quality, free fertilizer while avoiding the expense of disposal elsewhere.

Fertilizer sourced from sewage sludge

Germany's new Waste and Sewage Sludge Ordinance requires large sewage treatment plants to recover phosphates from sewage sludge or ashes as of 2032. Conventional recovery technologies are costly and chemical-laden. A new ...

Energy from microbes for drying sewage sludge

A new biodrying process from Siemens quickly converts sewage sludge into a usable form while saving energy. When dried with the new process, sludge from wastewater treatment can be used as fertilizer, dumped in landfills ...

Can we turn sewage 'sludge' into something valuable?

Over the past few years I have become an academic expert in "sewage sludge" – the residual, semi-solid mix of excrement packed with microorganisms that is left behind within wastewater treatment plants. Every year the UK ...

Energy efficient sewage plants

High-rate digestion with microfiltration is state-of-the-art in large sewage plants. It effectively removes accumulated sludge and produces biogas to generate energy. A study now reveals that even small plants can benefit ...

Scientists study how a diabetes drug affects soils

The transport of pharmaceuticals released from sewage treatment plants into farmland soils, with the potential to load into drinking water sources, is one that researchers at the Illinois Sustainable Technology Center (ISTC) ...

Microplastics in agricultural soils—a reason to worry?

Microplastics are increasingly seen as an environmental problem of global proportions. While the focus to date has been on microplastics in the ocean and their effects on marine life, microplastics in soils have largely been ...

Extracting valuable resources from waste to make new bioplastics

An old British phrase states that 'where there's muck, there's brass' - meaning that where there are dirty jobs to be done there is money to be made. This rings true to this day where many valuable resources can be recovered ...

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