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 ...

Sewers could help clean the atmosphere

Sewage treatment—an unglamorous backbone of urban living—could offer a cost-effective way to combat climate change by flushing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.

What causes algal blooms, and how we can stop them?

Outbreaks of algae have killed up to a million fish in the Murray Darling Basin over the last two weeks. The phenomena of "algae blooms", when the population of algae in a river rapidly grows and dies, can be devastating ...

Removing multi-resistant bacteria from sewage

Multi-resistant bacteria have learned to survive treatments with antibiotics by developing defense mechanisms. Not all of them are dangerous for human beings. Still, these bacteria are able to transmit their resistance genes ...

Clean Water Act dramatically cut pollution in U.S. waterways

The 1972 Clean Water Act has driven significant improvements in U.S. water quality, according to the first comprehensive study of water pollution over the past several decades, by researchers at UC Berkeley and Iowa State ...

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