Today, only 11 per cent of the world’s treated wastewater is reused and around half of the world’s untreated wastewater still enters rivers, lakes, and seas. Wastewater is a growing health and environmental threat, accounting for almost as much planet warming emissions as the aviation industry. The global demand for water, food and energy is expected to intensify, resulting in scarcity, energy shortfalls and declining reserves of non-renewable nutrients such as phosphorus, zinc and copper. But there is a large untapped potential if we would manage our wastewater and our nutrient flows more sustainably. Solutions already exist to introduce a new era where today’s wastewater treatment plants become the resource plants of tomorrow: by recovering energy as well as nutrients like phosphorus and nitrogen from wastewater and reuse treated wastewater for agricultural and industrial use. We would like to reframe the notion of wastewater management to one of resource recovery resulting in cost reduction and circularity to turn our planetary crises around.
- Pages
- 2
- Published in
- Baku, Azerbaijan
