Do canal boats have toilets? Yes, and they’re greener than your average bog.
The Hawkesbury’s waters look beautifully natural but treated sewage makes up to 20% of the river flow where the North Richmond Filtration Plant draws its water.
Karl Baron/flickr
Perth is looking at recycling all its sewage in the city’s future water supply. But many Australians’ drinking water already contains indirectly recycled treated sewage.
Wastewater treatment systems around the world are hamstrung by outdated tests that don’t identify a growing array of pathogens or identify the sources of pollutants.
In Africa, more than 315,000 children die every year from diarrhoeal diseases caused by unsafe water and poor sanitation.
Shutterstock
There have been modest improvements in water and sanitation provision in Africa, but there is still a long way to go. Most citizens rate their governments’ performance in this sphere poorly.
Could municipal biosolids be a trove of tiny treasure?
Heather Lowers, USGS Denver Microbeam Laboratory
Mining waste rock from historic mines or even treated sewage to find useful metals and minerals could be a sustainable way to meet demand for these finite resources.
New Delhi’s Yamuna River, like much of India’s water, is polluted. The world urgently needs low-carbon ways to clean things up.
EPA/Harish Tyagi
Much of the world still lacks access to proper sanitation and clean water - an issue that needs urgent action. But without low-carbon technologies, clean water could come at the expense of the climate.
A tangled web. Helping infrastructure make connections.
Zachary Scott-Singley
Every time we turn on a tap, switch on a light or drive to the shops we are relying on the infrastructures that make our modern economy work. These infrastructures are being developed to meet new challenges…
It was a ball of grease so enormous, so destructive and so repugnant that not just London, but the whole world, recoiled in horror. The city’s biggest-ever fatberg lurked under Kingston-upon-Thames for…
Dredging of Tasmania’s Tamar Estuary reveals our sewerage systems aren’t coping so well.
Ian Kidd
Anyone flushing a toilet in urban Australia today does so confident that they’ll never again see the thing they’ve flushed. They probably also think they are causing minimal environmental harm, thanks…
Increased coastal population growth and rising water levels could lead to damaged sewerage systems and water contamination.
Flickr/autowitch
Sea levels are rising and the world’s vast coastal settlements face many damaging changes. One of the most difficult and expensive challenges is the risk to the safe and effective operation of our sewerage…
Sewer infrastructure isn’t ready for our water saving techniques.
gnackgnackgnack/Flickr
Saving water is a good thing, right? But what if I told you it could also cause problems. A recent study from Victoria University indicates water-conservation can have unintended consequences for residents…
Our conventional water supply system that continually captures and delivers water is under great strain because of an increase in population, rapid urbanisation, and drastic changes in climate and rainfall…