Waste Water Recycling and Sewage Treatment

Written By Admin
Dated: October 17, 2007

View More Articles

Print Friendly Page


Waste Water Recycling and Sewage Treatment

Everyone tinkles and poo’s, even the Royal family. But unless you’re the parent of a tot-in-training, it’s not typically thought to be proper to be discussing toilet issues beyond where the nearest loo is located and permission to utilize those facilities. Without regard to whether it is proper or not, most of us don’t personally think about it much farther than that anyway. You do your business, flush, and wash your hands properly and that is the end of it. Many of us do not consider the amount of water that a conventional toilet uses to flush wastes away, or consider what happens to wastes after flushing.

In your home waste can be delivered to a septic tank outside your home via your toilet and the pressure of the up to ten gallons of rushing water into the bowl that is created when you flush.  There it remains and naturally breaks down over a period of many years. It typically takes five or more years for wastes to break down and become a sort of fertilized soil matter, albeit the matter is of course human wastes. Septic tank systems usually do not encounter problems unless the amount of wastes going in is greater than the capacity of the tank or the wastes already in the tank have not wasted away enough to allow for the introduction of more wastes. If this occurs, a septic systems professional would need to empty the tank of wastes to prevent nasty backflows and bogging of wastes in the toilet itself.

Alternatively, many homes, as well as businesses and hotels, have their wastes carried by water and pressure through a piping system to a sewage treatment facility. Once the waste arrives at the sewage treatment facility it is contained in what are called reed beds where the waste undergoes a sanitation process which is aided by exposure to the elements such as rain and air for rapid biodegrading. A reed bed used for sewage treatment is an eco-friendly process because very little energy for power is needed and a reed bed removes harmful pathogens within the waste before it can become an environmental or public health hazard. Waste that has undergone this process of sewage treatment is easier and more cost effective to dispose of and the treated wastes can be used for other things such as for agricultural purposes. The water which was used to carry the wastes to the sewage treatment facility along with rain water collections also undergoes a sanitation process and the clean water is recycled for reuse.

Conventional toilets, whether they are installed in and used in suburban homes or in hotels for use by guests, use more water than is needed for their intended purpose. More and more residential consumers, businesses and hotels are installing eco-friendly toilets that use less water and can even recycle waste water for reuse to significantly reduce water and electricity usage to help conserve these two precious commodities. Some are now also choosing composting toilets for recycling waste water and conserving electricity, and believe it or not, properly composted human wastes can be used safely as agricultural and garden fertilizer.

An eco-friendly composting toilet uses two water holding tanks. One is known as Gray water and the other is known as Black water. The grey water is the water used to flush wastes from the toilet bowl into the black water tank. There is a filtering system in which recycled waste water is returned to the grey water tank for reuse.   The black tank holds liquid and solid wastes and also contains bacterial enzymes to aid in the breaking down or composting of wastes. When the black water tank becomes full it can be emptied onto a backyard composting pile for use as fertilizer for garden plants and flowers or it can be taken to a sewage treatment or sewage disposal centre for emptying.

Eco-friendly sewage treatment, a reed bed, waste water recycling, waste sanitation, composting waste for use as fertilizers, and composting toilets may not have been used often in your typical vocabulary before today. After all, most of us do not feel comfortable discussing toileting and human waste issues. It is however important that this begins to change, that people become more comfortable with discussing and choosing to use eco-friendly alternatives such as low-flow water and composting toilets, and supporting sewage treatment facilities. It is important because the future of our environment is dependent upon the full participation towards conservation and protection of the environment by everyone. We all tinkle and poo, but we do not have to be and cannot afford to be environmental, conservation and protection poopers. Eco-friendly choices such as composting toilets, waste water recycling, and sewage treatment give us the tools to  take command of the future health of our environment and ourselves.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Water Conservation

Green Cleaning