Recycling the Resource: Ecological Engineering for Wastewater (Environmental Research Forum, Vols 5-6)

This volume focuses on wastewater treatment that includes a recycling loop for water, nutrients, energy and other resources in the wastewater. The preliminary indications are that decentralized, re-circulating systems of wastewater treatment can be significantly cheaper than building and maintaining the conventional systems. Someday wastewater will be an antiquated expression, synonymous with "wasting water". The present-day systems of throwing away the majority of the nitrogen, phosphorus and other nutrients, plus organic matter in wastewater will be regarded as primitive, like the early computer scientists "throwing away" so much space with their large ungainly machines. It will be considered as natural to reuse wastewater's resources as it is now for farmers to plow their wheat stubble back into the ground. Ideas for new ways of treating wastewater are beginning to be accepted more and more.