Recycling Water And Sludge For Municipalties

Recycling water and sludge for municipalities is a hot topic. Especially in the water-starved Central Valley of California.

The city of Modesto has embarked on a massive project to recycle their sludge for use by local farmers. This is smart project is the highlight of an excellent article on the NPR website: 
http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/07/20/424571389/drought-stricken-california-farmers-look-to-tap-urban-wastewater/

But what do you do if you don’t have hundreds of millions of dollars?

With the Figure 8 Environmental approach, we have figured out a way to offset the costs of setting up your own sludge recycling system with income generated by the gathering and selling of waste byproducts. The result, as one of our customers put it, is simply a “no brainer.”

How To Make Money From Sewage

Recovering nutrients from sludge can be profitable, as well as environmentally sound.

In this case, Ostara, a company in Vancouver, Canada, is recovering phosphorus through sewage treatment. They produce a high-quality fertilizer is easy for plants to absorb.

Their solution is aimed at cities with large sludge processing needs. Another example of creative ways to deal with sludge.

How to make money from sewage involves a different approach to phosphorus.

To extract the phosphorus from sewage, one of the methods is to use microorganisms. The treated microorganisms become a byproduct called sludge cake, which can can be resold to local farmers and used to fertilize their soil. Or, you can use it on your own farm to boost yield per acre.

Read more about this method at:

http://ostara.com/project/how-can-money-be-made-from-sewage/” target=”_blank”>http://ostara.com/project/how-can-money-be-made-from-sewage/”>http://ostara.com/project/how-can-money-be-made-from-sewage/