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4.1        Introduction

Treatment to clean our sewage is essential to protect human health and the environment. Waste water treatment is also expensive, resource intensive and can generate significant greenhouse gas emissions. In seeking to protect the environment from micropollutants generated by our modern way of living, we solve the issue by adding yet more resource-intensive solutions, creating more waste and emissions. In our focus towards ensuring the water cycle is respected,  we have developed a linear solution – missing the circularity which sewage treatment should represent. This approach is an unsustainable way to resolve an issue of a “waste” that will be continuously generated.

A central problem that we create for ourselves is the use of substances which are harmful to the environment, traces of which can enter the water system from our homes, schools and workplaces. Some of these substances are essential and alternatives may not be available. But for others, achieving the aims of the Chemicals for Sustainability Strategy provide for a long term solution. Transitioning to a society where chemicals and products no longer contain substances of concern[1] both advances zero pollution and also allows circularity, within the product as well as the “waste water” chain. In advance of achieving that ambition, we will nevertheless have to manage pollutants already in use and circulation.

Historically, we have left it to water managers to solve society’s waste problem, at the end of the pipe. But already more sustainable solutions are being trialled by innovative utilities, villages and cities. By recognising the central role that waste water treatment can play in a circular, zero pollution economy, full power can be applied to achieve systemic change.

[1] i.e. those with persistent, toxic, bioaccumulative and mobile characteristics