Key Messages

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Treatment to clean up our sewage is essential to protect human health and the environment.
Urban waste water treatment (UWWT) has been key to improving the quality of Europe’s waters in recent decades, shown in the significant improvement of bathing water quality. However, treatment methods can be energy- and water- intensive.
Many chemicals from our homes and workplaces, such as plasticisers and personal care products, end up in waste water. These then need removing, as waste water treatment remains the last chance to protect our waters from chemical pollution.
Greenhouse gases are emitted at many stages of UWWT, from those embedded in infrastructure like sewers to sludge management.

We can move from our linear approach to waste water treatment, which focuses on the water cycle and water treatment, to a genuinely circular approach, which considers all the inputs and emissions related to sewage treatment.
Sewage treatment can generate energy and allow resource recovery, e.g. of phosphorus, leading to sustainability.
Treatment of sewage is not “one size fits all”. Local conditions call for local solutions. Financial resources, the availability of land, the density of population and types of industry are among the factors which influence potential options.
Technical solutions already exist to deliver circularity in sewage treatment. Vacuum toilets enable sewage to be safely treated within buildings or streets, recovering both energy and nutrients. Meantime, waste water from washing and cooking can be reused for lower quality applications. We need to enable implementation of such innovative approaches, through regulations, institutional and cultural shifts.
A key component for longer term circularity of sewage treatment is to ensure that harmful chemicals no longer reach sewage. This requires implementation of the Chemicals Strategy for Sustainability under the European Green Deal.