Need for a dual sewage system

John Seymour

Two subjects that are very close to my heart: muck and money.

'To extract all the soluble nutrients out of the effluent from our present drainage system will never be possible'

Of course human sewage should be returned to the land. Anyone can see that is impossible to go on feeding the billions on this planet by the process of extracting phosphate and potash from rapidly diminishing deposits, turning them into food crops, eating the latter and then dumping the P and K down the sewers into the sea. BBut we have given our sewage engineers the wrong brief. We have said: 'Get rid of it!' We should have said: 'Recycle it!' It is true that it is possible to withdraw a small proportion of the solid matter of sewage and make fertiliser of it - but to extract all the soluble nutrients out of the effluent from our present drainage system (which are the things that really matter) will never be possible. For all the rain that falls on the roof - all the billions of tons that falls on the streets - goes down the same pipe! The only thing that can possibly happen to it is that it gets dumped into the rivers and the sea.

We must one day, before all the potash and phosphate get used up, install a dual sewage system - and return all human sewage back to the land, thus instituting a cyclical system instead of the present linear one. The survival of our species depends on our doing this.

John Seymour, address above.

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