Vast amounts of valuable energy, agricultural nutrients, and water could potentially be recovered from the world’s fast-rising volume of municipal wastewater, according to a new study by UN University’s Canadian-based Institute for Water, Environment and Health (UNU-INWEH).
Today, some 380 billion cubic meters (m3 = 1000 litres) of wastewater are produced annually worldwide – 5 times the amount of water passing over Niagara Falls annually – enough to fill Africa’s Lake Victoria in roughly seven years, Lake Ontario in four, and Lake Geneva in less than three months.