Wastewater treatment plants turn waste into energy

When you flush your toilet, the water goes down the drain. But before it can be safely discharged back into rivers, lakes, or other waterways, that water must be treated.

A modern wastewater treatment plant with ponds that recycle sewage water.

The process takes a lot of energy. In most places, that energy is costly and creates a lot of carbon pollution.

But that’s changing in Santiago, Chile. There, utility group Suez is working to make its wastewater treatment plants generate as much power as they use.

Giros: “By reducing our energy consumption, being more efficient, this is really fighting against the climate change.”

Read the story from Yale Climate Connections  - “Wastewater treatment plants turn waste into energy.”

Will giving the Himalayas the rights as people protect their future?

Himalayan glaciers, rivers, streams, lakes, air, meadows and forests now have the same legal rights as people after the Uttarakhand High Court in India granted these natural treasures this new status as a way to protect them from pollution and environmental destruction.

View from Kalindi Peak of Himalayas located
at Uttarkashi district of Uttarakhand, India.

The ruling, made on 30 March 2017, aims to ‘preserve and conserve’ the ‘Glaciers including Gangotri and Yamunotri, rivers, streams, rivulets, lakes, air, meadows, dales, jungles, forests wetlands, grasslands, springs and waterfalls’ of the Himalayas.

This ground-breaking ruling came ten days after the same court ruled India’s sacred Ganges and Yamuna rivers were also legal persons. At the same time, the New Zealand Government passed legislation recognising Whanganui River as a legal person. Collectively, the establishment of these new legal persons represents the most significant creation of new legal rights for nature since 2010, when Bolivia passed the Law of Mother Earth.

Read the University of Melbourne Pursuit story - “Will giving the Himalayas the rights as people protect their future?”