The treasure in our toilets

People Fixing the World

• Episode: The treasure in our toilets
• Website: People Fixing the World
• Feed URL: http://podcasts.files.bbci.co.uk/p04grdbc.rss
• Duration: 00:24:21
• Published: 2020-03-24 04:06

Human sewage contains lots of valuable nutrients, so should we be recycling it? One of these nutrients is phosphorus, a key ingredient in fertiliser. We need fertilisers to meet the demands of the planet’s growing population, but there is a limited supply of phosphorus. Once it finds its way into the sea it becomes impossible to recover. And yet we all excrete about half a kilogram of the stuff a year, making cities a potentially rich source of the element. In the Netherlands human sludge is already being processed to recover phosphorus and recycle it into a high-tech fertiliser which will not leach into the environment. Reporter: William Kremer Photo: Getty images