These days, it’s all anyone can do to recycle in every facet possible. Recycling helps our environment, bolsters industry and can even affect the end consumers of products in a tremendous way! And, while there may be many types of recycling—from separating your plastics to composting biodegradable items—there’s one form of recycling that many people are not so familiar with: biosolids recycling.
The beneficial reuse of biosolids in Bethel, OH is something that’s been getting more and more attention in certain circles, but you might not hear too much about it through traditional information sources. Why? Because it’s often a subject that many people would rather avoid—after all, it focuses on the recycling of sewage waste and effluent. Not always a savory topic of conversation!
But, when you get down to the brass tacks of what biosolids recycling is, it’s actually quite interesting and very beneficial in a number of ways. To understand the many benefits of recycling biosolids, however, you must first stop thinking of it as sewage and waste and instead focus on the raw materials that can be salvaged from it.
Consider this: even our waste has nutrients and usable components to it—just because our bodies don’t require these things and they’re expelled, doesn’t mean that they don’t serve a purpose elsewhere. In fact, the beneficial reuse of biosolids in Bethel, OH focuses primarily on one industry that is tremendously bolstered by our waste: agriculture.
Agricultural benefits
In case you didn’t know, one of the best fertilizers known to man is waste: specifically animal waste, such as horse or cow manure. We’ve been using it to help crops grow big and strong for centuries and in that time, through the power of science, we’ve learned exactly why manure is so beneficial for soil. It’s because the crops and the soil they’re growing in absorbs the leftover nutrients from the manure, which is rife with them!
So, using this time-tested logic, biosolids are now being implemented as crop boosters. This serves a dual purpose benefit, since sludge and other waste is considered a biohazard until it’s properly dewatered. When dewatered, however, the sewage and effluent is then transformed into a biosolid that’s easily applied in an agricultural setting. Dewatering is a very important step in the process, however, since it stabilizes the organic matter within the excrement and allows for a safe application on farmland.
Environmental soundness
A highly touted peripheral benefit of creating and implementing biosolids is the lessened impact that sewage has on the environment. Rather than handling raw sewage and effluent in a way that might allow it to devastate the environment (remember, it’s still unstable at this point), companies are now appropriately handling waste and turning it into something that can be used in conjunction with the environment, rather than against it.
All of this is to say that, when handled correctly, human waste and sewage can actually be tremendously beneficial to the environment around us and today, has a chief practical use that makes it something more than just waste. The beneficial reuse of biosolids in Bethel, OH is something that’s only going to gain momentum as we learn more and more about how to appropriately use it to our advantage!