Sewage

I know some might react to that statement with disgust, but just think about it: sewage is obviously something which society produces in huge quantities, so doesn’t it make every kind of sense to find uses for the stuff if we possibly can?

In fact the potential is virtually limitless.

Medically, raw sewage offers all kinds of exciting possibilities for the discovery of new antibiotics to replace some of the obsolete fungal-derived ones to which super-bugs are becoming immune.

Sewage also harbours all kinds of potentially beneficial antipollutants.

In 1997, a bacterium was discovered in sewage that in no time at all cleans up carcinogenic organo-chlorines that would otherwise take decades, if not centuries, to biodegrade.

Sewage could also be an abundant source of vital phosphates for the chemical and food industries. Currently, these are obtained from fluoropatite minerals, which sometimes carry the risk of radiation. It would be far cheaper, as well as safer, to obtain them from raw, or semitreated, sewage sludge.

I could go on. I haven’t yet mentioned the obvious one: sewage makes excellent fertiliser.

I know some might find the above distasteful – but just think: sewage represents a limitless and virtually untapped source of huge benefit to humanity and it’s high time we were doing something about it.

Tony Kelly, Crook.