This is still referring to the things I learned from the documentary Crapshoot:
We are looking now at sludge. Sludge is the solid waste after water is removed; it’s also called bio-solids even though that’s not quite right if you remember the list of substances going into sewage. As mentioned before, sewers were never meant to be clean and chemical-free. The use of sewers was not meant to result in safe and beneficial products that could be reintegrated into the nutrients cycle. In Canada half the sludge is still spread on farmland. Sludge is often free of charge to the farmer and even labelled as soil enhancer!
Example: In rural Ontario, where food is grown and cattle grazes, sludge is taken onto fields without notifying residents. The sludge gets dumped 1 to 5 times per day. Afterwards plastics and waste products can be found on the fields. A resident started asking questions and got no proper answers from government authorities or the treatment plant. Instead she was threatened that she would have to shut up about the issue in order to not cause worries amongst other residents. Water tests come back with E-Coli contamination. Looking forward to your farm fresh produce now?
In Sweden and other European countries (Belgium, Netherlands) sludge spreading on farm land has been banned, not by government but by agricultural entities. One reason was that flame retardants in sewage were spread on fields and later found in food and breast milk – the concentration of flame retardants had doubled every 6 years in Sweden. These flame retardants are linked to causing cancers. In Sweden sludge has since been used as a land filling material in motorways and non-critical places.
The state-of-the-art waste management facility in Edmonton includes a huge composting hall. The resulting compost was initially sold as Nutri-Plus but not everything that goes into the composting hall is just organic waste. In the meantime it’s sold as compost enhanced top soil to residents and agriculture.
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