Keeping freshwater clean starts at source. Essentially every toilet or kitchen sink is a spring within the catchment, flowing down to our percolation area or town sewer and on to our local river. The aim is to keep these springs as clean as possible; or at least to filter them if they get polluted by use within our homes. Many conventional sewage treatment methods offer excellent filtration properties, but can be expensive and energy intensive to implement and maintain. Nature Based Solutions such as reed beds, wetlands and willow systems can be used for treatment of domestic septic tank effluent…
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First published for Feasta on April 26th, 2016, reproduced here in full. Link to original article below. Introduction Closed loop agriculture is farming practice that recycles all nutrients and organic matter material back to the soil that it grew in. This forms part of an agricultural practice that preserves the nutrient and carbon levels within the soil and allows farming to be carried out on a sustainable basis. Current farming practice (as shown in Figure 1) relies heavily on imported nutrients to sustain high production. We eat the food; and then the nutrients and biomass from faeces and urine are…