17 Ways You Can Reduce the Impact of Wastewater on Wildlife

The environmental impact of wastewater is significant, and we humans are responsible for poisoning wildlife with our wastewater.

Julie Smith, 5/14/26

This is a summary of Chapter 14, Dirty Water, in the book, “2050: What’s it Gonna Be?”.  You can download the full chapter, as well as other chapters.  References are here.

Like water, it’s unrealistic to have a complete discussion of balanced sustainability on planet Earth without including wastewater.  Just like water, wastewater is life and wastewater is energy and energy is wastewater.  And, we are wastewater.  After all, what goes in must come out.  The fact is, pretty much everything we flush, other than what we shouldn’t flush, to be discussed later, enter our bodies through our mouths, then get processed by the natural biological systems within.  Basically, the endless array of microbes that make up the microbial culture that drives the physiological processes in every living thing on earth, including us.  

In a balanced world, what goes in and what comes out of animals is in balance with what goes into the plant life that animals consume as food.  However, we no longer have a balance world, because we’ve grossly overpopulated it with us humans.  This actually was already a problem to deal with more than a century ago, when it became obvious that the planet couldn’t absorb all our waste.  And, ironically, the waste isn’t actually bad.  It’s full of nutrients and energy that’s simply leftover from our bodies, that we don’t need for energy or cell-building.  It’s really valuable stuff, at the end of the day. 

In the U.S.¹ there are about 16,000 wastewater treatment plants that serve about 76% of the population, treating about 34 billion gallons per day.  The rest of the wastewater continues to be treated with septic systems in remote locations.  In addition to the treatment plants themselves, there’s a vast network of collection pipes that convey wastewater from your toilet to main underground pipes and ultimately to the treatment facility.  Wastewater treatment is a big deal, and a lot of trained professionals and a lot of energy and resources are involved in keeping our surface water resources clean by treating the wastewater.  When we flush, the water goes somewhere.  It doesn’t magically disappear, much as we might like to think.

And, all this wastewater treatment isn’t free.  Over the next two decades, estimated funding needs are more than $4 trillion for drinking water and wastewater infrastructure, and $271 billion for stormwater, assuming we’re reckless enough to continue growing our population.  If we get a clue sometime in there and back off on the population, these costs could be lower.  Either way, it won’t be cheap.  Also, these numbers don’t really include all the extra money we’ll have to spend to meet increasingly stringent discharge limits if we grow our population, to accommodate increasing amounts of wastewater from more people, or for extra treatment if we don’t stop flushing toxins, pharms, hormone disrupters and the like down the toilet. 

Based on data from more than 100 countries, the world’s population produces approximately 95 trillion gallons of wastewater annually.  Out of this, about 52% is treated prior to discharge, and the rest flows into the environment untreated.²  Not only is this gross beyond belief, given the sheer numbers of us, it’s horrible for the wildlife that has to live with the receiving yucked-out waters.  So, it’s no wonder we’re losing so much wildlife, given this horror on top of everything else we do to them.

The electricity to treat our wastewater in the U.S. runs more than 30 terawatt hours per year,⁴ and makes up 25 – 40% of the budget of most treatment facilities.⁵  Wastewater is the biggest energy user in a municipal utility, typically more than 30% of the electricity.  This is only the direct electricity, and doesn’t include the various chemicals used in the treatment processes, like the chlorine, methanol and coagulants, or any natural gas that might be used for heating in cold climates, or transportation for the fleets.  Any way you look at it, wastewater treatment consumes a lot of energy.

Luckily, there are plenty of opportunities to improve operations in wastewater plants to reduce energy and chemical requirements, and since less energy saves costs, more treatment plants are pursuing these.  It turns out that wastewater is actually a valuable resource, and facilities are beginning to focus on harnessing this vast valuable resource.

Traditional “Wastewater Treatment Plants” are being renamed as “Water Resource Recovery Facilities”, or WRRF’s, sometimes shortened to RRF’s.  This new name sets a new definition of wastewater as a resource to be recovered and utilized beneficially, rather than as waste to be removed and eliminated.  After all, when our bodies convert food into nutrients through metabolic processes, a lot of energy is consumed within us, and a portion of this energy remains within the excrement that makes up the sewage.  Something like the carbon that is held in a tree.  In short, it’s estimated that the energy contained within wastewater is about five times the amount of energy needed to treat it.  

Wastewater is being viewed as a circular economy, in which resources are extracted from it, turning the treatment plants into profit centers instead of the CO₂ emitters they are now.  In a way, it’s like mining, and then recycling the material we mined after it’s used for, say, an aluminum can.  Only different.  Instead of extracting finite resources that took millions of years to accumulate deep in the earth, we’re taking an infinite resource and continuously reusing it, eliminating the need for mining fertilizers and such.  And if we can manage to stop growing our population, we can keep it at that, and maybe even give back someday.

If all the resources were recovered from wastewater plants, emissions would be reduced by 95%, and costs would be reduced by as much as $40 billion. One of the world’s first energy neutral RRF’s, in Marselisborg, Denmark, produces 50% more electricity than it needs to operate.⁶ 

Following are some examples of recoverable resources from wastewater treatment plants:

1. Sludge. Also known as biosolids, properly treated sludge is compost that can be applied to crops as a much more sustainable fertilizer than industrial fertilizers. Sludge is all-natural and infinitely replaceable in a circular economy, while industrial fertilizers are made from petrochemicals and mined minerals. Compost delivers nutrients to the crops and builds soil without running off, while industrial fertilizers run off the land and pollute waterways and the ocean, resulting in toxic septic algal blooms.

2. Biogas. Biogas is methane, which is exactly the same as natural gas. The important difference is that natural gas is produced from reserves that have been stored deep in the earth for millions of years old and add to carbon emissions when burned, while biogas is an infinite resource that is carbon neutral, because the wastewater and sludge that it's generated from emit CO₂ during treatment, so we get the energy from the carbon instead of just emitting it.

3. Algae. It turns out that, while runaway algae blooms are horrible for the environment when they’re in open waterways and the ocean, when done right, in RRF’s algae can be extremely valuable.  These days, it’s used in everything from beyond burgers to animal and fish feeds to natural dyes to fertilizers.  Algae, being a plant, can take up the CO₂ off-gas from wastewater plants and consume it in photosynthesis, which also reduces the CO₂ released to the environment from the treatment process for a win-win.

4. Heat Recovery. Since a significant portion of the wastewater we send down the drain has been heated for showers and cleaning and such, the heat can be recovered and reused to offset the energy that was used to heat the water in the home.  A recent example of this in Denver is the National Western Complex, which has up to 90% of the complex’s heating and cooling supplied by nearby Metro Denver wastewater treatment plant, offsetting about 2,600 tonnes of CO₂ per year in one of the largest sewer heat recovery projects on the continent.¹³

It turns out that most of the wastewater that we humans are responsible for never sees a wastewater treatment plant. This is because agricultural operations aren't required to treat their wastewater, so it simply runs into waterways untreated, releasing 14 times as much as wastewater treatment plants. This is the nastiest runoff of all, the runoff that’s causing extreme damage to wildlife, causing the massive deadly nutrient blooms in all our oceans. And then there's stormwater, which includes any water that runs off lands from cities and towns, including off vacant lots, buildings and parking lots and such, and typically runs through storm drains into the nearest water body, often the same water body, such as a river, that the local wastewater treatment plant discharges to.  And, the stormwater contains all the pesticides, dog poop, trash, oils, tire flakes and such from all our filthy irresponsible discards, so the wastewater treatment plant discharge is definitely much cleaner than the stormwater. The list of ways that humans pollute the waterways by way of our sewage is truly endless.

Here are 17 ways that you can reduce the impact of wastewater on wildlife and for humanity.  At the end of the day, it’s not hard.

1. Flush only the three P’s – poop, pee and paper.  NOTHING ELSE.  NO WIPES!  NO CONTACT LENSES!  EVER!

2. Food waste is fine, if you have a disposal that grinds it up. 

3. Never run fats or oils down the drain. EVER.  They form globs of fat in the sewer system known as "fatbergs", that cause blockages and backups.

4. Don’t litter.  That should be really basic. If you can take the time to go to the store and buy something, you should damn well be able to take the time to dispose of the container responsibly.  I mean, who’s supposed to pick it up if you don’t?  Your mother?

5. Pick up your pet’s feces so it doesn’t run into waterways.  Same comments as above.  If all dog crap is left on the ground, it’s as bad as if all of us humans did it, as if we had no wastewater plants, which in half the world they still don’t.  Don’t make things worse with your pets.

6. Avoid single-use plastic packaging.  Buy bulk.  Recycle packaging you can’t avoid.  Kitchen plastic like chip and snack bags can be collected in a TerraCycle Box, you can get one online and one box will last a year or more for a family of four if you’re careful about plastic.

7. Don’t buy personal care and cleaning products with nasty petrochemicals in them.  The problem with petrochemicals like unnecessary dyes and fragrances is that they don't break down in the wastewater treatment plant, and most of them end up getting discharged to receiving waterways, where they poison fish and wildlife. Know what you’re buying.  When you wash up, they go down the drain to the sewer.

8. Check with your landfill on where to dispose of any toxins in your home, get rid of what’s left and then stop using them for good. 

9. Avoid buying plastic clothing to keep plastic fibers out of the wastewater stream.

10. If you have a yard, don’t apply poisonous pesticides and fertilizers.  They run off into waterways and kill the wildlife, after they kill everything in your yard. Did you know that half of all pesticides sold in the U.S. are to homeowners? Please don't be that toxic loser. Be better.

11. Fleas on dogs and cats – don’t use poisons or toxins to remove fleas or keep them off your pet.  Wash them with soapy water and use a flea brush to get rid of the fleas, and drown them in the water.  The collars and poisons used to kill fleas are not good for the dog or the environment.  And if they’re on the dog they are in the house, and the house is what needs to be cleaned, again, soapy water and diligence, not poison.

12. Buy only organic food.  It’s the only food that’s certified to be grown without poisons.  All other food practices use poisons that not only run off into waterways after killing everything in fields where they’re applied, they also poison farmworkers.  Most local food and food at farmer’s markets are grown without chemicals, though they may not be certified because of the cost.  Ask if you’re uncertain.

13. Don’t buy industrial meat and dairy, because the waste is running off and polluting waterways, leading to dead zones and decimation of aquatic life in our oceans.  Buy only responsibly raised meat.  Certified grass-fed beef, for instance, is raised using practices that don’t destroy land, wildlife diversity and waterways.  Search for it.

14. While we can’t do a whole lot about pharms that run through our bodies, we can at least take care of ourselves by eating healthy, so we’re less likely to need them.  Also, think twice about the instant gratification offered by BIG PHARM, that constantly deluges us with commercials about how wonderful and happy our lives can be if we take this or that or the other, if we can overlook the side-effects.  Make sure you actually need it. 

15. NEVER EVER flush pharms down the drain.  They shouldn’t go in landfill either.  These days, police stations are taking pharms annually, and sending to incineration, where, done properly, they are burned down to CO₂ and water, which is better than poisoning and deforming wildlife with them by flushing them into our waterways.

16. Try to get a tour of your local Resource Recovery Facility/Wastewater Treatment Plant to learn more.  It’s truly amazing how they work.

17. If you’re looking for a career, check out wastewater.  The opportunities are really endless and it’s an absolute blast!