The largest wastewater treatment plant in the country hopes the use of special bacteria will clean up our sewage, as well as the environment.
Millions of litres of wastewater comes through the Watercare facility in South Auckland every day, carrying with it the contents of toilets and showers from more than one million Aucklanders.
Watercare head of sustainability Chris Thurston says the water contains a mix of “quite potent” greenhouse gases.
“[This includes] both methane and nitrous oxide, which has 30 and 300 times the potency of carbon dioxide [respectively],” he said.
Watercare is trialling different ways to reduce emissions, with one approach including the use of specially-bred bugs.
Due to biosecurity laws at the border they can’t be imported, so they have to be grown on-site.
Watercare innovation manager Kevan Bryan says “one of the big energy consumers of our process is pumping oxygen through the tanks”.
When it comes to these bugs, however, he says they “hardly use any oxygen”.
The treatment plant says the trials need to happen now, especially as Auckland’s population continues to balloon.
“We get more and more sewage coming down the pipes, and that’s natural. We understand as the city grows that [increased sewage is] going to happen more and more,” Thurston said.
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