Making drinking water from sewage and other big ideas at Chicago Water Week
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Recycling sewage into drinking water may sound gross, but it's one of many ideas being floated at this year's Chicago Water Week.
The big picture: To better understand this alternative to diverting H20 from water-rich areas like ours, Axios talked to Peter Annin, author of "Purified: How Recycling Sewage is Transforming our Water."
- He'll speak at the Shedd Aquarium on Thursday.
His biggest surprise: How many communities are already drinking former sewage, including Orange County, California; San Diego; El Paso and more.
- "It is happening all over the Sunbelt and most people don't even realize it," Annin tells Axios.
The big takeaway: "There are only two realistic options left for 'new' water supplies: the ocean and the toilet, and that the toilet is the more sustainable option — as long as people can just get over the yuck factor," he says.
Zoom in: Closer to home, Green Bay Packaging is using "recycled sewage to make their paper and not discharging any wastewater into the once notoriously polluted Fox River," Annin says.
The intrigue: Rare earth minerals may be the next resource scientists extract from wastewater, according to new research.
- UChicago researcher Chong Liu and others will talk about a process to pull lithium from "dilute sources" on Tuesday night in a program that is already filled up.
If you go: You can find all the Water Week events, including Annin's Thursday talk here. Highlights include:
- "How to Poison a Planet," a film featuring Mark Ruffalo about forever chemicals and how they got into the environment at 7pm Monday at Jones College Prep.
- Spring migration bird tour at Powderhorn Lake hosted by Audubon Great Lakes at 9am Wednesday.
- Walking tour of the Wild Mile on the Chicago River hosted by Urban Rivers at 6pm Wednesday.
- Virtual tour of the Deep Tunnel hosted by Metropolitan Water Reclamation at 2pm Thursday.