Fair play George

[melted welly]

Government taken to court over axing of farmland sewage sludge pledge

Campaigners granted permission for a High Court hearing to challenge government over decision to axe pledge to test agricultural sewage sludge for microplastics

www.farminguk.com

Never used the stuff. However, in the UK retailers “WWF Basket” commitments is a pledge to ensure suppliers use 50% recycled phosphate by 2030. So that’s via sewage cake is it? And that’ll be a condition of supply, that human sewage products are spread on the land.

On the old maps, there was a “sewage works” 2 miles from here on a railway siding, I always wondered why one was needed in a small hamlet of 4 houses. I now understand that this was where the “night soil” fertiliser would’ve been delivered via rail for farmers to collect and spread. This accounts for the shards of fancy china found in the middle of random fields, it wasn’t a ploughman’s picnic, broken crockery was thrown out with the shite prior to the likes of Joseph Bazalgette sorting out urban sanitation.

So recycling human waste isn’t new, it’s the circle of life. Or it was. There was no pharmaceutical residues or micro plastics in the night soil.

We learn more about the complex biology of the soil every year, I really feel it could be severely fecked up for food production, far beyond the degradation that our tight rotations and recreational cultivating has achieved.

I agree with George.

 

[Swarfmonkey]

Over three quarters of a million tons of sewage sludge offloaded by water companies on to English farmers every year. That's some leverage there. What would happen if you decided, en masse, that you'd not take it unless you were paid to take it? It would start piling up real quick if you weren't disposing of it for them.

 

[melted welly]

Over three quarters of a million tons of sewage sludge offloaded by water companies on to English farmers every year. That's some leverage there. What would happen if you decided, en masse, that you'd not take it unless you were paid to take it? It would start piling up real quick if you weren't disposing of it for them.

Maltsters have in their supply contracts that they won’t accept grain grown on land it has been applied to, not a lot of it used on Scottish farms. Think RT might have something on fresh produce too.

 

[Swarfmonkey]

It'd be interesting to know how much is spread north of the border, I could only find the figure for England.

 

[melted welly]

It'd be interesting to know how much is spread north of the border, I could only find the figure for England.

None round here, and I don’t know anyone who uses it. SQC don’t allow it I think.

 

[milkloss]

What would happen if you decided, en masse, that you'd not take it unless you were paid to take it?

It wouldn’t happen…… we’re not smart enough for that.
I’m not joking either.

 

[hendrebc]

No one else but farmers would take what is basically toxic waste and act like the person giving it to you is doing you a favour.
I'm not against using human waste as such it should be used for growing food again. But no one should take it unless it's had the chemicals and microplastics removed properly.

 

[Bokey]

No one else but farmers would take what is basically toxic waste and act like the person giving it to you is doing you a favour.
I'm not against using human waste as such it should be used for growing food again. But no one should take it unless it's had the chemicals and microplastics removed properly.

And heavy metals

 

[BrianV]

It wouldn’t happen…… we’re not smart enough for that.
I’m not joking either.

Lets be honest farmers & the NF Union are the dumbest feckers in the country, we have in our grasp a way to bring this country to a virtual standstill with no cost to ourselves & without inconveniencing the general public that any other union in the country would give their back teeth for.
It simply takes someone in the NFU to have the balls to instruct every farmer in the UK to stop taking sewage sludge until the government play fair with UK farmers, but for the simple reason at the beginning of this it will not happen.

 

[Swarfmonkey]

It wouldn’t happen…… we’re not smart enough for that.
I’m not joking either.

Frankly, that's bloody depressing. In other sectors even mortal enemies (in a business sense) will band together to fight for their common interests.

 

[Green oak]

Straw for compost days have dried up around here Plastic content. And hormones found in Sewage sludge. They put it in the sea. Not good. They dump it on the land. Not good. Whats the alternative.

 

[Vader]

No one else but farmers would take what is basically toxic waste and act like the person giving it to you is doing you a favour.
I'm not against using human waste as such it should be used for growing food again. But no one should take it unless it's had the chemicals and microplastics removed properly.

Micro plastics everywhere now already...
Same with chemicals. People pump their houses full of them, from air freshners to cleaning products.
Bit of each in shite is least of health worrys...

 

[deleted user 837354]

I don't believe the metals or plastics or chemicals can be removed from it economically.

About the only thing that you can do with it then is bury it in a hole, dump it in the sea or burn it in a power station.

 

[vantage]

I don't believe the metals or plastics or chemicals can be removed from it economically.

About the only thing that you can do with it then is bury it in a hole, dump it in the sea or burn it in a power station.

The last of those three options would be the one to use, until all plastics, chemicals and metals are removed pre it going in the sewage. Two hundred years ago they managed it.

 

[deleted user 837354]

The last of those three options would be the one to use, until all plastics, chemicals and metals are removed pre it going in the sewage. Two hundred years ago they managed it.

Burning it to make electricity and then using the resultant ash as an aggregate to build roads would make most sense. You won't stop all the stuff ending up in it I don't think. Think of all the rain on roofs- washes over a bit of lead in the roof, straight down the drainpipes and into the sewer. That's heavy metals right there.

 

[wr.]

Blody hell! I've been saying this for years. We in Wales should be boycotting this crap. Two places I cut the hedges have huge piles of it dumped in fields. One of the piles runs out of the roadside gate and into the gutter. The other is running straight into the River Usk. Can the contraceptive pill be removed from the sludge for a start? It really is frightening when one stops to think about the consequences to this alone without all of the other stuff that is in it.
No wonder Wales is in an NVZ.

 

[soapsud]

Straw for compost days have dried up around here Plastic content. And hormones found in Sewage sludge. They put it in the sea. Not good. They dump it on the land. Not good. Whats the alternative.

A skeptic tank man down here bought land to dispose of his sludge. The sheep that grazed it after didn't do well (after the usual rest times etc). Something about an aggressive bacteria apparently. He doesn't keep sheep now. Though that maybe because of EA rules on treatment.

So drugs, chemicals heavy metals and hormones are problems for a healthy soil?
Here's a flippant answer to what's the alternative:
- a hippy commune like Somerset's Tinker's Bubble or Machynlleth's CAT where sludge comes only from organic vegetarians, over 40 and not on pills.

 

[Kevtherev]

Burning it to make electricity and then using the resultant ash as an aggregate to build roads would make most sense. You won't stop all the stuff ending up in it I don't think. Think of all the rain on roofs- washes over a bit of lead in the roof, straight down the drainpipes and into the sewer. That's heavy metals right there.

Roads are shyte anyway without doing that.

 

[BrianV]

Roads are shyte anyway without doing that.

Can you imagine the panic in government if the NFU threatened to bring this to the publics attention as a negotiating stance, they won’t because the NFU were bought off years ago.

 

[BrianV]

You have to wonder just who it is that is pulling all the strings with these puppets.

https://www.nfuonline.com/media/2smbeu2j/nfu_2023_financial_statement.pdf