United Utilities is converting a by-product of waste water at its Blackburn plant into gas.
Some communities have successfully taken the initiative over ordinary rubbish as well as waste water.
Experts say that with further development, it could find applications in cleaning up oil spills and waste water.
Mines and factories that make paint, batteries or electroplated products discharge waste water into local rivers and lakes.
Researchers in Scotland are taking a leading role in a project to reduce pharmaceutical residues in waste water.
Despite severe drought shortages in California, the general public has resisted converting waste water into drinking water.
The rate of tax paid by each household is also used to calculate waste water and refuse collection charges.
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The next step on the water is polishing which brings the waste water to a usable water for irrigation.
Instead of draining away waste water, the workers on duty somehow flushed out thousands of litres of bulk whisky.
They export large amounts of wastes including household and industrial wastes, waste water and the gases linked with global warming.
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In these locations disposal wells are drilled into existing underground salt-water aquifers and the waste water is pumped into these zones.
But water companies needed to invest in the sewer network to ensure untreated waste water was only released in urgent cases.
Mobile Fluid Recovery then used a massive high-speed drum to spin out all the absorbed oil and waste water from the booms.
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In the meeting, residents were urged to keep waste water to a minimum as concerns about the village's sewage system were raised.
First, a radioactive waste water spill outside of Chicago that went unreported.
The method uses biogas, which is produced when waste water sludge is broken down by microbes in a process known as anaerobic digestion.
The HighDro Power system works by harnessing the considerable energy from falling waste water in the soil pipes of high-rises, converting it to electricity.
The waste water is treated and just over half reused for industrial purposes, according Mohamed Al Madfaei, executive director at the Abu Dhabi Environmental Agency.
But arid Adelaide recycles over 30% of its water, and to its south, the vineyards of McLaren Vale are irrigated with the city's waste water.
By 2015, the government intends to add 42 million tons of daily sewage treatment capacity to increase its urban waste water treatment rate to 85 percent.
The idea of turning waste water into drinking water may see repulsive to some, but experts say it's already being done elsewhere on a smaller scale.
The method is being employed at a small test facility, where waste water is piped through a complex maze of equipment, including a membrane that removes the nasty stuff.
The ratings will cover eight broad categories: education, health care, water and waste water utilities, energy utilities, cities, counties and states, transportation, ports and airports, U.S. Treasuries and agency debt.
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Critics of existing scrubber technology however point out that the technology only removes the toxic chemicals from the atmosphere at the expense of depositing them in the ocean as contaminated waste water.
The Chicago area has 1, 300 units of local government, including six counties, 113 townships, 270 municipalities, 306 school districts and 558 special districts that do everything from treating waste water to fighting mosquitoes.
As such, Obama says that the Environmental Protection Agency has the authority to monitor certain aspects of shale gas production such as the disposal of waste water and the assurance of clean water supplies.
New technology might be able to halve the amount of water again, says Mike Fatigati, vice president of Delta-T Corp, a Virginia company which has designed a system that does not discharge any waste water.
But the other 45% of recycled waste water was simply discharged at sea or released on to the land, where it had been pushing up groundwater levels, and eventually resulted in the creation of Lake Zakher.
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