“Sludge is a toxic stew of not only human waste, but everything else that goes down every drain.” – United Sludge-Free Alliance
There are two kinds of toxic sludge.
One is the food processing waste from food processing plants, or FPRs. Waste removal companies sign contracts with food processing companies such as Tyson Chicken to collect the wastewater, or sludge, and dispose of it. Food processing residuals. It sounds rather harmless. It’s not.
This is waste that comes from meat, vegetable, and fruit processing factories and slaughter houses. It is wastewater from washing down slaughter areas and rinsing animal carcasses. Disinfectants and cleaning chemicals. Residual chemicals from extracting or refining food. Pesticides, fungicides, and herbicides. Bones, blood, and pathogens. According to several online sources, it may contain “blood; bone; fruit and vegetable peels; seeds; shells; pits; cheese whey; off-specification food products; hides; hair; and feathers.”
Hold that thought for a minute. We’ll talk about whether those items can become “fertilizer” shortly.
The second item that is considered toxic sludge is wastewater sludge from water treatment plants, also called “sewage sludge.” It is everything that gets flushed down the drains of homes, businesses, and hospitals that doesn’t break down in wastewater treatment plants. Antibiotics and disinfectants. Steroids, hormone replacement therapy, and chemical abortion pills. Pharmaceuticals of all kinds. Chemicals that don’t break down, known as PFAS or “forever chemicals.”
This is household, medical, chemical, and industrial waste and no one knows what bacteria and pathogens it contains, or other unknown materials that can result from this toxic combination.
The powers that be and the business owners that profit from spreading this sludge on our land like to say that all these pathogens and chemicals have been safely broken down. They call it “fertilizer.”
how does it go from waste product to fertilizer?
It doesn’t.
As the United Sludge-Free Alliance points out, “Sewage treatment plants were never designed to produce fertilizer – They were designed to treat and condense whatever goes down the drain from homes, businesses, industry, hospitals, laboratories and funeral homes, where it collects at municipal waste water treatment plants.”
When the toxic sludge leaves the manufacturer, it is called “waste.” It’s then trucked to a farm and dumped into a specially constructed holding tank, like a manure pit. This is called an anaerobic lagoon. Here it becomes “fertilizer.” Chemicals are added to help the sludge break down faster. While this is happening, gases such as ammonia, hydrogen sulfide, and methane are emitted from the pit. And somehow, all the chemicals, pathogens, fats, oils, heavy metals, and animal body parts will become “fertilizer” when this process is complete.
Whatever complete means. It’s at the discretion of the farmer.
Now let’s talk compost. The fertilizer gardeners know.
As any composter knows, making compost fertilizer from fruit and vegetable peels, yard trimmings, leaves, sticks, animal manure, even weeds, is perfectly fine but it’s an art. It requires careful balancing of green and brown products and turning to ensure the microbes have a chance to begin breaking this down before it’s able to be spread on your garden. It’s a good 6-8 month process. And any good composter knows you never put meat or cheese in your compost bin. Or pour your buckets of cleaning water in it with its Mr. Clean or Clorox or any other disinfectant. And we also know that if there are pesticides and fungicides on the vegetables they will survive in the compost bin.
Now another thing a good composter knows is that healthy compost smells earthy and clean. You can crumble it in your hands. But this sludge stuff, as anyone can attest who lives nearby a spreading site, smells like rot and death. Nothing’s been broken down. It’s simply sat in its own toxic stew. And it has chemicals in it. Chemicals that haven’t broken down in water treatment plants. Chemicals that won’t break down in the waste pits. Chemicals that leach into the water supply. Chemicals that contaminate our land, our food, and our kids.
This is not fertilizer.
It’s a lazy way of getting rid of waste by dumping it onto the very earth that feeds us instead of talking about other ways to dispose of it. And there are other ways to dispose of it.
It’s time to stop. It’s time to take responsibility.
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