the.com/sewage
Civilization's honest diary, flushed and forgotten but never actually gone.
means The waste-carrying wastewater from homes and industry — what goes down drains and toilets — that must be collected and treated before it can rejoin the world.
from Sewage grew out of 'sewer,' which traces back through Anglo-French 'sewere' to a Latin root meaning roughly 'to lead water away from' — ex- (out) plus a word related to 'aqua' (water). The earliest sewers were simply channels built to drain overflow from fish ponds and low ground. 'Sewage,' the stuff itself rather than the channel, is the newer word, stitched together in the 1800s as growing cities needed a plain noun for what their new underground pipe networks were suddenly, urgently, moving.
- covid tracking
- cities test sewage to detect outbreaks before hospitals do
- energy source
- some plants generate electricity from their own sludge
- drug data
- wastewater reveals a city's cocaine use more honestly than surveys
- ancient problem
- rome built sewers before it built decent roads