Waste water treatment occupies a very important role in the wellbeing of our society and in the future of mankind. However, the future must be focused using a new vision of the interaction among the human population and the planet Earth, “Our Common Home” as Pope Francis wrote.
The Industrial Revolution made a deep change in our society when manufacture went from hand processing to machines, and energy availability improved with steam power. Later, the invention of the automobile and the era of the internal combustion engine using gasoline, meant a big impulse on the use of machines for transportation and industry.
The Digital Era, that began with the discovery of the transistor, and impacted social communication, has given rise to an increased diffusion of knowledge outside of the research labs and into the main stream of our society. Fortunately, the first major role of this process has been the socio-political awareness that we are the authors of the climate changes at the global level.
Mankind, generated in a few years an atmospheric increase in carbon dioxide ( CO2 ) leading to global warming and climate changes, due to the excessive use of natural resources and craving for energy to generate more goods. Water availability is no longer guaranteed at the local, national and even planetary levels. Rainfall and storms of unprecedented impacts produce changes in food production and destruction of towns and even cities.
Leading educational institutions are generating global guidelines for the future, it is the beginning of thinking in “our common home” beyond political, racial and even religiousness differences, and it’s a get together to look for solutions of common problems. The President of MIT launched a campaign for a better world, and among the proposals for global water solution there is the use of waste water treatment to recharge depleted aquifers.
The proposal may seem as a dream hard to fulfill, but nowadays there are equipments that allow farms, towns, cities or all sizes of industries, to return used water by appropriated waste water treatment. Technology exists, and awareness of the common citizen will pressure the involvement of local political leadership into action before it is too late. Today’s generation must truly leave a better world to future generations, assuring them water access.