Your article (Millions of tonnes of toxic sewage sludge spread on UK farmland every year, 7 July) gives some insight into the environmental impact of the practice and the paucity of regulatory control. The legal case had been made as far back as 2015 that the spreading of sewage sludge – which the water industry prefers to call “biosolids” – should be brought under the potentially much tighter environmental permitting system that applies to the spreading of other industrial wastes applied to land for agricultural benefit. Not surprisingly, the very mention that sewage sludge be treated as a “waste” drew strong resistance from water companies that feared a collapse in the market.
However, this is only part of the story. The ban on dumping at sea, coupled with the move away from landfill, has seen a huge shift from putting waste in one place to smearing it in ever more discrete parcels over farmland and elsewhere, purportedly for ecological improvement. In additional to sewage sludge, there are construction waste soils, waste compost and anaerobic digestate, plus a range of non‑waste soil improvers deposited. Examples such as pig carcasses in compost on farmland testify to what some people will try to get away with if not properly regulated.
