Wastewater Reuse Activities

History of water supply, sanitation and drainage.
Wastewater Reuse Activities
Mesopotamia
Ancient China
Roman Empire
Islamic World
Medieval Europe
Classic and early modern Mesoamerica
Sewage farms for disposal and irrigation
Modern age
Bristol, Liverpool, London and other cities, UK

The development of sanitation provision has been closely connected, throughout human history, to the earliest practices of reusing wastewater. In order to divert human waste from domestic settlements, reusing wastewater has been practised across many civilisations and across many hundreds of years. Similarly, waste has also been disposed of into and through the land for centuries. Both of these methods have developed and evolved greatly throughout time.

Since the Bronze Age (ca. 3200-1100BC,) humans have used wastewater within agriculture and farming, including for irrigation in the Indus Valley and Minoan. Wastewater and human excrement have been used throughout history in farming, especially to fertilise crops. For example, human waste has been used to fertilise crops in China since ancient times.

Mesopotamia