Recycling Water, Nutrients, and Waste in the Nursery Industry

Abstract

With the increasing concerns about our environment, resources, and landfill reduction capabilities, industry is confronted with the need to recycle water, nutrients, and wastes. I will discuss sophisticated water recycling, which requires flocculation of colloidal matter, dual media filtration, chloramination, and blending. Simplified water recycling, which primarily depends on the natural settling of suspended matter, is being used more often by the nursery industry. Organic matter recycling of nursery wastes is a viable means of conserving our resources. Concomitant with water and waste recycling is nutrient conservation. Some inorganic waste and petroleum-derived organic wastes, such as perlite and plastics, have limited recycling capability, and the cost of reprocessing these materials is a problem. The cost economics indicate that recycling water, nutrients, and wastes provides a quick return on investment, conserves resources, creates an appealing public image, reduces operating costs, and protects the environment. tation pit creates a quiescent zone of water that permits suspended solids to settle and lightweight, floating materials to be removed by "baffling." The sand in these pits will settle in less than 20 sec, and the silt will settle within 2 h. By far, colloidal matter, usually clay, is the most difficult contaminant to remove from water. Either a sophisticated system of clarification or a simplified one can be used to remove colloidal matter.