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What do we put into water?
About half of the water that comes into our homes, that which we use inside the house, ends up at the sewage treatment plant.
We use it to wash our food, our dishes, our clothes and ourselves, and to flush away our personal waste. We use considerable amounts of it to carry away only a small quantity of dirt, so wastewater is mostly water — a 200-litre drum of it contains only about one tablespoon of dirt.
The dirt consists of organic molecules that contain carbon, inorganic molecules that do not contain carbon (except for carbonates), microorganisms and fine particles that are suspended in the water rather than dissolved.
A 200 litre drum of wastewater contains only about one tablespoon of dirt.