What is Integrated Waste Water Treatment?

Explanation

Waste water including sewage can be treated in an integrated way, by  combining artificial and natural processes.
An example of such an initiative is the town of Arcata, situated along the northern coast of California.
The native people in collabaration with Humboldt State University created an integrated waste water treatment process within a natural system.
The cleaning occurs in two stages : (a) The conventional sedimentation, filtering and chlorine treatments are given. (b) To combat with pollutants like dissolved heavy metals the biologists developed a series of six connected marshes over 60 hectares of marshland where plants, algae, fungi and bacteria were seeded which neutralise, absorb and assimilate the pollutants.
As the water flows through the marshes, it gets purified naturally.
The marshes also constitute a sanctuary, which is highly diverse in the form of fishes, animals and birds that now reside there.
A citizens group called Friends of the Arcata Marsh (FOAM) are responsible for the safety of this project.
Ecological sanitation is a sustainable system for managing human excreta, using dry composting toilets.
This is a practical, hygienic, efficient and cost-effective solution to human waste disposal.
The important part is that with this composting method, human excreta can be recycled into natural fertiliser
There are working .EcoSan. toilets in many areas of Kerala and Sri Lanka