Deep in the reeds: Australian scientists put dollar figure on floating wetlands’ global water quality savings
‘We’ve worked out that no matter how hard you engineer something, nature filters everything much better than anything else’, says academic
A steady stream of utility vehicles and trailers comes in and out of the Sunshine Coast council’s resource recovery centre in Caloundra, dropping off piles of garden clippings and soil that are pushed by a dumper truck into a tiny mountain which, given time, will turn into compost.
Walker is in Queensland with Prof Simon Beecham from the University of South Australia to inspect an artificial floating wetland that’s been deployed in a pond to help soak up the floods of nitrogen and phosphorus that run from all those garden clippings after rain falls.