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Hybrid Nature: Sewage Treatment and the Contradictions of the Industrial Ecosystem

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A history of of the industrial ecosystem that focuses on the biological sewage treatment plant as an early example.

Biological sewage treatment, like electricity, power generation, telephones, and mass transit, has been a key technology and a major part of the urban infrastructure since the late nineteenth century. But sewage treatment plants are not only a ubiquitous component of the modern city, they are also ecosystems—a hybrid variety that incorporates elements of both nature and industry and embodies multiple contradictions. In Hybrid Nature, Daniel Schneider offers an environmental history of the biological sewage treatment plant in the United States and England, viewing it as an early and influential example of an industrial ecosystem.

The sewage treatment plant relies on microorganisms and other plants and animals but differs from a natural ecosystem in the extent of human intervention in its creation and management. Schneider explores the relationship between society and nature in the industrial ecosystem and the contradictions that define it: the naturalization of industry versus the industrialization of nature; the public interest versus private (patented) technology; engineers versus bacterial and human labor; and purification versus profits in the marketing of sewage fertilizer. Schneider also describes biotechnology's direct connections to the history of sewage treatment, and how genetic engineering is extending the reaches of the industrial ecosystem to such “natural” ecosystems as oceans, rivers, and forests. In a conclusion that shows how industrial ecosystems continue to evolve, Schneider discusses John Todd's Living Machine, a natural purification method of sewage treatment, as the embodiment of the contradictions of the industrial ecosystem.

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Series Title

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Call Number

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Publisher

Cambridge : The MIT Press., 2011

Collation

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Language

English

ISBN/ISSN

9780262312509

Classification

NONE

Content Type

text

Media Type

computer

Carrier Type

online resource

Edition

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Subject(s)

Architecture

Specific Detail Info

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Statement of Responsibility

Daniel Schneider

Other Information

Cataloger

Kholif Basri

Source

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Validator

reva

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/8868.001.0001

Journal Volume

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