There are many activities, documentaries and social campaigns set out on educating the masses on environmental related issues. Most of them are effective but they do not directly address the topic on wastewater because for most part the population tend to be unaware of most problems nationally and globally. These campaigns do make viewers rethink their practices and how it damages the environment, so this is a good start to making progress. However, we are very much lacking the educational programs pertaining to wastewater treatments. Even when we flick through the TV channels, how often do we come across the topic of wastewater treatments? As far as I can recall not even once! Nonetheless there are wastewater expo events running throughout Australia which are free to attend, and few educational programs set out there to educate especially the younger viewers.

Waste Expo Australia presents Wastewater Summit a free-to-attend seminar program. This educational component is led by the industry’s experts, giving industry professionals the opportunity to share knowledge on a range of topics including innovation, technology, regulation and new industry developments. The purpose of this seminar is to confront the challenges and opportunities in wastewater treatment through technology, strategy and compliance. Wastewater Summit hosts three distinct focus areas with the first being technology: seizing opportunities in wastewater technology and innovation, with the second being strategy:creating new revenue streams through wastewater to energy and developing cost effective strategies. Last but not the least it deals with compliance: navigating the regulatory framework to understand impacts to your organisation

A notable example is the ‘’World Toilet Day’’ campaign on 19^th November 2016 which is an opportunity to teach young and old Australians. World Toilet Day is an official United Nations international observance day on 19 November to inspire action to tackle the global sanitation crisis. Four and a half billion people worldwide live without proper sanitation. World Toilet Day was established by the World Toilet Organization in 2001. The programs teaches the different type of waste that goes in the kitchen sink, rubbish bins and down the toilet drain. It also teaches students that waste does not magically disappear and the effect it can have on our beautiful beaches, rivers (swan river for example) and our environmental as well.

Social media, marketing and innovation has a direct positive effect on wastewater education whether directly or indirectly. These strategies of spreading the message makes an average consumer much more aware of how their actions affect the world we live in. Not only do the two mentioned organisation help raise awareness, they are also involved in the building, funding and supplying resources in order to achieve their goals. For example the organisation World Toilet Day, they have a set target of goals for every upcoming year. There should be no one single strategy to follow to inspire change in people rather we should utilize every method in the book to spread the message. There are many initiatives that promote this but they are not so well know given that they are not given enough media coverage and the fact is that most of us simply do not care about such issues.

As helpful as it is having such programs, we need a more effective method of preaching wastewater practices and my first recommendation is through popular TV channels and many electronic posters around especially in cities where population is quite dense. Electronic posters keep people more interested and updated with ease and this has zero consequence on resource to spread awareness. This is also where the government comes into the picture since they control the media to quite a large extent as well as influence on large companies and organisations. The government needs to make changes in law towards sustainable practices. We need the key big players to make an effort to sustainable practices because that’s where we can see the greatest changes. Sure, individually we can help but there’s only so much we can do.

I’m willing to bet that majority of people today don’t even know that toilet can be recycled into drinking water and imagine their surprise when they find out about this. In such a modern world that we live in today, people are still quite behind on general knowledge. So who is at fault for their lack of education? I do not like to point fingers as we are all partially guilty but the main blame goes back to the government. They control the news media but yet decide to show us news that a lot of the times are of no benefit to the society and at times counter productive. This is the perfect opportunity to use the popular channels to run shows on wastewater treatment, recycling and transportation to give the average consumer a basic understanding of the dire situation we live in. The whole world lives on social media and TV so we should exploit this tactic to educate.

Regulatory frameworks and wastewater engineering both go hand in hand. In our context regulatory frameworks refer to sets of policies that set up by the Australian government whereby the local government must comply with in the wastewater management. The Australian government is involved in the national legislation, strategies and policy frameworks for waste. The local government on the other hand are responsible for the provision of household waste collection, recycling, managing landfill sites and maintaining the wastewater infrastructure. The government policies can be briefly summarised as ”less waste, more resources”. The Australian government has had a long history of collaboration  on waste policies and actions.

When reading the environmental protection act, rights in water and irrigation act & metropolitan water supply, sewerage and drainage act pretty much deals with how wastewater should be taken care of, monitored and penalties for not following the guidelines. No matter how detailed the framework of policies and regulations, the real issue we deal with is policing the laws that are set and dealing with loopholes in the regulations which allow large businesses, industries and corporations to exploit them. There is no point in having countless list of policies regarding wastewater if rules are not applied and punished accordingly or perhaps it may be a combined effect of poor policing and weak policies that can to lead to such disasters.

There are many environmental mess-ups which are have little mention in the media and on top of that the government tries to keep the story on a low profile. A perfect example of this is the swan river in the state of WA. I remember as early as 2003 when I first arrived to Australia the swan river struck a permanent image in my mind as a sparking blue clean river with even dolphins swimming in the river. Now in 2018 when I see this river, it looks so sick and dirty. Major renovations and construction of Elizabeth Quay is nothing more than a mere distraction to a gruesome situation which the government has made little mention of. Experts mention that the swan river and its marine life is choking. It is so bad that it has reached to the point that artificial oxygen is being pumped into the river to prevent it the ”ecological equivalent of a cardiac arrest”. When researching more upon this issue you will find that the root problem is due to high volumes of pollution entering the river. Thousands of tonnes of rich fertilisers that run-off from farms in the Swan and Avon River catchments are the main cause of this disaster. These nutrients once they dissolved in the river, it feeds algal blooms which takes oxygen away from the marine life killing fishes and shockingly forms a toxic sludge behind. I personally witnessed the sludge on a rainy day near Henry Reveley bar in Elizabeth Quay. During and after the rain the water was brown in colour with bits and pieces of sludge across the river.

I sincerely recommend readers to read these links to fully grasp the seriousness of the situation. https://www.perthnow.com.au/news/wa/experts-say-perths-swan-river-and-its-marine-life-are-choking-to-death-ng-e454f6cd0118b17a2f9c3e6e0bcc27c2 & https://www.smh.com.au/opinion/the-swan-river-a-river-on-life-support-20131004-2uyry.html

The Barnett Government is responsible for this disaster and the WA environment minister abolished the swan river trust which is a body responsible for the monitoring and reporting the health condition of this river. The local government is trying their very best to hide themselves from public scrutiny and their majorly failed environmental policies. Restoration of the river itself will cost billions of dollar since the swan river is not far away from being considered a wastewater river if this keeps up. The swan river not only highlights failed regulatory and policy framework but also a poor social framework as well. The only reason I noticed of this problem is because I live close to the swan river and seeing this river dying really affects me and many others in the region that live near or those that pass by that river.

Should a trust of bodies come together to tackle this situation, we can expect better wastewater engineering practices specially in the technological advancement and improved methods to help reverse this snowball of disasters. We require stricter policies because stricter policies forces improved wastewater engineering to adapt to tougher regulations and stricter policies. Also new laws need to put in place to educate the population and raise awareness of the environment we live in. It is such a crucial aspect of this framework because public awareness of government disasters keeps politicians in check so that they do not destroy precious marine life out of their recklessness and avoidable mistakes.