Water purification, from dirty to clean water
Did you know that the average Amsterdam resident uses 141 litres of water per day? That is about 14 buckets full. We use this water as drinking water, but also for showering and flushing the toilet. This wastewater ends up in the public sewer system together with rainwater. From the sewer, the water goes to the water treatment plant to be cleaned.
Sewage treatment plant
Waternet maintains the sewer pipes in and around Amsterdam. That's 4,000 kilometres of pipes! That's about the same distance as from Amsterdam to the coast of Canada. Sewage water cannot simply be allowed to flow into nature or the canals of Amsterdam. That is why our sewage treatment plant cleans the dirty water first. Only then can it be returned to nature. We clean the water on behalf of the Water Authority Amstel, Gooi & Vecht You can read all about it on the authority's website.
Read how we purify wastewater (You are leaving this website)
Producing drinking water
Cleaning sewage is different from producing drinking water. Would you like to know how drinking water is produced? On our 'Where does your tap water come from?' page, we explain this step by step. From source to tap.
Green energy through water purification
Once the water has been purified, muddy soil remains. We refer to this as sludge. We use this to produce sustainable green gas. We use it, for example, as fuel for our company vehicles and to heat buildings. We supply any surplus gas to an energy company. They convert the gas into electricity. We also extract another substance from the sludge: struvite. We convert this into a fertiliser.
Berry, the digital assistent