Water Fleas Offer Low-Carbon Treatment Alternative, Say Researchers

Researchers at the University of Birmingham have demonstrated that a tertiary wastewater treatment technology based on Daphnia — tiny freshwater organisms commonly known as water fleas — can deliver environmental benefits compared with conventional treatment methods. In a study published in Water Research, the team found that treating one cubic meter of water with the Daphnia-based system produces just 0.0006 kilograms of CO₂, representing a 99.8% reduction in climate emissions relative to standard tertiary treatment technologies. At the scale of a typical installation processing 100,000 cubic meters of water annually, the approach could avoid more than 30 tons of CO₂-equivalent emissions