Phosphorus Recovery\nin Municipal Wastewater and Socioeconomic\nImpacts in Canada and the United States

Phosphorus is a nonrenewable material\nessential for ensuring food\nsecurity whose global reserves are controlled by a limited number\nof nations. Potential phosphorus insecurity prompted some countries\nto develop regulations to support a circular phosphorus economy from\nend-of-life materials. However, the impact of phosphorus recovery\ncosts on the economy of communities served by wastewater resource\nrecovery facilities stays unquantified. We analyze the socioeconomic\nimpact of phosphorus recovery at the wastewater resource recovery\nfacilities of Canada and the continental United States. We found that\nphosphorus recovery results in a cost gap between urban and rural\nareas due to the differences in the treatment level and scale of wastewater\nresource recovery facilities. This cost disparity could lead to the\nemergence of deprived social groups bearing the economic burden of\ntransitioning toward a circular phosphorus economy. However, the environmental\nremediation costs avoided by the recovered phosphorus offset the recovery\ncosts, providing an economic driver for phosphorus recovery.