Environment

Emory Sewage Plant And Marietta Caterer Among Honorees For Clean Water Work

October 6th, 2020

University president Gregory Fenves announced on Thursday that Emory will remove the names of a former psychologist and a former U.S. Supreme Court justice from campus institutions and professorships.
Ali Guillory / WABE

Several Atlanta institutions are getting recognition for their efforts to clean and conserve water. They’re on the Georgia Water Coalition’s annual list of 13 people and organizations that work to protect the state’s environment.

One honoree: Emory University’s WaterHub. It’s a sewage treatment plant that looks like a greenhouse, and it supplies 40% of the campus’s water, Joe Cook with the Georgia River Network said.

“And it is odor-free,” he said. “It processes some 400,000 gallons of sewage daily and returns that treated wastewater to the campus where it is used to flush toilets in some of the residence halls and is used to heat and cool campus buildings.”

Another organization getting recognition is Live Thrive Atlanta, which runs the Center for Hard to Recycle Materials, otherwise known as CHaRM. Cook said they have kept tens of millions of tons of waste out of landfills.

“At CHaRM, Styrofoam finds new life as home insulation,” he said. “Electronics are broken down and mined for reusable material, paint is used for community graffiti cleanups, and tires are turned into asphalt that fills potholes around the city.”

The Georgia Water Coalition also honored a Marietta-based catering company. They say Parsley’s Catering is a model of sustainability.

And the Chattahoochee RiverLands was also on the list; that’s an initiative to build trails and parks along 100 miles of the river in metro Atlanta.

The Georgia Water Coalition releases its “Clean 13” list annually, as a counterpoint to its “Dirty Dozen” list of environmental problems. Other honorees around the state this year included a vineyard, a window manufacturer and a couple state lawmakers.

“We always have more nominations for the ‘Clean 13’ than we do have for the ‘Dirty Dozen,’” said Cook. “I think there will come a time in the very near future that some of those perhaps that were on past ‘Dirty Dozens,’ you will see on future ‘Clean 13s.’ That’s really the goal.”