Environmental-Friendly and Cost-Effective Agricultural Wastes for Heavy Metals and Toxicants Removal from Wastewater

According to released data from the United Nations (UN), about 60% of the world’s populations could live in water-stressed situations by 2025. This could negatively affect many aspects of modern life and may also cause food and energy shortages leading to higher rates of illness. As world populations and their activities increase, wastewater generation increases as well. Releasing the toxic pollutants into water bodies has adverse consequences on human health, aquatic organisms, and ecosystems due to changing water properties making it unsuitable for consumption by humans, animals, and/or plants. In developing countries that suffer from acute shortage in water supply, remediation of the generated wastewater is a major issue since treated wastewater could be a valuable source of clean water. Treatment of wastewater can be physically, chemically, and biologically performed; however, the conventional methods have many disadvantages. Low-cost and environmental-friendly wastewater treatments can alleviate this issue and provide safe reusing of wastewater. Agricultural wastes can serve as natural adsorbents for pollutants from wastewater. A vast variety of ease regular adsorbents can be used for remediating sorts of toxins and pollutants from water and wastewater. Rice straw, cotton sticks, sugarcane bagasse, coconut husk, shells, etc., are examples of using agricultural wastes efficiently in wastewater treatment.