Step back and ask why do we want ecosystems for waste treatment?

Integration and use of waste resources within society ("resource out of place")

Need to stop thinking about "removal" and think of utilization of resources. 
Can use these "waste streams" to produce benefits.

Utilize nature’s inventory of processes and relationships to treat.
Complexity and information in natural systems immense-we can use
Living world is matrix for all design

As fossil fuels become more scarce, population grows, less natural areas—we have to use sustainable natural processes to our advantage.
There is no more room to throw things away or have ‘natural areas’
Design based on renewable energy sources
Design must reflect bioregionality—design for available resources

Field of Ecological Engineering pursues this ideas…

Principles of Design for Living Technologies (Todd & Josephson 1996)
"Gathering of disparate parts of knowledge which are recombined to create new technological forms." What to include in our system and where to get it?

Mineral Diversity:
Need diverse mineral base to support diverse animal and plant community.

Should include igneous (basalt, granite, feldspar, quartz), sedimentary (sandstone, shale, {gravel, sand, silt, clay}, gypsum, limestone, coal), and metamorphic rocks (slate {shale}, schist, gneiss, marble, quartzite)

Previously used finely ground rock powders-quick incorporation into biological systems.

Nutrient Resevoirs:
Need to have nutrients in available forms for plants and microbes.

Soluble carbon (i.e. anaerobic reactor & aerobic reactor)

Calcium carbonate recommended for nitrifying microbes

Should have major nutrient input from washwater

Steep Gradients:
Abrupt or rapid change in time or space in properties of system (where in our system?)

Interfaces are critical in all systems—many things happen: aerobic/anaerobic wetland, east/west berlin, estuaries.

Use of humic materials encourage gradients-should we add?

High Exchange Rates:
Maximize surface area of living material to which water exposed. How?

Periodic and Random Pulsed Exchanges:
What is a pulse?

Systems to will adapt to repeated pulses-requires diversity-can accelerate self-design.

Usually done in newly developing living machines-should we & how will we do?

Cellular Design and the Structure of Mesocoms:
How are we doing this?

Minimum Number of Subecosystems:
Recommend minimum of 3 subecosystems in distinct cells.

1.photosynthetic 
2. Animal consumer 
3.detritus/bacterial

Do we have these?

Microbial Communities:
Foundation for living machines—need diversity of microbes.

How & where will we collect diverse microbial "seed?"

Fungi and protozoans, etc.

Solar-based Photsynthetic Foundations:
We have this with the lights. Renewable energy basis.

Animal diversity:
Find species that direct living processes toward useful products—food, fuels, waste recovery, environmental repair

Snails critical to living machines—where will we get?

Mollusks, Zooplankton, Inverts—where?

Fish-species and where?

Biological Exchanges Beyond the Mesocosm:
Continual "seeding" will speed self-design and increase efficiency of system.

Vast potential of relationships and information in environment to draw from.

Microcosm, mesocosms, macrocosm relationships:
Recycle and Feedbacks and Self-organization to let system mature?