PHOSPHORUS MANAGEMENT AND SOCIETAL STRUCTURE Hampered effluent accumulation processes (HEAP) in different areas of the Swedish society / Fosforhantering och samhällsstruktur Ackumulationseffekter i det svenska samhället
Some of the problems of phosphorus pollution and source exhaustion are identified to be time-dependent, structural problems. This is demonstrated to be the case in land independent animal production, in urban settlements and in the waste-water treatment – landfill cycle. A calculation indicates that saturation of the systems can take place in the time range of 20-100 years. After this time, inputs will be converted to leakage. It is maintained that structural problem must be solved with structural solutions. To avoid leakage problems, phosphorus circulation must be attained. A scenario analysis investigates the effort-result of some possible systems to attain phosphorus circulation. The results show that the cost/benefit efficiency of increasing attempts of phos- phorus recycling will not increase considerably in spite of increased ambitions if the current habitation structure is kept. However, integration of the population with its supporting agriculture will increase this efficiency with about four orders of magnitude