About 3.5 million tonnes of sludge – the solid waste produced from human sewage at treatment plants – is put on fields every year as cheap fertiliser.

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Unlike the cleaned water that is discharged from wastewater treatment plants, the sewage sludge, or biosolid as the industry calls it, is considered “exempted waste”.

In 2017 a report commissioned by the Environment Agency [EA] found that sludge contained potentially harmful substances, including microplastics and “forever chemicals”, at levels that “may present a risk to human health” and may create soil that is “unsuitable for agriculture”.

It said that “perhaps the biggest risk to the landbank” is from the spreading of physical contaminants such as microplastics into agricultural soil. The report also said it had heard evidence from EA staff indicating that some companies may be using wastewater treatment plants to “mask disposal of individual high risk waste streams not suitable for land spreading”.

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