“Waste-To-Energy”? What about “Waste-To-Fertilizer”?

Today’s NYT has a piece on the controversy surrounding deployment of large-scale waste incineration for energy production in the USA, a practice that apparently is widespread in some regions of Europe (e.g. Denmark).

link

Energy from trash. Why not P from trash?

The ash produced from this incineration, in theory, should contain all the P from the trash that was burned (along with a bunch more stuff, like worrisome heavy metals and such).  What would it take to be able to extract the P from that ash, separate it from potentially toxic stuff, and then recycle it for fertilizer production?

Any readers out there know of such application?

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