Megan Thompson:

Between flushing the toilet, bathing, and washing dishes, the average person in the United States generates almost 100 gallons of wastewater each day. And dealing with that water requires a lot of resources. In fact, treating water, including sewage, accounts for 3 to 4% of all the energy used in the United States.

But imagine if that water – even sewage – could itself be used to help generate energy. We're going to take you inside a utility plant in suburban Chicago that's doing just that. It's generating all the power it needs to run … just using the waste that it collects.

It's a model that could dramatically reduce the amount of energy used to treat wastewater around the country. Christopher Booker has the story.