Life in the gutters

Associated with waste and squalor in the collective unconscious, gutters are essential elements of the sanitary life of our towns and villages. A whole universe of cells and micro-algae thrives there, fed as much by their direct environment as by waste water.
In order to measure the proportion of anthropic and environmental contributions to the composition of their water, a series of samples were taken from Parisian gutters randomly from the 1,700 kilometre-long streets of the French capital, five per district.
The objective is to understand how the biodiversity of gutters develop, and to demonstrate that certain forms they contain contribute to cleansing their waters. In the long term, it would be possible to have urban gutters become part of the current revegetation policies of large cities.