Quotation of the Day, 12.19.08

“Since Thomas Crapper invented the water closet, many sanitation experts have come
to view it as one of the stupidest technologies of all time: In an effort to make them
“invisible,” it mixes pathogen-bearing feces with relatively clean urine. Then it dilutes
that slurry with about 100 times its volume in pure drinking water, and further mixes the
mess with industrial toxins in the sewer system, thus turning “an excellent fertilizer and
soil conditioner” into a serious, far-reaching, and dispersed disposal problem.
Supplying the clean water, treating the sewage, and providing all the delivery and
collection in between requires systems whose cost strains the resources even of
wealthy countries, let alone the 2 billion people who lack basic sanitation. The World
Health Organization has stated that waterborne sanitation cannot meet any of its
declared objectives—equity, disease prevention, and sustainability—and suggests that
only with more modern (waterless) techniques can the world’s cities be affordably
provided with clean water for drinking, cooking, and washing.”
Natural Capitalism, Hawken, Lovins & Lovins

Hear that? Flush toilets are bad. Bad for poor people too.
WiredForStereo

Sawdust Toilet Pictures!!!

At long last, I have pictures of the sawdust toilet. These were taken the day I finished it. It's a beauty, works like a charm, and the compost is getting nice and hot. Enjoy!



It is made of thick oak plywood, with a solid oak seat with brass hinges, and stainless steel hinges on the box lid. The bucket it is sitting on is a regular 5 gallon bucket that is used under the seat.

My wife has been pleasantly surprised at the lack of odor other than that of sawdust, and if I can convince my wife to use this thing, you can convince yours. It's really an excellent sustainable idea that eliminates contamination of groundwater and loss of nutrients into the water table.

WiredForStereo

World Series

What I would do if I were to become the supreme dictator of the United States. My wife and I were talking about this early yesterday morning at breakfast, so I decided to write a little series to tell what I would do if I were in charge to highlight some of the major unsustainable parts of our society.

I'll try to keep it to issues regarding sustainable living, renewable energy and the like, but I cannot guarantee that there won't be some politics in there as well. This is not an actual bid to become supreme dictator of anything, it merely highlights what I think the problems in our society are. And yes, some of these changes are huge and expensive, but sacrifices must be made to reach our goals. Unfortunately, sweeping changes no longer exist in this country, so here goes.

My first target as Supreme Leader of the United States of America is the waste disposal system of this country. Effective in one year would be the complete elimination of organic waste, metal, and glass from the trash system.

Here is the focus of a capitalist society: With me as the Supreme Leader, new markets would be born overnight, companies would have to do what is necessary to adjust their focus, market, and products.

I would launch a massive campaign to educate people about compost, and there would have to be massive new composting facilities that would have to jump up immediately. If we could teach people to compost their organic waste at home, (those who can) the excess needed to be processed could be limited. There are several cities like SF (I think) who have large composting facilities. Nova Scotia has a great organic material processing facilities as well.

Metals are the most recyclable materials that exist, and glass is also there on the list. So they will be separated from the waste stream at the consumer level and be picked up separately just like another trash can.

Paper will be disposed with the organic material since paper can be composted just like food. In fact, right now I am doing an experiment at home where I am composting grass clippings and using shredded paper as the carbon source. It creates some really hot compost, enough to burn you. At least I know those weed seeds will be dead.

Effective in two years, residential sewage lines will be decommissioned. People would need to get ahold of composting toilets, or figure out how to compost their waste using a sawdust toilet or other soon to be invented toilet technology. Incinerating toilets will not be allowed to exceed their current production levels because while they are sometimes necessary, they are almost 100% wasteful. Grey water will need to be treated in some manner on site or in local small treatment plants and used to water lawns and gardens. This will take an enormous burden off the public water supply saving money and energy. Also, removing human waste from the sewers will take an enormous burden off the sewage treatment plants which will keep more nutrients and pollutants out of our oceans and streams and water that otherwise could be purified into drinking water.

Composted organic waste will have to be disposed of, since there will be so much more of it (composted instead of wasted) than there was before, we cannot expect people just to buy all of it. But it could easily just be dumped on consenting farmer's farm land. It could be used to rehabilitate sections of land left unusable by strip mining, logging, or excessive erosion.

There would be more focus on mulching mowers to process yard waste, and composting bins and piles would be infinitely more common. Hopefully there would be more home gardens also, as ways to recycle nutrients.

Ok, so that's the first day's reforms.

And this is totally open to discussion, I welcome comments.

Next time, we discuss cars and gas mileage.

Your favorite Supreme Ruler,
WiredForStereo

the Humanure Handbook Critique.

Pictured here is the third edition of the Humanure Handbook by Joseph Jenkins. I just finished reading it (not sure which version) online. Check the last post for the link. Click the pic for buying.

As you can see from the date and time on the last post which I posted sometime during the first or second chapter, it has not taken me long. I finished it this morning, and according to one guy, it can be read in 4 hours straight through. I didn't read it straight through, but I'd say it took about that long.

The book's subtitle is "a guide to composting human manure" and I'd say it's that and more. This you might call the real composting guide. Most books about composting or having a section on composting completely skip over the subject of human excrement, and most others look down on it with quite some disdain. Most composters recommend against composting a bunch of things, like kitchen grease, oils, fats, meat, pet poo, and dead animals, but Mr. Jenkins recommends and demonstrates composting all these things. His resulting compost is excellent, and his methods are tried and true for 20 years.

Now a word for you fecophobes. This book will trip you out. If disgusting things bother you, you will be bothered. If you are one of those people who likes to pretend you never crap, this book will mess you up. If you are an active minded person who wants to live sustainably, and believes that therein lies the solution for the future, this book will open your eyes.

The author begins by delineating the problems with today's waste processing systems. And believe me, there are alot of problems, and blindness to those problems. I believe this is beginning to be remedied with recycling programs that teach people that there is no such place as "away" or "out" where you can throw things. But the place that is still missing in people's minds is where "down the drain" ends up. Sure we see a sewage treatment plant now and again, and we catch a whiff o' that smell, but what really goes on there? Turds and stuff get turned into sludge and CO2, that's what.

Now if you are a global warming believer, this should just outrage you, because sewage treatment plants produce millions of tons of CO2, and there's no way you can remediate it. Plus, the sludge that's left over is nasty, with massive amounts of toxins and heavy metals and it just gets to be landfilled. That's no sustainable solution for anyone.

So what is the solution? Recycling our "waste" which is no waste at all. You all know I love composting toilets. Well, Mr. Jenkins takes that concept a bit cheaper and says compost your stuff in your back yard. And you know I love cheaper. He champions (and so do his followers and humanure believers) the concept of sawdust toilets. Basically, it's a 5 gallon bucket with sawdust instead of a toilet bowl. Same as a composting toilet, except you empty the "toilet bowl" when needed onto a properly managed thermophilic (hot) compost pile. Within hours or days, all active pathogens are dead, and the compost is well on it's way to being rich earth for your garden.

The benefits, cheap, easy, cheap, provides compost, cheap, easy, cheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeap. The only problem is what Mr. Jenkins calls Fecophobia, the fear of poo. Most people are happy to pay for clean purified drinking water to crap in, flush it down to nowhere using a bunch more purified drinking water and forget it ever existed, and to pay for that service too. They are also happy to pay for food, eat it, then forget about all those wonderful nutrients that could go in their garden to make more food.

So what do we do? Read this book, (free online) and take it to heart except the small Christianity bashing section. Decide if you want to be part of the problem or the solution. If you want to be part of the problem, go ahead and stop there. If you want to be part of the solution, change your life. Don't be like hypocritical global warming hype politicians and celebrities who wont change their lifestyle to match their message *hmmph*algore*HHMHHmph*.

The solution is active care of the planet, not rhetoric; personal responsibility, not politics. The solution is you.

WiredForStereo