How to Build and Operate a Composting Bin for a Sawdust Toilet in Three Easy Steps.

Step 1:  Build bin from pallets found near random dumpster (or wherever else you can get them for free.)

 

 

Step 2:  Put yer stuff in.

 

Step 3:  Cover over with straw or hay, repeat until bin full, build new bin and start with step 1.  After this bin has waited a year, use compost. Enjoy!

See, it's just that easy.  Leave a comment if you have any questions, comments, or snide remarks.

WiredForStereo

The Sawdust Toilet comes Full Circle

Well, I guess I'd have to grow food in the compost and eat it and then it would be full circle.  But until later this spring when that comes to pass, the news is for now.  The bin has been sitting for a week short of a year, and I had some time today so I decided to break into it and see what was in there.  

 This first picture was what I saw when I first took the pallet off.

 Closer view here.  The grassy stuff is compost, grass, paper etc. that I put on top of the pile as it condensed.  No point in wasting good composting space.

Then I started to dig out a section to see what I was getting into.

Here you can see a good cross section of the pile.  There are four distinct layers.  The top layer is uncomposted organic material.  The next layer is composted bathroom waste.  The black layer is a layer of leaves that I put on the pile between the times the pile was in use because for a few months, I ran out of sawdust.  The red/brown layer on the bottom is the oldest of the bathroom waste compost.

Here it is in the wheel barrow.  There are some spots you can see with uncomposted material, that is pieces of plastic from various sources, cardboard tape, shredded envelope windows and the like.  It should photo-degrade pretty quickly when it gets exposed to the sun.

Finally, here is a sample in my hand.  I did have the thought "This is poo in my hand" but then I realized "No it isn't, it's compost, it's not poo any more."  The consistency shown is that of worm castings, if you click on the picture, you can see a much larger view.

The biggest thing I noticed was that I expected the compost to be much darker.  I think that my be due to the fact that in this pile, I did not use rotted sawdust, but fresh stuff from a cabinet shop.  Therefore, it may be more powerful when finally composted in comparison to the nitrogen rich materials.  Other than that, I can't wait to get this stuff on the garden and see some results.  My corn has been poor here, I hope to change that.  If you have any questions or comments at all, please leave a comment, even if you wish to do so anonymously.  I read every comment and answer nearly every one.

I spread the first wheelbarrow full on the strawberries.

WiredForStereo

Carbon Dioxide, Global Warming, and Pollution: What to do, what to do.

I was discussing global climate change with one of my professors, who also happens to be my mentor, at school the other day. He is a Civil Engineer, Associate Professor of Environmental Engineering, specializing in ground water. So I asked him what he thought about climate change and the like not knowing what he would say because he is also a Christian and I wasn't sure what his opinions were. Let me qualify that by saying as you know that many Christians, especially here in the Bible belt are conservatives and conservatives tend not to be on the global warming bandwagon, so I just like to feel around usually before I make an ass of myself.

Somewhat surprisingly, what he told me was extremely similar to my own beliefs on the subject. He said that he tended to be somewhat cynical but was not trying to discredit the science. I was excited.

So we talked about the true pressing problems in the world. We talked about one of the climate reports that said if we don't do something in the next few decades, by 2050 some people were going to be displaced or something. We also compared that to how a billion people in the world have no access to clean water and how two billion have no access to sanitation. We talked about how many million people die each year from diseases related to lack of clean water.

And I have thought about this before, I've even blogged about it in passing, so I decided to blog about it again, but in more detail this time. I want to enumerate the real exigent issues and how they relate not only to our world, politics, people, but also to how I live out my faith through those things.

Let me start by saying that I'm not a "climate change denier" nor do I want to be bellicose toward this issue. I am most certainly not against science, but I think there are a few things not adequately explained by the popular climate change theory, scientifically speaking. I do definitely line up on the side of the issue that says pollution has got to go, it's bad, it's not loving our neighbor as ourselves when we pump the sky full of toxic substances. However, carbon dioxide is not a toxic substance, you inhale a little and exhale a bunch with every breath. Nor do I find it to be the major component of greenhouse gases on this planet. I also feel that the sun causes much of our climate change though I believe man probably has something to do with it. But finally, I don't believe it to be the most pressing issue of our day, and though it may cause rising ocean levels, possibly displacing millions of people, millions of people are already dying because of things that are far easier and cheaper to fix.

Water woes are set to become far more visceral an issue than climate change. The primary thing a culture needs to become great is water. Without water, many people cannot live in tightly packed cities, and without sanitation, disease will run rampant. A civilization cannot thrive unless it has water. So in this age where in America, we flush 1.6 gallons of purified drinking water down the crapper just to wash away a 3 ounce turd and less than 3% of the water purified for supply to our houses actually enters a human body, why are we not focused on providing water to a billion people who don't have it? Why are we so focused on an invisible menace while ignoring a manifest obstacle?

Well, I don't know. Maybe it's sexier. Maybe it's a way to be better than other people. "I have a smaller carbon footprint than you." Maybe people don't really care about other people.

I'd like to think of myself on a lot of issues as a progressive. I think of it this way, I'm not a conservative because I don't think we should go back to something that was better than it is today. I'm a progressive because I think it's never so good that it can't get better tomorrow. I like progressive taxation, conservationism, social justice, and many other progressive ideals. I want things to change, I want them to get better.

For instance, the United States is still about 50% reliant on coal for electrical power. Aside from the issue that coal is about the most carbon intensive form of energy generation, there are a crap ton of other reasons why it's the most horrible of all ways to make power. Look at it from the cradle to the grave. Massive amounts of devastation are wrought to collect the coal at the beginning of the process. Mountaintop removal destroys wild land, mines drool water pollution, and dams that hold tailings from the mines collapse and kill people and ruin watersheds. Most coal is transported to power plants by diesel trains which though quite efficient provide the US with an incredible 10% of its nitrogen oxide pollution. At the plant, the coal is burned, releasing hundreds of tons of toxic metals such as mercury, cadmium and lead which lead to all sorts of diseases from lowered IQ's to full on birth defects and destroying fisheries. Leftovers from the burning include fly ash which gets piled up in heaps which can collapse and make a huge mess as we have recently seen. From Genesis to Revelation, coal power is bad. It's bad for health, for safety, for beauty, for nature and just really really bad.

Despite being a little cynical of the imporance of carbon dioxide in the world, I am most definitely for climate change legislation for the simple reason that it will probably prevent scores of new coal power plants from being built and will hopefully choke off existing ones. With the populist swell against coal that already exists, coal plants are being abandoned left and right. Hopefully, more of the same will happen if Carbon Cap and Trade comes to be.

Also understand that I am an avid reader of Treehugger and Mother Earth News. Both are excellent avenues for finding ways to consume less and for highlighting the real problems with consumption and pollution in the world. They still focus an inordinate amount of time on climate change, but that's their prerogative.

I guess another reason why climate change gets more press is that it's too easy to be against climate change. It's hard to go to a foreign country to provide water purification, but it's easy to be pro-climate. You don't really have to do anything. Its unfortunate, but people will always be lazy, self centered and apathetic. We all know it's so much easier to do nothing rather than something.

If ocean levels rise (they haven't risen much so far, but we'll see, I'm young) yes, millions of people will be displaced. However, as I've mentioned before there are already bigger problems. But people can move. People have the ability to move. 20,000 years ago, ocean levels were 130 meters below where they are today. The earth is constantly in flux. Tides can fluctuate tens of feet every day in some places. Saying that ocean levels can rise is describing the occurrence from an extremely human centered point of view. I'm sure the rise will be quite welcome to brackish water swamp creatures. We can adapt, we will adapt. One day we will run out of coal. Truth be told, all that coal was once free atmospheric carbon dioxide anyway.

What really needs to happen is for us to leverage our resources in such a way to make a sustainable way of living for future generations. People need clean water. People need food. These problems are a trifle in cost compared to the costs of mitigating climate change, but they will be ignored in favor of sexier problems, ones people see on TV and in disaster movies.

I don't care about carbon dioxide. Yet I pursue sustainable living, renewable energy, waterless toilet technology, and the like. Why? Because the pollution, the real pollution that I make travels around the world and causes my brothers and sisters and neighbors to suffer.

That's not loving others like I love myself. That's just loving myself.
WiredForStereo

Conservation and a Different Way of Life

I spent a few days after Christmas with my in-laws. They live in a new house, but they were raised in a different time. I cannot remember how many times I shut of lights in empty rooms as I meandered through the house.

I don't mean in anyway to insult or denigrate my in-laws, but this stuff got me to thinking about how we think about things. We can require all news houses to be super insulated and have zero net energy usage, but we still have virtually all people living in sub-standard (energy wise) housing. Worse, we still have most people who don't really care about anything other than energy bills, and not that much even then. People care about making more money, and when you make more money you can pay more bills.

I'm not saying I have solution for this, but this is the problem. Older people don't have the same concerns and cares about the environment and energy usage as some of the younger of us do. The older you get, the more you are stuck in your ways and beliefs. From the era of cheaper power, some just don't care about whether or not the lights are on. When I go on vacation for more than a day, I turn off a bunch of the breakers and everything not necessary and turn the thermostat down to 40 but I don't know anyone else who does. And I sure don't personally know a single person willing to go so far as to make the change necessary to stop crapping in drinking water. I mean, I save a thousand gallons a month from an already quite low water bill by using the sawdust toilet, but I don't even know anyone who has what I consider to be a true low flow shower head.

So the problem is resistance to change. What can we do? We could raise the cost of energy, but that hurts the poor more than anyone, they are least able to make the changes necessary. Maybe some sort of progressive tax based on how much a person makes.

Or maybe it could truly work with just awareness and personal responsibility. Right.

No, it will probably come about with the end of fossil fuels, some sort of energy drought or something like that. It's already become uncool to be greedy thanks to the recession, hopefully it will become uncool to be wasteful and environment ignorant. Maybe if the recession gets deep enough, we'll get both birds with one stone.

Hard, I know. It takes hard stuff to get the change we need, not exactly like voting for a black guy or a woman or something...
WiredForStereo

Garden Next Year

I've been preparing for the garden next year, I am not sure how exactly big it will be, the fenced in area is about half covered with mulch. I don't know if I'll be able to get any more of it covered, so I may resort to doing half the garden in no-till, and the un-covered half may get tilled the old fashioned way.

I do know that I won't be able to provide as much maintenance in the garden this year, not only do I have Spring Break in Mexico, but I have Honduras in June, and various youth events at various times all summer. On top of that, I am planning on taking a summer class or two so there will be even less of me around.

A couple of good things have happened, I've been using the trailer I built in Oregon to add capacity to my truck so I can haul larger amounts of manure and compost. You remember when I got a pickup load of horse manure earlier this year, just last week, I got another pickup load with a trailer load too. I also got a load of compost from Bentonville's compost facility back in November I think it was. The compost is fairly coarse, not the good stuff, there's a lot of moderately large wood chips in the mix, it will take a few years to decay, but that's not exactly a bad thing.

Also, the new worm bin is beginning to do so some good work, the worms are beginning to congregate at the surface, especially underneath the slices of watermelon I put in there. Anything that gets them to group up is good because not only do they work faster in groups, they also mate more profusely which they really need to do to get the population up. The manure and compost will be for general soil amendment while the worm compost will be for fertilizing plants on an individual basis. The tomato plant you can find in the Fall Update was fertilized with composted horse manure, and it did quite well, but only after the manure was added. The soil is very poor, but it seems to be easy to fix.

I would have liked to have been able to use the sawdust toilet compost for the garden this year, however I had already added new material to it before I thought of that. Remember, the pile needs to sit at least a year before it can be used. The purpose of this is to kill off the most potent organisms which would normally be roundworms, which I don't have. It is not really necessary to compost for so long in a well managed compost pile, but for the sake of a factor of safety, it's a really good idea. In fact, for the sake of argument, that's just the way it should be done. If there were legal requirements that's what they should be, and in most cases two years can't hurt either.

Also this next year, I'm planning on not losing all my plants to frost. I will be starting tomatoes early like I did last year, but instead of planting them out in the frost, I'll be adding additional transplanting steps into larger pots so that they will be plenty large to get a good start when it comes time to plant them outside. The problem last year was that we were having 70 degrees for three or more weeks before we had the last frost which really messed stuff up. This is part of the learning curve when you move to a new area I guess. I plan to irrigate the tomatoes this year as well, I have a drip system that I'll be putting together so that the tomatoes don't get dry and crack when it rains again.

Hope you had a happy Christmas.
WiredForStereo

Quotation of the Day, 12.20.08

"There are two kinds of people in the world, people who sh-- in drinking water, and people who don't." - Someone who chose to remain anonymous.

Cheers

WiredForStereo

Sawdust Toilet is Back!!!

Got a good pickup full of excellent sawdust today, great mix of fine stuff for absorbtion and planer shavings for aeration. I'm really excited about getting the water bill back down, and starting up the 'ol compoost pile again. Plus, there's no really good reason to crap in perfectly good purified drinking water.

WiredForStereo

The New Worm Bin Update.

Not much to update about.

I am still feeding the soldier fly larvae well so they can metamorphosize and fly away, and they are getting big, but still here. For those who don't know what those are, they are a type of fly that has larvae that look like maggots but aren't really because they have hard shelled heads. They exist mostly in piles of organic material, not so much in carcasses, they aren't much into meat. They tend to make compost piles warmer than worms like, until they turn into flies (that look like wasps) and fly away. I get them in my worm bin from time to time when for some reason the worms aren't performing well. This time it was because the bin got nasty while I was in Oregon and I had a little die-off.

Anyway, I started the bin with paper on the bottom to keep the material from falling through, and I have put a total of nearly an entire wheelbarrow of composted horse manure in it. The paper has disintigrated and the material is compressed enough not to fall through for the most part, not at least detrimentally. The bin is so full right now that the lid is sitting on top of some watermelons I put in there and weighed down with a brick so it doesn't blow off. If there are any remaining soldiers, they'll find the watermelons fast enough and make quick work of them, however, it seems the soldiers are declining in population as I expect they are getting to the stage where they will start changing. Soon there will be flies in there all the time. These aren't like your normal house flies remember, they look like wasps and aren't dirty little suckers.

I have also been adding material from a backyard compost bin that the worms had populated. There have been quite a few worms in the material and so with the bin's heater, I hope they will soon be taking over and populating the bin. This bin is supposed to have many lbs. of worms in it to start, but I don't have that kind of dough, so I hope this method will work. they need a population large enough so they can reach peak productiveness. If there are too few worms, they will not find each other as fast and will not reproduce as much and it will take a long time, if ever, for that population level to be reached.

I am still needing to fnd a good source of sawdust for the sawdust toilet. I'd like to train the boy on the sawdust toilet, some kids are afraid of being perched above a pool of water.
WiredForStereo

We Don't Clean our Toilet

My in laws are staying with us for a few days because the baby was just born, and my mother in law, always helpful as she is was searching the house for the toilet scrubber. After we explained that we didn't know exactly where it was, she asked "Then how do you clean your toilet?" to which I replied:

"We don't clean our toilet."

We just don't use it enough for it to be a problem. The sawdust toilet is great. Even the guests are starting to use it.

Live what you believe.
WiredForStereo

Sawdust Toilet Water Bill Update.

Got our water bill the other day, it was just over 2000 gallons for the month, that's a little over 30 gallons per person per day, which is about half the national average. And this with a daily sprinkler drip system that waters the tomatoes and strawberries as well as watering the outside potted plants when it doesn't rain!

This is Success!!
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

Sawdust Toilet and Radiant Barrier Insulation

Without our bathroom, the sawdust toilet is doing fabulously. I do have a few problems to report, there's not enough rain to keep the compost pile moist right now, so when I empty the bucket, I take a gallon of water with me. This also helps to rinse the bucket by the way. As was expected, smells are virtually non existent, and the water bill is on it's way down. Like many people, I just never realized how much water gets flushed down the toilet.

By doing some simple calculations (this was before the sawdust toilet) and not including the filling of the wading pool, I found that we have just over half of the national average per person water consumption. This was a result of a rainy first half of summer and modifying our bathroom behavior to flush less. After the sawdust toilet, I expect our consumption to go down an additional 20-30%, though I have had to start watering some of the plants so that may make a difference.

While recycling, er remodeling the bathroom, I decided to put some radiant barrier insulation in some important places. Our last house was absolutely horrible for the cold tile floors, and I am hoping that the radiant barrier in the floor will help at least some of that problem. I have also decided to put some up in the roof and wall sections that are being removed, and the rest of it will go in the attic, hopefully to cover the whole ceiling and reduce heating and cooling bills. I read one figure that claimed that 70% of our heat loss was due to radiant heat losses. Additionally, I will be adding some more insulation to the attic in the fall because there is only something like six inches of rock wool up there, barely worth even mentioning. The former owners claimed to use 600 gallons of propane per winter, and with the state I am finding things, I don't doubt that the central heating system ran constantly. I've also decided to install radiant barrier surrounding the shower. In my reading of technologies like the German Passivhaus, I discovered that a major source of heat can be the shower. Additionally, I like baths that stay warm, so I am interested to see where this will go.

After the move, I am still unable to find the mini-USB cable to get the pictures off the digital camera, but I have pics of both the toilet and the floor. I'll get them up as soon as I can.

WiredForStereo

Yes, News!

I've just completed construction on my new sawdust toilet. It's out in the carport with the stain drying. I'll try to get up some pictures as soon as it's actually in operation but for some imaginary pics, just imagine a box about the size that a toilet without the tank might fit in. The box is made from oak plywood with a standard store bought oak toilet seat with brass hinges.

Though it has been in the planning stages for a few months since I read "The Humanure Handbook," I was forced to build the toilet after I found out I'd have to tear up the whole floor in my bathroom because of a water leak from the toilet supply line. That would leave me with no toilet for a few days or even weeks. So, I decided to build the sawdust toilet.

Construction was easy, though my toilet was a bit more complicated and expensive than "normal" ones are. In fact, if you can find some scrap lumber, old buckets, and a toilet seat, it would be essentially free. Mine cost $40 for the plywood, half of which is left over and $10 for the seat as well as some 2" screws, hinges and stain. My wife knows a woman whose husband is a carpenter, and they say we can have all the sawdust we want. I did have to buy buckets, but you can get those at any paint or big department store with a home improvement section.

Take a look around the internet for sawdust toilets and the theory behind their operation. It's basically a hot compost operation, allowing plenty of time to cook and cure. Then enjoy the richest compost you could imagine. After all the stuff I've read about composting toilets going wrong, I haven't found any complaints with the sawdust composting method, in fact, I've read a number of articles and stories about people who have been doing it for years.

The benefits are vast, especially from a sustainable living viewpoint. Think of all the water not wasted flushing the toilet, and all the energy and pollution saved from not treating that water both before and after the toilet. But the best part is that the nutrients go back into the garden or lawn or wherever you decide to put it. Returning the nutrients to the soil is something that rarely goes on in today's huge fertilizer fed farms.

I'll probably be using it for the first time some time tomorrow so I'll keep you up to date.

This poo's for you!!!
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