by

Jansen Estrup

Now that we have the petrochemical companies and power producers on the defensive (not beaten by any means, but on notice and retreating), there is another urgent matter at hand.

Waste. Yes industrial pollutants, coal slush, fracking waste water, plastics and farm waste are being addressed. Great ideas about cleaning and replenishing the oceans are being introduced and even space has a Swiss company proposing to clean the hi-tech trash from near-Earth orbit.

I'm talking about something more personal, and yet also a universal disaster. I'm talkin' about your biological cast-offs, the urine and feces we each contribute to the Earth's growing health concerns. Each of us, every day, produce 1.5 liters of urine, a nearly sterile fluid composed of water and organic and inorganic compounds. We also excrete about 150 grams of feces, which is mostly water. But nearly a third of it is dry weight bacteria and an equal portion is fibre. The rest is proteins, fats and chemicals like nitrogen, potassium and phosphorus.

More 'advanced' nations have, over recent decades, dealt with the problem by installing city-wide sewer systems and even modern rural homes have septic tanks. But the sewer systems of our cities are already getting old, frequently leak their bile into our drinking water and will cost hundreds of billions of dollars to dig up and repair. Washington, D.C., not quite as old as our nation, reports 450 breaks and leaks a year.

More than 2 billion humans, mostly in Asia and Africa don't even have rudimentary treatment facilities, using open trenches, streams and rivers. Or nothing at all.

What is to be done?

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and other NGOs, are working hard to solve the problem and these solutions may work in first nation countries as well as the Third World. The most promising answer is a variation on the universal 'honey bucket' … the modern dry toilet.

One version, called The Blue Diversion Toilet, separates urine, feces and water using a simple hydraulic membrane and a small solar panel. Urine is first pumped into a treatment tank through a 'bioreactor' that converts organics and amonia into safe compounds and recovers clean water, which is recycled for hand washing and anal cleaning. No paper or hand cleaner necessary, a boon to both remote and urban areas.

Low-tech versions of the composting toilet require more planning to install and more 'hands on' actions, but we've been separating other trash for quite a while, so aside from a new mind-set, toting excess bodily wastes to the curb or refuse center (or having it done for us) is just a new, less ordoriforus variant of the age-old honey-bucket.

Self containment is as much a part of self-sufficiency as individual solar power (including wind, which is activated by the sun, too). Millions of miles of copper wiring, sewage and oil pipelines, water reclamation systems, delivery systems (which include rail- and highways) require far too much energy, raw material and maintenance. Delivery via drone and 3D printer are already here.

Disposal and reuse of our day-to-day wastes have always been problems, and now, more and more of us are having to live in our own drek.

I am reminded of that film scene where the Durham Bulls are milling around on the mound and the umpire goes out to see, 'what is the holdup?' The players gripe about the second baseman's wedding woes, the first baseman's cursed glove and the pitcher's inability to throw strikes. “We're dealing with some shit, here,” the catcher tells him.

But I am also reminded of some stories which fill the waste not, want not category of literature. Science and technology are ahead of the curve, there. It is only a matter of consumers insisting that there is a market. That's you, folks!