This reblog from Mike at Damn the Matrix.
It blew him away! It blew me even further! And like Mike I kept thinking, “what will they do when the oil runs out?”.I’d like to see a full chemical analysis of these ‘biosolids’, aka sh*t.
I’m so glad for my composting toilet. Quite the best thing I’ve ever done. I know what goes into it and I know what comes out of it. I have no reservations about using it for the garden. But the fecal waste of a city the size of New York. No thanks.
I’m well known for predicting the demise of large modern cities. Utterly convinced of their massive unsustainability I am… apart from the vulnerability of their food distribution systems in a collapsing fossil fuelled world, there is the issue of sewerage. People in cities just flush and forget, but have no idea of what happens afterwards. Nobody, absolutely nobody, wants to know what happens to their shit! Don’t get me wrong, I don’t find it the most palatable of subjects myself, but if you’re interested in sustainability, then shit is a major issue.
Then, along comes this film past my intray. It’s times like these you’re glad they haven’t yet worked out how to make your computer generate smells as well as sounds..! All the same, it’s a real eye opener.
There is no doubt that sewerage saved London (the first sewered city in the world, if you don’t count Rome…
View original post 171 more words
Foodnstuff 
November 21, 2014 at 2:38 pm |
Oh crap! Sorry, ‘human residuals’. I think I must be into toilet humour because I got quite a few belly laughs from watching the movie. Thanks for sharing. Yes, I know it is a weighty issue but where would we be without a moment or two of levity.
It is somehow nice to know that the cycles of nature go full circle. Poop to sludge to cake to compost to food to poop again.
Whoever knew (we are obviously not meant to know) that large quantities of the world’s food is grown in human waste. And most Westerners think that only the Chinese did that.
And yes, you’re right, what happens when the merry-go-round stops?
LikeLike
November 21, 2014 at 4:58 pm |
I’d never considered the waste from hospitals. What about when gastro hits town (like it is around Melbourne at the moment)? It’s making me think but also about how to put in a composting toilet here and how best to and where best to compost it. I’ve got ideas. 😀
LikeLike
November 21, 2014 at 6:44 pm |
It’s not hard….there are plenty of designs for composting loos around. I presume you’ve already got a conventional flush job, and that will satisfy the powers that be and your visitors, but you can easily build something no-one but you will know about and landscape around it and make it look like part of the scenery.
You can use it most of the time and only use the flush job when necessary, e.g. rainy, wet, nights 😉 I have a proper EPA approved RotaLoo, but they cost money and it’s the only loo in the place. It actually cost less than a conventional one and the septic tank that would have been needed, because we don’t have sewerage here.
I expect you’ve already downloaded Joe Jenkins’ Humanure Handbook from the Net.
LikeLiked by 1 person
November 22, 2014 at 12:12 pm |
I’ve definitely got the humanure handbook. 🙂 I’m thinking more about where to put the loo – our house is not all that big and we’ve used much of the available indoor space – as well as composting it down. I’m wondering if whether an aerobin would work well or be necessary. We have a storm drain (we call it the creek) running through our block too which adjoins the Werribee river about 100m further down so we need to make sure that our greywater is well filtered and any pathogenic compost (cat manure and humanure) is not causing any run off into the waterways.
I looked at the Rotaloo as well as other brands but all of the larger capacity ones are not approved in Victoria. Only some of the small capacity ones are. Bureaucracy! 😦
LikeLike
November 22, 2014 at 12:27 pm |
I’m lucky with the RotaLoo in that most of the composting happens in the system as the bins rotate into and out of use. When I empty a bin, I put the contents (generally unrecognisable) into a compost bay and add a tray from the worm farm. Once the worms have been through it it’s beautifully friable. Keep working on it. I’m sure you’ll come up with a useable system.
LikeLiked by 1 person
November 22, 2014 at 6:26 am |
You should see how hard it was for a neighbour to install a composting loo here :(. I am just going to make my own and forgedaboud telling the bleeding council! It’s not like they bother to even venture out into the sticks anyway! 😉
LikeLike