I took some serious abuse in comments when I wrote Gates Foundation Throwing $42 Million Into The Toilet, questioning whether we needed a high-tech toilet solution. Commenters wrote: “This article is a disgrace and a sham.” Niels Peter Flint, who I respect and have written about here, writes “The problems around human waste are ENORMOUS and here you just ridicule a very serious and honest approach to come with NEW & INNOVATIVE solutions.”
But I was not ridiculing it. I was trying to make a point that high tech solutions are not always the most appropriate, and that economic and social systems have existed for centuries to deal with poop and pee, because the stuff had real economic value. I concluded by stating:
Perhaps I was trying to mix too many concepts into one post.I did note the next day that “I was concerned that they were looking for a solution to a problem that was not technological but societal; that we need to relearn lessons from the past rather than looking for new toilets for the future.”
For instance, one of the toilet designs being funded by the Gates Foundation, from the University of Toronto, “can dehydrate feces and smoulder them - like charcoal - to sanitize them within 24 hours. The powdery byproduct can then be used as an agricultural fertilizer. The toilet will also filter urine through a membrane, then disinfect it using ultraviolet radiation.”
That sounds complicated, and probably consumes a lot of power. But in a Globe and Mail article, chemical engineer Yu-Ling Cheng of the U of T made an important point about toilets, that it is more than just about having a place to poop:
Dr Cheng is reiterating the point that poop and urine have value. If, instead of treating it as waste, we monetize it like they did in China and Japan a hundred years ago, then it ceases to become something that we carelessly do in the fields.
Image credit Strategic NinePeak Fertilizer
Right now, the prices of the main components of fertilizer, nitrogen and phosphorus, are going through the roof. The reasons are simple; nitrogen fertilizers are made from fossil fuels, primarily natural gas.
While there is a temporary boom in natural gas thanks to hydraulic fracturing or fracing, (now commonly called fracking), gas is also replacing coal in power plants and may well replace gasoline in cars. Prior to the rapid expansion of fracing, it was assumed that we were pretty much at peak gas. All the fracing will push off the peak, but doesn’t eliminate it. Read more in TreeHugger:“Peak Fertilizer” To Make Manure A Valuable Commodity
Phosphate fertilizers are mined, and we are running out of them too. The Soils Association writes:
More on peak phosphorus:Fred Pearce On Peak Phosphorus: It’s Time For Pee-CyclingIs “Peak Fertilizer” Nearer Than We Think? New Report Fuels Concern
Yet we have seven billion people on this planet pooping out nitrogen-rich manure and peeing out phosphorus, often washing it away with drinking water. What kind of crazy system is this?
In Part 2 of this series, The History of the Bathroom: Awash In Water and Waste, I noted that some engineers advocated
It’s time to admit we were wrong and fix it.
The fact is, if there was away of managing poop and pee, they would have real economic value. How much? Gene Logsdon, the author of Holy Sh*t: Managing Manure To Save Mankind tried to figure it out in the Atlantic. He indicates that fertilizer costs $80 per acre. The tiny farm wiki suggests a rate of 8.5 tons of manure per acre for an annual application. That puts an economic value of about 10 bucks per ton of manure. We know from our post The Flusher King: Testing Toilets that the average poop is 250 grams, or 1/4000 of a metric tonne, so on average, at current fertilizer prices, each poop has an economic value of two cents. Multiply that by a town or city and you are talking real money. And we haven’t even got started on pee and phosphates.
Logsdon concludes:
That may be overly romantic, we are still talking about poop. But here is how we might start:
- Bring Composting Toilets into our homes and offices
It has got to the point that composting toilets can be pretty much indistinguishable from conventional ones; this Clivus Multrum uses a little foam instead of water, but otherwise is a pretty normal throne. The difference is the back end; just as the toilet was an adaptation to a supply of running water, (see part 2) this is an adaptation to a clivus multrum composting system that has to be cleaned out every six months.
There is an entire office building in Vancouver that has been running off-pipe for 15 years. I wrote in my post on it:
- Separate and Collect Urine
First of all, it makes for better, more valuable poop. From Yellow is the New Green:
Secondly, it is valuable on its own. April notes how it can be easily turned into a valuable resource.. Warren quotes Cynthia Mitchell, an Associate Professor from the Institute for Sustainable Futures at the University of Technology in Sydney, in P is for Phosphorus (As Well As Human Urine):
Over a hundred years ago, Teddy Roosevelt said “civilized people ought to know how to dispose of the sewage in some other way than putting it into the drinking water.” He is still right. It’s time to get over our fear of poop, redesign our systems to separate and store poop and pee, put an economic value on it as fertilizer replacements and start putting it to work.
