Environmental considerations of greening human waste: a good read (really!!)

I've been reading a book about poop and pee, and let me tell you, it's fascinating. The Big Necessity, by Rose George, covers the world of human waste from the high-end, built-in bidet with blow-dryers, heated-seat robo-toilets of Japan, to the hand-collection of excrement due to open defecation that happens in undeveloped parts of the world. And everything in between. 

Now, if you use a flush toilet like I do, you may think it's simple. Everyone just needs to do what we do. It's modern, efficient, clean and sanitary. Our senses are not assaulted by foul smells and sights. But modern is probably not a fair description. Most western urban sewers were built a long time ago, and have a hard time keeping up with the growth of our cities. Or they don't work during sudden severe rains -- and end up overflowing raw sewage into rivers, lakes and oceans. This happens in Portland on a regular basis. Surprisingly, it's not really the poop that is the bane of the sewer workers' existence: it's fat and Q-tips and liquid concrete and grenades. The ignorance of "civilized" people throwing everything down the toilet and just flushing it "away." Before I move on, I want to underscore that fat from residential cooking and especially restaurants going down the drains is especially bad because it builds up in sewer pipes, has to be cleared by hand and can cost millions of dollars.

Here's the crux of it. Most of us who live with flush toilets can trust that our waste is the city's problem. My poop, your problem. We pay for clean water and sewers. End of story. What this book made me realize is that the clean water we use to flush these toilets is a crime. I've heard of people using their gray water to flush their toilets, and while I'm not sure how that would work logistically, it's worth looking into. Yet the world cannot support everyone on the globe having flush toilets. We all need sanitation to cut down on excrement-related disease such as parasitic worms and cholera, but as George says the flush toilet cannot be the holy grail of sanitation. I will not even tell you about the challenges associated with biosolids being spread onto farmers' fields. But just mull that one over a bit...

Here's an excerpt from the chapter: China's Biogas Boom:

"Mr. Wang had found my interest in fen, the Mandarin world for excrement, peculiar. Nonetheless, he tried to be helpful. He would point out when he spotted a truck full of fen looming behind, though its odor preceded it by far. He would alert me when he saw a tiny figure in a roadside field bearing a tank and a hose, spraying -- by the smell of it -- the contents of his toilets on his cabbages. This practice would horrify any public health professional, given the disease-load of feces, but it's what happens to 90 percent of China's excrement, and has been done forever. There are reasons not to eat salads in China, and why the sizzling works are so sizzling."

This chapter goes on to explain how 15.4 million biogas digesters in China are expanding the definition of a cheap and inexhaustible supply of "clean energy." 

I could just go on and on. This book is beyond fascinating. Not because it examines something that we consider gross. But because all of us should realize that our poop is really our problem. There are issues with sewer systems and water scarcity. There are issues with open defecation and disease. There are issues with biosolid disposal. And it's a big problem world-wide. 

I'll leave you with a teaser. An EnviroMom reader recently shared with us how her family has stopped using toilet paper, which we plan to post about very soon. Reading this book made me realize that this change should be applauded, and a no-brainer for all of us. Of course, we all have our cultural hang-ups about toileting, so it won't be a no-brainer. But worth mulling over as we all figure out ways to raise green kids.