Let us all poop in the bushes instead of in the water. The sea, our primary food source, will thank us.

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Greatest I am
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Let us all poop in the bushes instead of in the water. The sea, our primary food source, will thank us.

Post by Greatest I am »

Let us all poop in the bushes instead of in the water. The sea, our primary food source, will thank us.

All human waste should be used to make arable land instead of killing our primary food and cooling source. The sea.

Funny as it may sound, the wold has been producing arable land from animal waste forever. We lose that benefit by pumping our human waste into the sea.

A sea that will cost us trillions and impoverish many in the next 25 years, as it rises and forces us to spend trillions on infrastructure.

Add in the trillions that the wars that famines create and you have a depression style of life. All in the next 25 odd years. Happy days?

And all of this happens as the world population increases to its estimated plateau of 10 billion people, who will need to burn even more fossil fuels and add even more to global weather carnage.

I think we all suffer from a case of collective insanity.

A good reversal of that would be a collective protecting of our primary food source and create more arable land to feed the hordes of bodies that we will have to sustain. Human food needs fertilizing and human waste makes a great fertilizer after it becomes arable land.

Let us all poop in the bushes instead of in the water. I mean pump our sewage onto land of course.

This links leads to a longer one that all should view.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSjE8xw_-Dg

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DL
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Re: Let us all poop in the bushes instead of in the water. The sea, our primary food source, will thank us.

Post by brimstoneSalad »

The problem with that is that the waste water drains into groundwater, which is used for irrigation and drinking. Basically the plague era all over again. It's difficult in terms of infrastructure to transport solid poop around and spread it out enough to avoid those issues.

Yes, dry composting works if the internal temperature gets high enough for long enough, but that's only viable at the point of creation, and the EPA can't give that kind of oversight on a large scale to make sure people compost correctly.

Once the waste is processed in conventional sewage treatment, the result does sometimes become fertilizer, but there are challenges to that:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sewage_sludge#Land_application_and_other_disposal_options
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Re: Let us all poop in the bushes instead of in the water. The sea, our primary food source, will thank us.

Post by Greatest I am »

brimstoneSalad wrote: Mon Jun 12, 2017 1:14 am The problem with that is that the waste water drains into groundwater, which is used for irrigation and drinking. Basically the plague era all over again. It's difficult in terms of infrastructure to transport solid poop around and spread it out enough to avoid those issues.

Yes, dry composting works if the internal temperature gets high enough for long enough, but that's only viable at the point of creation, and the EPA can't give that kind of oversight on a large scale to make sure people compost correctly.

Once the waste is processed in conventional sewage treatment, the result does sometimes become fertilizer, but there are challenges to that:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sewage_sludge#Land_application_and_other_disposal_options
I hear you but to continue making the mess we are making, and expecting things to get better, is a sign of insanity.

This is not an issue that any individual can tackle. It is a political issue so the fears you have of future problems can be expertly dealt with, as best as we can, before any new system of land and water recovery and environmental clean up takes place.

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DL
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Re: Let us all poop in the bushes instead of in the water. The sea, our primary food source, will thank us.

Post by NonZeroSum »

Greatest I am wrote: Mon Jun 12, 2017 9:21 am A good reversal of that would be a collective protecting of our primary food source and create more arable land to feed the hordes of bodies that we will have to sustain. Human food needs fertilizing and human waste makes a great fertilizer after it becomes arable land.

Let us all poop in the bushes instead of in the water. I mean pump our sewage onto land of course.
Water + Raw excrement just makes for really bad fertilizer, it needs time to hot compost, the biggest problem as I see it is nitrogen pollution from chemical and sewage run off destroying (through eutrophication) all the life in lakes, rivers and streams around.

If I had it my way everyone would only use the toilet in their house for expelling urine, and we'd all have communal toilets in the garden with a wheely-bin you fill up with poop and sawdust / paper (to cover the smell and dry brown material for composting) that gets taken away every week by a special purpose bin lorry. That's how we've always done it on sites I've lived on, that and tree bogs where you just cover it over with straw, soil and perennials when the hole is getting full. Also yes going in the bushes away from rivers and streams when cycling or hiking in the middle of nowhere and bringing along a trowel to make a small hole, cover over and use compostable toilet paper.

But I agree polluting and eutrophication of coastal waters, oceans is a big problem, Surfers Against Sewage is a group that got a lot of publicity after a surfer went to hospital for ingesting water on a beach near a sewage overflow pipe, so they are lobbying the government to put more funding into larger capacity and better waste treatment facilities, not to treat these 'emergency' overflow pipes as standard practice out of bathing season. They're also drawing attention to the amount of plastic that washes up out of the ocean which is really bad: https://www.sas.org.uk/campaign/combined-sewage-overflows/
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Re: Let us all poop in the bushes instead of in the water. The sea, our primary food source, will thank us.

Post by Greatest I am »

NonZeroSum wrote: Mon Jun 12, 2017 10:02 am
Greatest I am wrote: Mon Jun 12, 2017 9:21 am A good reversal of that would be a collective protecting of our primary food source and create more arable land to feed the hordes of bodies that we will have to sustain. Human food needs fertilizing and human waste makes a great fertilizer after it becomes arable land.

Let us all poop in the bushes instead of in the water. I mean pump our sewage onto land of course.
Water + Raw excrement just makes for really bad fertilizer, it needs time to hot compost, the biggest problem as I see it is nitrogen pollution from chemical and sewage run off destroying (through eutrophication) all the life in lakes, rivers and streams around.

If I had it my way everyone would only use the toilet in their house for expelling urine, and we'd all have communal toilets in the garden with a wheely-bin you fill up with poop and sawdust / paper (to cover the smell and dry brown material for composting) that gets taken away every week by a special purpose bin lorry. That's how we've always done it on sites I've lived on, that and tree bogs where you just cover it over with straw, soil and perennials when the hole is getting full. Also yes going in the bushes away from rivers and streams when cycling or hiking in the middle of nowhere and bringing along a trowel to make a small hole, cover over and use compostable toilet paper.

But I agree polluting and eutrophication of coastal waters, oceans is a big problem, Surfers Against Sewage is a group that got a lot of publicity after a surfer went to hospital for ingesting water on a beach near a sewage overflow pipe, so they are lobbying the government to put more funding into larger capacity and better waste treatment facilities, not to treat these 'emergency' overflow pipes as standard practice out of bathing season. They're also drawing attention to the amount of plastic that washes up out of the ocean which is really bad: https://www.sas.org.uk/campaign/combined-sewage-overflows/
Thanks for this.

Some of your suggestions are quite good for rural and suburb dwellers but are impossible for urban centers. We have to pump their sh refuse somewhere and we have many areas where settling ponds that can be created to allow nature time to purify the water and produce good top soil.

All it takes is political will and a desire to help the environment instead of hurting it. Presently, as the beef issue shows, we do not want to confront reality.

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DL
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Re: Let us all poop in the bushes instead of in the water. The sea, our primary food source, will thank us.

Post by brimstoneSalad »

Settling ponds result in anaerobic fermentation, which produces huge amounts of methane. We need to mind our methane.

Anaerobic digesters like this are already used in conventional sewage processing (from septic systems to large scale operations). And it's not hot enough to kill dangerous pathogens.

You have to keep the feces from getting wet in the first place so you can use HOT aerobic composting to make it safe to use (and which doesn't produce methane).
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Re: Let us all poop in the bushes instead of in the water. The sea, our primary food source, will thank us.

Post by Greatest I am »

brimstoneSalad wrote: Mon Jun 12, 2017 2:23 pm Settling ponds result in anaerobic fermentation, which produces huge amounts of methane. We need to mind our methane.

Anaerobic digesters like this are already used in conventional sewage processing (from septic systems to large scale operations). And it's not hot enough to kill dangerous pathogens.

You have to keep the feces from getting wet in the first place so you can use HOT aerobic composting to make it safe to use (and which doesn't produce methane).
If you followed that link, you know that cow methane does more damage than what man does.

It is not practical in urban setting to try to separate our liquids and solid waste. We have to find a way to process our sludge and perhaps do as they do in some country's which is to collect the methane and use it as fuel.

How we would do that might be to use some of the many abandoned mine shafts that dot our landscape.

Not being a scientist or expert, I do not know how practical this would be but since we are killing our oceans with pollution, I think we have to try various systems or solutions.

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Re: Let us all poop in the bushes instead of in the water. The sea, our primary food source, will thank us.

Post by brimstoneSalad »

Greatest I am wrote: Tue Jun 13, 2017 12:02 pm If you followed that link, you know that cow methane does more damage than what man does.
The contribution of human waste and garbage is actually pretty substantial. Every bit helps, and building more huge settling ponds like that would have the potential to increase the impact of human waste massively.
Greatest I am wrote: Tue Jun 13, 2017 12:02 pm It is not practical in urban setting to try to separate our liquids and solid waste. We have to find a way to process our sludge and perhaps do as they do in some country's which is to collect the methane and use it as fuel.
We need to stop mixing them in the first place, but that will take new innovations and infrastructure.
If you do the anaerobic fermentation in a closed vessel as is currently done, then yes you can collect the methane and use it as fuel.
There are already companies starting to do this, as I understand:
https://www.clarke-energy.com/sewage-gas/

Open settlement lakes on degraded land wouldn't help with that.
Greatest I am wrote: Tue Jun 13, 2017 12:02 pm How we would do that might be to use some of the many abandoned mine shafts that dot our landscape.
I feel like that would just put waste into groundwater faster. You could collect some gas from it, but then how would you get the settled waste out?
Greatest I am wrote: Tue Jun 13, 2017 12:02 pm Not being a scientist or expert, I do not know how practical this would be but since we are killing our oceans with pollution, I think we have to try various systems or solutions.
I agree, but the current methods are already starting to use methane as on-site fuel, and produce some fertilizer as an end product.
The water that comes out of treatment facilities is reasonably clean; not drinkable, but it's not by any means raw sewage. In many cases it's put into lakes or wetlands that can process it more thoroughly. I think we're already moving in a good direction. If we stopped using cow manure (and stopped growing and eating cows) we'd probably have more economic incentive to process waste into fertilizer.

I don't think waste water dumping is a serious contributor to ocean degradation though.
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Re: Let us all poop in the bushes instead of in the water. The sea, our primary food source, will thank us.

Post by Greatest I am »

brimstoneSalad wrote: Tue Jun 13, 2017 4:09 pm [
quote="Greatest I am" post_id=31798 time=1497369746 user_id=2938]
If you followed that link, you know that cow methane does more damage than what man does.
The contribution of human waste and garbage is actually pretty substantial. Every bit helps, and building more huge settling ponds like that would have the potential to increase the impact of human waste massively.
Indeed. But in a positive way if we can harness the energy and top soil of fertilizer from it.
Greatest I am wrote: Tue Jun 13, 2017 12:02 pm It is not practical in urban setting to try to separate our liquids and solid waste. We have to find a way to process our sludge and perhaps do as they do in some country's which is to collect the methane and use it as fuel.
We need to stop mixing them in the first place, but that will take new innovations and infrastructure.
If you do the anaerobic fermentation in a closed vessel as is currently done, then yes you can collect the methane and use it as fuel.
There are already companies starting to do this, as I understand:
https://www.clarke-energy.com/sewage-gas/
Indeed. Some innovators are finding and creating means and ways to profit from our waste. We just need a lot more of such.
Open settlement lakes on degraded land wouldn't help with that.
I wonder.
Mine tailings are stabilized that way and those are way more toxic than human waste lakes would be.
Greatest I am wrote: Tue Jun 13, 2017 12:02 pm How we would do that might be to use some of the many abandoned mine shafts that dot our landscape.
I feel like that would just put waste into groundwater faster. You could collect some gas from it, but then how would you get the settled waste out?
Dig it out from the bottom the same way they mine. We would need to be below it anyway to insure that nothing dangerous got into the water table that you showed concern for.

We have been looking for a use for coal and from what little I understand of it, it might make a great filter to trap unwanted chemicals. We have all heard of charcoal filter. We might kill two bird with one stone here.
Greatest I am wrote: Tue Jun 13, 2017 12:02 pm Not being a scientist or expert, I do not know how practical this would be but since we are killing our oceans with pollution, I think we have to try various systems or solutions.
I agree, but the current methods are already starting to use methane as on-site fuel, and produce some fertilizer as an end product.
The water that comes out of treatment facilities is reasonably clean; not drinkable, but it's not by any means raw sewage. In many cases it's put into lakes or wetlands that can process it more thoroughly. I think we're already moving in a good direction. If we stopped using cow manure (and stopped growing and eating cows) we'd probably have more economic incentive to process waste into fertilizer.

I don't think waste water dumping is a serious contributor to ocean degradation though.
[/quote]

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/05/070521-sex-fish.html

Fish in the Great Lakes are already changing sex and going extinct and oxygen dead zones are already in the sea.

We are fouling our nest and leaving it for our children to clean up. Shame on this generation.

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DL
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Re: Let us all poop in the bushes instead of in the water. The sea, our primary food source, will thank us.

Post by brimstoneSalad »

The great lakes are much smaller and more fragile than the entirety of the oceans, it's not hard to destroy them.

Dead-zones are relatively small, if you look at a map of them. They're not so much of a growing problem like other pollution that builds up. Wastes in the water are broken down pretty fast.
Oxygen dead zones do imply some anaerobic fermentation must be going on after the oxygen is used up, though, and that's of course bad. We should try to spread out our waste better so it doesn't result in these issues.
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