Examining The 'Unmentionables'
Hello and happy new year. It's now no longer the International Year of Sanitation - or indeed the International Year of the Potato - so I'm pleased that TPM Book Café still sees fit to keep talking, and to examine the unmentionables, as Time magazine headlined a piece about Alexander Kira, author of the wonderful and peerless The Bathroom, back in 1966. That title was partly behind my subtitle (the US one at least; the UK one is "Adventures in the World of Human Waste", which was thought a bit too Boy's Own for Americans, though I think it's truthful), but it wasn't actually accurate, in the sense that after two years of research, I don't think the topic is unmentionable.
I'm not referring to myself, because it has obviously been in my interest to mention it, constantly. But in the sense that even when I wasn't talking to people in the business, the unsung heroes who flush the sewers, install latrines, pick hospital aprons out of wastewater treatment plant grills, I found my conversation partners to be astonishingly willing to talk about it. There was usually a pause, after I'd told them what I was writing about, and then invariably some anecdote or other would come pouring out. Sometimes I was the one to change the subject. The same thing has happened since the book has been published: I expected to get some mockery, and some attention because of the potential gross-out nature of the topic, but there's been none of that. Instead, genuine, respectful curiosity and a real interest.
What's my point? That I think people aren't given enough credit. Part of the reason that American - and other western countries - wastewater infrastructure is in the parlous state it is (underfunded, undermaintained, and kept going by the consistent firefighting skills of the people in charge of it - is that politicians and local government officials assume it to be taboo subject of interest to no-one, which gives them the leeway to keep it off the agenda. When's the last time you saw a mass demonstration in protest at the basic absence of public toilet facilities in, say, New York City (though insert any city name there and it would be accurate)? When is the last time there was a major story or news report on the fact that every week, millions of gallons of raw sewage is discharged into New York's waterways? Or that, according to research carried out at Stanford, up to 1.5 million excess gastrointestinal illnesses are caused by sewage - treated and raw - being discharged into the ocean off 28 Californian beaches, and that this costs the state up to $51 million (in 2000 dollars) in health care costs? I'm not suggesting there is anything improper or illegal in these practices: they're what sewer systems are designed to do, and it's what they do more and more, under pressure from increasing population and from greater and more intense volumes of water from rainfall. But surely they can be bettered?
I've been criticized for not calling for a wholesale revolution of the waterborne waste treatment paradigm, or of the practice of using biosolids as fertilizer - which I am certain will be a lively topic of discussion this week - and the criticism is just. For now the system is too entrenched. There are alternatives, but they are so far small-scale. I don't see a revolution happening any time soon. But I do think that things can be improved. And for that to even begin, what is desperately missing, in a country whose eminent association of civil engineers awarded its sewers and treatment plants a D minus in its last report card, is public discussion about whether waterborne waste treatment is the best way to dispose of human shit. Or whether Teddy Roosevelt was right when he said in 1910 that "civilized people ought to know how to dispose of sewage in some other way than putting it into the drinking water." Either way, I think people can handle the discussion more than is assumed.
I know one thing everyone can do right now to cut down on even more waste than human sewage waste. It's largely untreated waste even -- no sewage plants involved. It's polluting our air, polluting our land and our water. It's the excrement of farm animals.
Just dairy cows in California, and that's just dairy cows, not meat cows, or pigs or chickens or any other animal, and that's just in California, but dairy cows in California alone produce the same amount of waste as 21 million people. Imagine the waste all farm animals produce across this country. We are literally drowning in it.
Al Gore won't talk about farm animals being one of the major causes of global climate change and what you can do about it.
Most environmental groups know about it but don't dare mention it.
The solution is easy really...
Go vegetarian!
January 6, 2009 4:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
Excrement of farm animials isn't waste; it is manure. Manure which should be spread back on fields to restore nutrients and to improve soil tilth.
January 6, 2009 6:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
Sure, in the olden days, before intensive industrial factory farms provided over 90% of US meat and dairy. Frankly, there's just too much shit nowadays to spread around and hence it's polluting our land and waterways. As for our air, methane, more harmful than CO2, and CO2 itself, from animal agriculture is responsible for almost half of the global warming impacting the planet yet barely gets a mention by most global climate change warriors. If you doubt me, check out the links I've provided above for hard scientific facts. Do your own google searches. Just for fun, do a search for "hog waste lagoons". And here's one more link before I move on. The info is out there, just not highlighted adequately in proportion to its harm on the environment.
January 6, 2009 11:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
ALL of the problems you bring up are solved with an on-site technology that does not produce methane, is the best fertilizer you can imagine because of its nutrient content and balance and means that we don't double-pollute with both excrements (that we cannot avoid) AND chemical fertilizer (that we can and should stop since it is contributing many-folds to the global warming !
January 7, 2009 7:24 AM | Reply | Permalink
I'm not sure how much sense your comment makes. If you could cite some sources that would sure be helpful. Otherwise, it sounds like you are talking out of your butt, no offense (and no pun intended).
First, ALL of the problems are not solved. They are ongoing, and getting worse every day. You can say you don't care, but don't pretend that there is any kind of feasible technological solution today that can deal with the environmental problems attributed to animal agriculture.
Now let's get back to some facts, rather than fanciful glee for the wonders of manure...
The methane actually comes from cow farts and burps, so I am really curious how technology plans to deal with that. Colostomy bags and masks?? Then store it undergound?? And how soon could this methane-capture technology be implemented, and at a scale big enough to make a difference?
As I indicated earlier regarding the sheer volume of waste, there is more animal shit than we could ever need for fertilizer. What exactly is the proposal for dealing with the excess? It's polluting all over the place now -- check my previous links. Maybe that "on-site technology" will simply va-poo-rize it all.
As for chemical fertilizers being a source of global warming, again a citation would be nice. I'm not advocating for them, but I just don't see how the harm from them, as far as global warming is concerned (I am aware of other issues with them), how they could compete with the damage animal agriculture causes when it's responsible for roughly 50% of all global climate change, not to mention of host of other environmental and health issues.
Lastly, we can very well prevent the animal excrement -- it is definitely avoidable -- as well as those seriously nasty farts and burbs (no joke)... Go vegetarian! Better yet, cut out dairy too and go vegan. If you care about our kids and grandkids having a livable world, it's about one of the most important (and easiest) things you can do.
January 7, 2009 1:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
This column is full of shit.
January 6, 2009 4:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
Apart from the health aspects, when you count all the expenses involved, countrywide; from toilets, to pipes inside and outside the house, to waste water plants, to maintenance of the entire system from toilet to outflow pipe at the sewage treatment plant....what might be the annual cost?
I'll start the bidding with a crappy guess at $200 billion.
January 6, 2009 4:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
It occurs to me that human solid waste is the only form of animal waste in the world that is dangerous to humans, that cannot be recycled into the human food chain. And, I do realize that many countries do, in fact, recycle human waste into the food chain, but they also pay some consequences for doing that.
Could it be that the population of this planet is limited not by food supplies, but by waste disposal?
January 6, 2009 7:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
I recommend you hunt down a copy of the "Yes Men" movie. In it, they propose that the poor should eat the recycled human waste of the first world. It's hilarious and sad at the same time.
January 6, 2009 11:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
It is only a threat to health if we apply it raw. The very nature of the long-term composting process makes the end product safe and concentrated so there is also a gain in the whole waste-transportation cycle. Swedish law [issued by the National Bacteriological Laboratories] stipulates that after processing and storing for a safety buffer period of six months, the end product can be safely used in agriculture.
January 7, 2009 7:08 AM | Reply | Permalink
I already discussed my distaste for potty talk. But think about how it was just a hundred years ago.
There was horse stuff all over every street in America. That was where there were home rules about leaving your shoes at the door and the custom of people wearing slippers in the house.
Rain would wash this stuff right into the rivers. It would all go into the groundwater.
And it could be dangerous. All you needed was one sick cow or horse and disease could spread in minutes.
Queen Victoria wanted to ban any horse traffic in London. Business shut down that idea because it would hurt business.
Human waste was a real problem. Chamber maid was not a nice term because she had to deal with chamber pots, little potties; emptying them out every morning. ugh
We have at least ten thousand years of dealing with this waste. And people like me wish to simply ignore the problem.
With three hundred million people, it is as important an issue as clean water and air.
January 6, 2009 7:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
I found your comment about the taboo nature of wastewater intriguing. I think you'll find the real issue here is with rural communities, however, not large cities.
January 6, 2009 8:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
THE IMPORTANCE OF POOP -- IT STARTS WITH WHAT WE NOW REPLACE PLANT NUTRIENTS WITH IN AGRICULTURE !
Instead of using chemical fertilizers that only effectively replaces the main building blocks of organic matter -- N,P and K -- human and animal fertilizer replaces the whole spectrum of nutrients including the micro-nutrients that give plants taste, good nutrition and resistance to disease. By doing so we would also cut in half the pollution caused by agricultural run-off and the now flushed out nutrients from sewage systems. It may seem to be an impossible change to make but the first step is simple. We can immediately apply a technology for dealing with toilet waste that catches the whole nutrient base from human excretion, without spreading disease from human pathogens.
By switching over to odor-free, hygienic toilet systems that catches the plant nutrients without mixing them up with technical waste, we would get these nutrients back in a directly usable form. This perfectly-safe-to-use [after the long term composting], full spectrum fertilizer, strengthens the plants and we will not, as now, need to kill everything that we consider a threat to the crop as they get much better at defending themselves. The food we produce will taste better, be more nutritious and attract better prices in the markets. Small natural blemishes is then, not a sign of bad agriculture but a sign that these fruits and veggies are organically produced and will be good for us and the environment.
So amazingly, healthy food starts with how we incorporate our and other animals bodily secretions in the cycle of our food production.
January 7, 2009 7:00 AM | Reply | Permalink
You should read the latest TPM post on this topic, about the sludge scam. She covers a lot of territory on human waste, from "recycling" to toxics to compost toilets. Doesn't seem like spreading the shit around is the snap solution you casually suggest.
January 7, 2009 2:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
I just read this book over the holidays and loved it. I can't stop thinking about it--the issue of how cultures deal with their waste (though as the author points out, it's not truly waste) is integral to how we organize ourselves and think about our human-ness.
I'm inspired to find out more about how NYC treats its sewage, especially after the author went down into the sewers in my home borough of Queens.
I would like to know more about the realistic options available to cities for revamping their existing sewage systems. Is there a way to keep industrial toxic wastes out of the public system so that we can safely turn sludge into compost?
January 7, 2009 10:56 AM | Reply | Permalink
As a followup to LB’s earlier post, I think that, at least in the developed world, lack of public awareness about wastewater sanitation, rather than repulsion to the topic, is primarily what keeps the subject off the agenda. The generations who eagerly witnessed the installation of indoor plumbing are all but gone. Today, we just flush and it’s whisked away, too busy in our daily routines to consider its fate. Many who live near sewage treatment plants aren’t even quite sure what goes on behind that fence. These days, beach closings are few, and the old “No Swimming/Polluted Water” signs that I grew up with have almost disappeared. In the U.S., significant Federal and state investments in wastewater conveyance and treatment in the 70s and 80s seeming made sewage a problem of days gone by.
Unfortunately, infrastructure doesn’t last forever. Like bridges and the electrical grid, our sewers, pumping stations and wastewater treatment plants need a continual flow of funding to be sustained. Federal money for wastewater-treatment projects dried up almost 20 years ago, dumping the burden on cash-strapped municipalities. Growth in population in many areas is already stressing systems, with some locales halting additional sanitary sewer connections. The propagation of pavement has increased storm runoff into aging collections systems; coupled with increasing rainfall rates, wet-weather overflows are on the rise.
To address these infrastructure and environmental issues, the City of New York recently released PlaNYC, which lays out dozens of multi-year initiatives. PlaNYC includes specific projects for maintaining and improving water quality, including expansion of wet-weather capacity at treatment plants, developing natural watercourses for storm runoff, and reducing overflows of combined sewage. In addition, the plan describes programs to improve power efficiency and reduce greenhouse gas emissions from these municipal facilities.
PlaNYC and Ms. George’s book will hopefully raise public awareness that active solutions rather than reactive fixes are needed. I'd delighted to hear that LB wants to learn more about how sewage is treated in his home borough.
January 7, 2009 1:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks Vincent--I'm excited about the PlaNYC program. I hope we also see incentives for more greenroof projects to decrease storm runoff.
And infrastructure doesn't pay for itself! If only we had a commuter-type tax for anyone who flushes a toilet while they're in the city limits.
-(Ms.) LB
January 8, 2009 11:01 AM | Reply | Permalink