I've been thinking about a bunch of sh*t today. I don't mean metaphorically; I've actually been thinking about sewage. It seems appropriate on Earth Day to ponder environmental issues.
Here in the Advanced Countries, we generate human waste in our houses and workplaces,as everyone does--but then we add lots of water and pour it into septic tanks which go to leach fields, or into public sewers which carry it many miles away to be put through a long process which destroys pathogens, cleanses the water we added, and releases it all as harmless stuff.
In the old days, they used outhouses. Not so good either. But there is a better alternative.
Composting toilets really make the most sense. They're not exciting and will probably never catch on for more than a few people, and I'm not suggesting we all install them. But think about it. Sewage is essentially biodegradable matter that really doesn't need to go anywhere. A composting toilet doesn't add extra water. It lets the natural microbes and bacteria break down the toxic components. What ultimately emerges is a moist, odor-free mulch which can be used on lawns, shrubs and other non-food crops. With a little further composting, it can be used to grow food. Even dumping it in the back yard or woods or paying someone to pick it up periodically would make more sense than shipping it far away.
We are supposed to get our furnaces and cars serviced regularly, so it would make sense to have periodic service calls set up, much as dental checkups are, so the work of maintaining the proper moisture content, temperature, etc. wouldn't fall on the homeowner. Right now, if you buy a system, you're responsible for watching over it for the rest of your life. A bit of a burden.
I imagine that, as adequate water resources are harder to come by, our grandchildren may see these systems become more prevalent. In a world where cars run on fuel cells and homes are heated and powered by solar, it doesn't seem far-fetched.
When the Rural Electrification Act of the '30s went into effect, millions of rural Americans were connected to the electrical grid. Prior to that, many farms had on-site generators to provide electricity. The total cost of the electrification of the rural U.S. was higher than setting up generators and/or windmills, with batteries, for all those country-dwellers would have been.
Of course, now the damage is done. We expect someone miles, maybe even thousands of miles away, to take care of us. The big electric, water and sewer companies or municipalities provide their products and services to us, when local service technicians could probably maintain smaller rural systems for a comparable price. Is the possibility of a site-based system failing for a day or two any worse than the four or five times a year I currently lose power because of a downed power line somewhere far away, while my own neighborhood, with its buried cables, is not the problem?
For urban and city dwellers, the larger, centralized grid makes sense, but not for Joe and Betty Corn-Farmer out in East Cow Flop, Tennessee. Ten years ago, I wouldn't have imagined 5% of cars on the road being hybrids, as they are now. So I can imagine a day when many of us stop dispatching our doodoo to a distant destination, and importing our electricity from an offsite entity.
So Happy Earth Day to you future composters!
In the old days, they used outhouses. Not so good either. But there is a better alternative.
Composting toilets really make the most sense. They're not exciting and will probably never catch on for more than a few people, and I'm not suggesting we all install them. But think about it. Sewage is essentially biodegradable matter that really doesn't need to go anywhere. A composting toilet doesn't add extra water. It lets the natural microbes and bacteria break down the toxic components. What ultimately emerges is a moist, odor-free mulch which can be used on lawns, shrubs and other non-food crops. With a little further composting, it can be used to grow food. Even dumping it in the back yard or woods or paying someone to pick it up periodically would make more sense than shipping it far away.
We are supposed to get our furnaces and cars serviced regularly, so it would make sense to have periodic service calls set up, much as dental checkups are, so the work of maintaining the proper moisture content, temperature, etc. wouldn't fall on the homeowner. Right now, if you buy a system, you're responsible for watching over it for the rest of your life. A bit of a burden.
I imagine that, as adequate water resources are harder to come by, our grandchildren may see these systems become more prevalent. In a world where cars run on fuel cells and homes are heated and powered by solar, it doesn't seem far-fetched.
When the Rural Electrification Act of the '30s went into effect, millions of rural Americans were connected to the electrical grid. Prior to that, many farms had on-site generators to provide electricity. The total cost of the electrification of the rural U.S. was higher than setting up generators and/or windmills, with batteries, for all those country-dwellers would have been.
Of course, now the damage is done. We expect someone miles, maybe even thousands of miles away, to take care of us. The big electric, water and sewer companies or municipalities provide their products and services to us, when local service technicians could probably maintain smaller rural systems for a comparable price. Is the possibility of a site-based system failing for a day or two any worse than the four or five times a year I currently lose power because of a downed power line somewhere far away, while my own neighborhood, with its buried cables, is not the problem?
For urban and city dwellers, the larger, centralized grid makes sense, but not for Joe and Betty Corn-Farmer out in East Cow Flop, Tennessee. Ten years ago, I wouldn't have imagined 5% of cars on the road being hybrids, as they are now. So I can imagine a day when many of us stop dispatching our doodoo to a distant destination, and importing our electricity from an offsite entity.
So Happy Earth Day to you future composters!
Posts
Interesting (com)post. :-)
ReplyDeleteI think you are onto something with the composting toilet, but I think it's a bit of stretch to suggest that there were really many viable alternatives to Rural Electrification.
Many/most of those farms did not have any generators. And the generators that did exist then were inefficient, broke down a lot, and polluted a lot. And the battery/inverter technology just wasn't 'soup' yet either. Even 20 years ago it was difficult to put together an efficient battery backup system.
More things that would need to go into the analysis would be figuring out what efficiencies/access to new technologies all those farms gained by access to large amounts of power - grain handling and storage is heavily electrified...
True enough. I titled this "musings" because I was sort of thinking aloud, some of it based on an article in Fine Homebuilding. That article's contention was that the US government could have supplied generators, etc. to all those rural homes. Perhaps if they had, the on-site power sources would have ultimately been replaced by more centralized suppliers anyway, just later on. But I wonder if now, with today's improved technologies, it might make sense for more people building new homes/farms in rural areas to consider going off the grid. Again, musing, not stating for sure.
ReplyDelete