[billg]

What the heck are we doing sending all our food scraps to the landfills? If we want to have a chance in a post peak oil world, the least we can do is to start the very simple practice of composting our food wastes. Our schools, our restaurants, our grocery stores, our prisons, our hotels, nursing homes, residences...need to separate organic wastes from non-organic wastes. And we need to have pick-up services for our organic wastes, just like we have pick-up services for other recycleables.

Actually, the EPA has a lot of info on the subject of setting up composting programs. And a lot of restaurants and schools are already participating, but not enough.

http://www.epa.gov/epaoswer/non-hw/organics/fd-res.htm

Tackling humanure is next. Large-scale collection programs for humanure (minus sewage treatment systems) could easily be developed in such a way as to not jeopardize the health of humans. Where there is a will there is a way.

How are we going to cope with rising food prices due to the rising cost of fossil fuel inputs if we can’t take these simple steps?

Bill

[eric_b]

Yeah I agree. I live in an Apartment and I end up throwing out so much food waste that just ends up going into the landfill. It's crazy. It should be going into someones compost.

[Cabrone]

Agreed. Poo is just unprocessed soil and urine is plant food. If treated properly it is hugely productive material for plant growth.

The agrochemical industry use natural gas to create urea which is used by farmers as fertilizer. It seems crazy to waste such a valuable energy source to make plant food when we pee urea out of our bodies and then get rid of it.

We treat sewerage as something to be gotten rid of but the truth is that it is a fundamental part of the life cycle on this planet.

[dohboi]

Without fossil fuel-based fertilizer, the fertility of farms will necessarily decrease over time unless heroic efforts are made to cylce nutrients back to the land. But spreading regular sewage on cropland has been disasterous for a variety of reasons. As it is, our whole food system is a process of robbing the land of nutrients and sending them down the river, both directly through run off, and indirectly, by shipping the food to urban masses who digest it and flush it down...to the river.

There may be ways around this, but it will take heroic efforts and a willingness to get around our general squeemishness at talking about and dealing with our own poop. (Kind of a metaphor for, as well as an example of, our bigger problems.)

Check out Jenkins' excellent "Humanure Handbook."

[Lore]

Better yet, let's just grind up our dead... there is a waste. Beat the rush to "Soylent Green"!

[I_Like_Plants]

Really though, food scraps and piss and poo used to go right back to nature. Since we wandered, there wasn't a danger of "soil burn" from too much in one place.

Let me tell you something about Man's long relationship with the dog. Human poo is fairly rich stuff, and if you have Fido along while hiking, well, if you do a #2, you won't have to bother to bury it. You also won't need to worry much about wiping, a nice warm tongue is there to clean up at the source, if you let it. There I said it, the memories of a rural (at times) childhood.

Then the dogs process that and poo themselves, and all's right with Nature. Yep dogs decided to throw in with us for our scraps and .... our poo.

Really, it's amazing, our scraps and pee/poo are all sequestered in landfill where they dont' do biological good for thousands of years, it's weird. I can see the disease prevention angle, though, and understand that's why things were set up that way - incidentally, set up that way when the human population was under 2 billion and Nature seemed endless. So what if we buried our part of Nature's cycle? There was a healthy environment (much more so than now) and enough of nature's creatures doing their thing .... now we're in a world where everything seems destined to become pavement or nearly sterile substrate for industrial farming.

[billg]

Purcatty,

Have you read the Humanure Handbook? The entire book is online.

You don't realize how many farmers throughout the world are safely using humanure to grow plants.

I have lived on several organic farms during the last 6 years. 7 of the 12 farms I have visited or lived at had composting toilet systems set up. All of the farmers separated the humanure compost from food scrap compost. However, this is not necessary according to Joseph Jenkins if you want to use it for food crops. Potential human pathogens will be gotten rid of through the composting process, but to be on safe side you can let your compost pile slow cure for 2 years.

A lot of farmers use their humanure compost on fruit trees, also I've seen it used on bamboo. A cut flower business owner i know uses it to grow flowers for market (unbeknownst to consumers)

Anyways, regardless of what you are using it for, it's ridiculous to flush this vital resource down the drain with another vital resource. Then it becomes a pollutant rather than a resource.

Bill

[billg]

I'm not quite sure why this thread is considered to be off topic and was placed in the Open Forum. Nutrient cycling IS conservation. This post belongs in the efficiency and conservation forum.

[pea-jay]

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Composting with human manure is like a potentially horrendous cause of desease, do not do this in your closed comunity if you are going to survive...you eventually will all die. Using human manure closes the transmission cycle. Sense we don't get sick from cow deseases it is safe. Pork poo is much more dangerous since they harbor human viruses. this is why Jews and arabs for thousands of years would not pollute their land with pigs.

[billg]

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Composting with human manure is like a potentially horrendous cause of desease, do not do this in your closed comunity if you are going to survive...you eventually will all die. Using human manure closes the transmission cycle. Sense we don't get sick from cow deseases it is safe. Pork poo is much more dangerous since they harbor human viruses. this is why Jews and arabs for thousands of years would not pollute their land with pigs.

[katkinkate]

You can add another layer of separation by using composting worms first, then use the vermicompost to fertilize plants used for mulch, timber, fibre, dyes, animal food, landscaping, aesthetics....

[Newsseeker]

Things definitely could be a little bit more eco-friendly and efficient.