I got online and did some web searches for composting, during which time I came across Joseph Jenkins and his Humanure Handbook. This was a pivotal work, for me, and I consumed his writing with zeal. At the same time, I ordered Farmers for Forty Centuries, a history of Asian organic farming that used night soil. These two works were the foundation for what is to become my major in college: Agricultural Engineering in Soil Sciences double majored with Microbiology.
To utilize our feces and urine, composted with the remainder of the organics we typically throw away to the landfills, as fertilizers to invigorate otherwise dead, or taxed soils to produce food or to aid in forest reclamation. In "Farmers," it becomes apparent that this is not a new technology, as the book is a journal of a scientist that travelled the orient in the early 1900's. However, in the name of technological advancement, even many of these sagacious, Asians have turned their backs on sound agricultural principles.
I am as guilty as all with my hydraulic flush contraption. I urinate, or defecate in a little bowl, flush it, and at the expense of 400 gallons of drinking water a week, do not have to pay my waste another thought. And at this point, it is waste. It is contamination. The very act makes me part of the virus that is killing the planet earth. If you knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that within 50 years the world would be populated with 9 Billion people contributing their share to the destruction of Earth, would you seek an alternative life? Do you even care if your children and their children even have a planet to call home?
Global warming is all part of the sickness that is reflective of our inability to live in a symbiotic relationship with our planet. Balance must be attained, if our children are to continue to exist in a manner similar to our own. Perhaps we are talking about extinction. Or, perhaps we are talking about small pockets of humanity that find a way to exist in spite of the odds. Or, maybe we take an active part in the healing of our planet.
My vision starts at the individual level and works its way up to the community. My vision is, perhaps, a bit on the radical side, but it is not technologically unsound. In fact, my vision isn't even technologically challenging.
At the individual level, I must concur with Pope Benedict that pollution is merely a contemporary variation on gluttony and sloth. So, I must find ways to balance my input (my gluttony, or selfishness) with my output (if done without consideration of future effects, this is sloth). Here, I am specifically talking about consumption and digestion balanced with defecation and urination.
Two points from "Farmers," page 194: (1) With each adult averaging 40 ounces of excreta per day, we can estimate the reutilization of 5,794,300 pounds of nitrogen, 1,825,000 pounds of potassium, and 775,600 pounds of phosphorous carried in 456,250 total tons of excreta per million of adult population per year. (2) In 1908, the Chinese government of Shanghai sold the privilege of collecting 78,000 tons of night soil (urine and crap) to a contractor for $31,000 gold - to be carried to the country for sale to the farmers.
And in "Humanure," Mr. Jenkins gives an in depth discussion of building a sawdust toilet, a compost bin, and how to use them at the personal level.
My vision is to incorporate these two examples, tie them to existing services, and in this one small way (to the tune of 80 percent of our total waste produced) return to the earth what she needs. Consider the house, and its occupants as a single entity. In the current state, as mentioned, we wastefully consume natural resources - water, food, fuels - without giving anything back. My vision, begins with the household. Water is piped in, as per status quo, for use in cleaning and drinking. (However, water is not piped in for sewage.) We drink the water. We eat the food. We urinate and defecate in sawdust toilets. We wash dishes and take showers (with organic, biodegradable agents), but the water is contained on the grounds in a reservoir that, perhaps, leeches into a water reclamation site (such as artificial wetlands). External spigots are fed off the reservoir, instead of with fresh water. The reclaimed product is used to water our yards - and compost bins if needed - and wash our cars, or whatever other task we have except consumption. The sawdust toilet is used until full (or 3/4 full, thereabouts) at which time a lid is fastened on and the bin is set outside. A waste management technician (the garbage guy), with a special truck, picks up the full receptacles and leaves empties, then drives to a composting facility where the product is added to a windrow or other naturally composting pile. Through thermophilic and mesophilic composting, the pile decomposes to about 1 to 2 percent in volume, at which point it is a mineralized soil. The compost is then utilized in forest reclamation and food production.
At the community level, I am thinking about advancing the green belt concept from Boulder, Colorado. We, the constituents, demand legislation that requires each community to maintain adequate carbon sequesters to consume carbon produced by power generation, vehicles, and industry. The logging industry must plant an acre of trees before it removes an acre of trees. Further, Boulder's beltway is an excellent idea to stop the sprawl. Instead of outward expansion, we could work vertically, so that more land exists to raise trees necessary to reduce the atmosphere's carbon content. In one concept I discussed with Jessica, housing would be shaped similar to the Mayan temples, with the terraced platforms serving as yards for trees and foliage all the way to the top. Each building would have several homes within it. (I kind of had a romantic notion of the hanging gardens of, Babylon, I think.)
There are still holes in my knowledge that need answering, but the holes in my understanding have been filled. David Ben Gurion, Prime Minister of Israel once commented that if the Israelis did not conquer the desert, the desert would conquer them. Thus, Israel has spent the last 50-some years working on desert agricultural practices to enhance their environment. That is the target. That is the goal. If we are to survive as a species and contribute to the balance of the planet, we must look for the methods to nurture earth, instead of polluting it.
(And for those that say that humans are too small to have any impact on the planet.... when was the last time you saw the ebola virus, or AIDS/HIV, or influenza. You didn't. Equally insignificant in size, but over time, they bring us to our knees and have the capacity to lay us in our graves - that's what we are doing to the earth.)
1 comment:
Good words.
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