Sanitation: Disregarding waste as a resource and its consequences.

[Sorcerer]

I was thinking of cycles in the environment and how argiculture and civilisation has caused imbalances with the natural cycles. Humanity in particular has outstripped the natural replenishment of nutrients in the soil. Intensive agriculture removes the organic matter locally and moves it as a food source to be consumed by people, who then flush what isn't digested down the toilet and out to sea. Pre-agriculture hunter gatherers would have removed far less from any particular spot, and subsequently redeposited the waste back onto the land. Modern agriculture compensates for this net loss of nutrients, by resupplying the land via synthesised, or mined and imported fertilisers.

Our centralised sanitation infrastructure in most of the modern world, is designed to dispose of our effluent into waterways or the sea. The cycle by which those nutrients would again reach arable land is an extremely long process, I'm thinking in most cases, hundreds of millions of years. In some developed countries it is common practice to add waste water back onto fields. There are health risks associated, but systems to counter these could easily be devised. Waste for fertiliser should easily be cheaper than manufactured or mined fertilisers.

The production and importation of fertilisers contributes to the input of Carbon Dioxide into the atmosphere, (another cycle which we are vastly imbalancing), and the oxidation of effluent to minimise its health risks also contributes Carbon Dioxide and Methane. Where conversely the use of effluent as a source organic matter and nutrients to increase crop yields would absorb carbon from the atmostphere via an increased volume of plants photosynthesising.

This is obviously a problem and not sustainable. It is ironic how santiation has allowed our population to grow, which in turn has increased our demand on agriculture, which has in turn increased our rate of removing nutrients from the soil and flushing them out to sea. This is a broken cycle, (or an extremely elongated one), these impacts we have on imbalancing cycles within the ecosystem leads to problems a prominent one being global warming. In future centuries, will we perhaps have a problem of nutrient defict in soils and kick ourselves and the stupidity of our ancestors for litterally flushing the land down the toilet.

There are many ways of going about solving this problem, but there are many cultural obstacles in the way, our natural tendancy to experience the emotion of disgust at the thought of effluent is most notable among these. This "yuck factor" needs to be over come with education and rational thought.

Decentralisation of sanitation is a possible solution, where people treat their waste locally and either export it back to farmers, or use it to fertilise their own locally produced crops. I think decentralisation of urban living can benefit us and the environment in many ways. Local production and self sustainability where possible, with minimum outside input, would reduce carbon footprints significantly. I think this perhaps will be humanities next big cultural shift. I have also see just the kind of technology needed to provide it.

http://www.gatesnotes.com/Development/Omniprocessor-From-Poop-to-Potable

This combined with locally produced solar power, local storage (Tesla's Home Battery), local production of produce and local water collection, storage and reuse is a direction which can lead us to rebalancing our impact on the planet and minimising our interference in natural cycles which replenish our essential resources and maintain healthy ecosystems.

So anyway, this was just the thoughts that I had recently, thought I'd share and I am wondering what yours are on the subject.

[studiot]

There are alternative (and IMHO more sensible) views on current policies on many waste products, not just sanitation waste

[Sorcerer]

There are alternative (and IMHO more sensible) views on current policies on many waste products, not just sanitation waste

Please elaborate, I understand it's probable we will be mining electronic waste dumps for rare earth elements among other things in the centuries to come.

[iNow]

We already are: http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/ghana804/video/video_index.html

[Sorcerer]

We already are: http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/ghana804/video/video_index.html

Yes I mentioned that it is common practice in some developing countries. The rest of the world still continues to waste resources for no reason though.

[studiot]

 

I think decentralisation of urban living can benefit us and the environment in many ways. Local production and self sustainability where possible, with minimum outside input, would reduce carbon footprints significantly. I think this perhaps will be humanities next big cultural shift. I have also see just the kind of technology needed to provide it.

 

 

In another thread you argue against monculture.

 

Sustainability and ecology are also susceptible to this argument against single ideas/panaceas.

 

Decentralisation is also largely responsible for the huge increase in vehicle journeys undertaken by modern citizens, going to school, work, play and other activities.

 

But then there is there is the 'Transition Town ' movement.

One of its founders Totnes in Devon went so far as to have its own currency.

 

I recently attended a fascinating lecture by Professor Ioan Fazey of Dundee University Institute about sustainability in the Solomon Islands.

The study showed some suprising effects.

[CharonY]

Loss of nutrients is more related to general agricultural use than to wastewater I would gather, though one would look at the actual flux. That being said, the use of treated sewage sludge is already in use (including the US) but there are massive concerns about the many contaminants and their influence on human health, but also on soil biota. It is not really a yuck factor (manure is yucky too and while people complain about smell, it has been in common use for a very, very long time), but rather emerging evidence that we may add a lot of problems into our food chain as well increase prevalence of antibiotic resistances (although this is also true for manure use).

 

But I do not understand the main issue here, as if anything we are overfertilizing, e.g. in order to get rid of manure. If we want to talk about sustainability, wastewater use seems in an agricultural context to be the wrong end of the discussion. Rather, the first question has to be what form of agriculture would be sustainable whilst ensuring sufficient access to food.

[Sorcerer]

Loss of nutrients is more related to general agricultural use than to wastewater I would gather, though one would look at the actual flux. That being said, the use of treated sewage sludge is already in use (including the US) but there are massive concerns about the many contaminants and their influence on human health, but also on soil biota. It is not really a yuck factor (manure is yucky too and while people complain about smell, it has been in common use for a very, very long time), but rather emerging evidence that we may add a lot of problems into our food chain as well increase prevalence of antibiotic resistances (although this is also true for manure use).

 

But I do not understand the main issue here, as if anything we are overfertilizing, e.g. in order to get rid of manure. If we want to talk about sustainability, wastewater use seems in an agricultural context to be the wrong end of the discussion. Rather, the first question has to be what form of agriculture would be sustainable whilst ensuring sufficient access to food.

I agree that leachate from livestock into waterways is a major problem, and there is probably a high loss of nutrients from the inefficient and overuse of fertiliser in agriculture, but all the same, adding to this by flushing more nutrients out to sea isn't helping anything. If we can reduce demand on fertilisers from other sources (ie manufactured and mined), by replacing it with fertiliser which is in direct cyclic connection (fertilser ----> food ----> waste --> fertiliser), surely we are increasing efficiency and sustainability.

 

If you look at the omniprocessor, http://janickibioenergy.com/s200.html , you might find a middle ground, where effluent is used for generating power, water is recycled and the ash remaining can be used as fertiliser.

 

I haven't looked into the question of green house gas emissions from burning effluent to generate power and how that compares to greenhouse gas emissions from oxidation ponds and/or burning of bio-gas reclaimed from sewerage.

 

Perhaps if we are unable to move away from intensive livestock farming which pollutes waterways, we could use the omniprocessor in a similar fashion to clean up the water and remove stock effluent.

Antibiotic resistance is already a major problem through their use in agriculture. I see the problem, if antibiotics are introduced to bacteria which are in direct contact with the food chain, instead of introduced to bacteria in the oceans. I guess it is simply a matter of processing the waste correctly and finding ways to minimise if not eliminate the problem. On a tangent, if we stopped using certain antibiotics for a century or, so, cycling through groups of antibiotics, there would be no selective pressure to retain resistance for the bacteria and those antibiotics would become effective again.

Edited May 23, 2015 by Sorcerer