Humanure is a taboo subject, but it's also natural, very good for the soil and the environment, and much better than our western system of waste management which has contributed to soil erosion, toxic waste, and contaminated environments. Not to mention how the safe drinking water supply is squandered, endangered, and contaminated worldwide.
While we don't see the effects as often in our culture (we still do see them as is explained in the book, but don't often connect the problem to our waste management system) other parts of the world are continually in desperate need of clean drinking water or suffering from the diseases caused by water-borne illnesses stemming from contamination from human excrement.
Contamination is inherent in the western waste management system which creates toxic water sludge. This sludge often gets combined with other water potable hazardous chemicals and toxins from industries. Waste sludge has to be treated (and the number of violations cited in the book alone is alarming) and even when treated, the sludge is not safe nor clean to be put back into the environment. It is unhealthy, and yet it is either held in what become hazardous waste sites (creating a very real danger to surrounding communities) or dumped into the ocean, where it pollutes further.
I recommend The Humanure Handbook if you're into gardening, composting, permaculture, or just care about the environment and the health of people everywhere, since we are all affected. The book is interesting and fact-filled. Excellent writing. I mean, here I am, not a whit embarrassed to promote it.
I'm seriously amazed at what proper composting can do. There's a farmer in Austria who introduced micro-organisms to his fields with proper composting and his was the only field that didn't have radioactive substances in it, while all the surrounding fields were contaminated from Chernobyl. Proper composting contributes to healthy soil and can even "clean" soil contaminated with diesel oil, grease, lard, heavy metals, and even radioactive waste.
An Austrian farmer claims that the microorganisms he introduces into his fields have prevented his crops from being contaminated by the radiation from Chernobyl, the ill-fated Russian nuclear power plant, which contaminated his neighbor's fields. Sigfried Lubke sprays his green manure crops with compost-type microorganisms just before plowing them under. This practice has produced a soil rich in humus* and teeming with microscopic life. After the Chernobyl disaster, crops from fields in Lubke's farming area were banned from sale due to high amounts of radioactive cesium contamination. However, when officials tested Lubke's crops, no trace of cesium could be found. The officials made repeated tests because they couldn't believe that one farm showed no radioactive contamination while the surrounding farms did. Lubke surmises that the humus just "ate up" the cesium.
*Humus is "a rich, loamy, pleasant-smelling, hygienically safe soil-building material," the result of properly composted humanure.
From "Compost Miracles" of The Humanure Handbook.
Properly composted soil has a variety of micro-organisms which when added to contaminated soil, separate out or "eat up" the heavy metals or contaminated elements, preventing plants and crops from taking them up and degrading the toxic elements.
Compost microorganisms not only convert organic material into humus, but they also degrade toxic chemicals into simpler, benign, organic molecules. These chemicals include gasoline, diesel fuel, jet fuel, oil, grease, wood preservatives, PCBs, coal gasification wastes, refinery wastes, insecticides, herbicides, TNT, and other explosives for instance.
It's really interesting and remarkable what nature can do!
The first part of the book covers problems with our current system of waste management: our small, precious supply of good, clean drinking water is rendered unusable and toxic, turned into hazardous sludge which contaminates and endangers wildlife and humans. By not recycling human "waste" through proper humanure composting, we promote soil erosion and demineralization when we could be renewing the soil.
It's fascinating and makes perfect sense.
Humanure composting is different from "Night Soil" which has been used in China -- taking human excrement at night and spreading it onto fields "raw". That's dangerous (and smelly) because the human excrement hasn't been "treated" as it is naturally with proper composting to kill the potentially dangerous elements in it. Properly composted humanure in addition to being odorless is also safe because a multitude of various microorganisms combine in various temperatures and stages to kill and basically eat up the potentially dangerous elements in the humanure.
The book explains how successful humanure composting works and combats many myths:
- How the composting toilet is sanitary (i.e. no flies) and odorless (using untreated sawmill dust, shredded junk mail, shredded cereal boxes, or rice hulls, etc.)
- How to build a successful and odorless compost pile using humanure, your compost from food, and bulking aerating items like hay, straw, dead leaves, etc, and what else you can put in there (grass clippings, anything that can rot, bones won't hurt, etc.)
- How to keep the right temperature, moisture (include urine, consider rainfall, etc.)
- Covers myths and concerns about composting (for instance the need to turn the compost pile, how to properly aerate the pile with bulky organic stuff, how it all works)
- and more
Anyway, it's a good solution to renewing soil and keeping drinking water safe and clean. It's being looked into or being adopted by a lot of developing areas in other countries, I think Kenya was mentioned as well as Guatemala, and hopefully the trend will continue.
It makes me wonder, why aren't port-a-potties made to be composting toilets? They wouldn't stink then and the humanure could be composted to provide something beneficial to the soil. Port-a-potty companies could even make a profit selling the resulting composted humus to gardeners and gardening stores. There is definitely no shortage of a need for it. I think in the future the company that jumps on that would be ahead of others. The more consumers learn about green ideas like these, the more likely they'd be to prefer a composting toilet outhouse rather than the traditional port-a-potty. They're stinky. All you'd have to do would be provide a simple explanation and instead of having that stupid toxic smelling "flush" you'd provide some sort of a simple sawdust flush covering, or even a big scoop and a bin of sawdust for people to cover their business with. Then rather than needing an expensive suctioning tube and specialized truck, you'd just collect and cover the containers, replace with another sawdust bucket, and take it to your composting piles. It's simple, cheap... you compost the stuff so eventually, when it's safe and ready (looks about 2 years) you can sell it as humus, good and safe for even food gardens. You don't have to treat anything or worry about where to dump it or what it might be polluting... there's nothing hazardous about it if you've composted correctly (using the thermophilic method so dangerous elements are rendered safe.)
Anyway. Maybe a little more reading and then time for bed.
I can't believe I've written so much about it. It's really interesting though. I just really like the idea of degrading toxic chemicals so less people suffer from cancer and children in developing countries not dying of diarrhea any more.
Time to crash! I've stayed up all night on this.
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