waste not, want not
from The Humanure Handbook:
"Every time we flush a toilet, we launch five or six gallons of polluted water out into the world. That would be like defecating into a five gallon office water jug and then dumping it out before anyone could drink any of it. Then doing the same thing when urinating. Then doing it every day, numerous times. Then multiplying that by about 290 million people in the United States alone." (p.17-8)
This just kills my brain. I want So Badly to replace my flush toilet with a composting toilet. We already reuse most of our greywater to flush our toilet, but I'd rather use it to fertilize the yard.
I'm also reading Liquid Gold: The Lore and Logic of Using Urine to Grow Plants. Piss contains Nitrogen, Phosphorus, and Potassium -- the same chemicals found in synthetic, petroleum-based fertilizers.
We're going to find a way to divert our piss to help fertilize our side yard, at the very least. We will likely have to wait until we own our own home to install proper humanure systems.
The idea of waste has always intrigued me. Ideally, there would be no waste -- we would all live in a closed-cycle of ecology. It makes no sense to not give back on par with what we're given. It seems extremely selfish and short-sighted and detrimental to the entire ecosystem. Polluting anything pollutes ourselves. We are a part of it all. We are not separate. We are the ecosystem. It seems so odd to me that we just don't see it this way.
Silly humans. Someday we'll catch on en masse and live the way we're supposed to. I hope to see it and enjoy it in my own lifetime.
"Every time we flush a toilet, we launch five or six gallons of polluted water out into the world. That would be like defecating into a five gallon office water jug and then dumping it out before anyone could drink any of it. Then doing the same thing when urinating. Then doing it every day, numerous times. Then multiplying that by about 290 million people in the United States alone." (p.17-8)
This just kills my brain. I want So Badly to replace my flush toilet with a composting toilet. We already reuse most of our greywater to flush our toilet, but I'd rather use it to fertilize the yard.
I'm also reading Liquid Gold: The Lore and Logic of Using Urine to Grow Plants. Piss contains Nitrogen, Phosphorus, and Potassium -- the same chemicals found in synthetic, petroleum-based fertilizers.
We're going to find a way to divert our piss to help fertilize our side yard, at the very least. We will likely have to wait until we own our own home to install proper humanure systems.
The idea of waste has always intrigued me. Ideally, there would be no waste -- we would all live in a closed-cycle of ecology. It makes no sense to not give back on par with what we're given. It seems extremely selfish and short-sighted and detrimental to the entire ecosystem. Polluting anything pollutes ourselves. We are a part of it all. We are not separate. We are the ecosystem. It seems so odd to me that we just don't see it this way.
Silly humans. Someday we'll catch on en masse and live the way we're supposed to. I hope to see it and enjoy it in my own lifetime.