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It's high summer in Europe.
The Guardian newspaper reports on a new initiative in the Danish musical epicentre of Roskilde to make festivalgoers aware of the intimate link between them and their beer: the festival organization coined a new word "beercycling" which means nothing more than recycling the valuable nitrates from music lovers' urine through a near-by barley field, and then transmogrifying said barley into golden mjød (actually pilsner beer in the current project).
According to the newspaper, the Roskilde festival (established æons ago in the hippy era) has a reputation for its ecological awareness.
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Green light in A.M. for new projects. Red light in P.M. for traffic tickets.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 03 2015, @11:31PM
Human excrement has long been taboo for use as fertilizer because it carries human pathogens, hormones, parasites, residual drugs and drug metabolites. It may be acceptable under certain strict conditions, where the produce is known to be sufficiently heated and sterilized later on, or when the excrement is treated to remove the aforementioned exposure risks. "Natural" is not automatically healthy.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday July 04 2015, @12:43AM
Using human excrement directly on food crops has it's risks, certainly. But the waste products can be used indirectly. Use it to fertilize non-food crops, or use it with landscaping mulch, or just spread it in the forest. Or - if economically feasible, treat it to destroy potential parasites. A hot mulching process would take care of that.
It all ends up back in the biosphere, no matter what you do. Might as well make the best use of it. Where I live, in Outback, Nowhere, our waste goes through the septic tank, out into a leach bed, then drains out into a forested area. We've not noticed that the trees are suffering from the "contaminated" water.
We're gonna be able to vacation in Gaza, Cuba, Venezuela, Iran and maybe Minnesota soon. Incredible times.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 04 2015, @06:46AM
"The grass is always greener over the septic tank" [amazon.com].
When I was a little kid, we had a septic tank too. You could always tell by the lush foliage...
(Score: 2) by frojack on Saturday July 04 2015, @12:49AM
Human waste was probably a whole lot healthier as a fertilizer before we had large scale sewer systems to gathered poo from wide areas, mixed with industrial waste, and then tried to re-apply it to the land. You might succeed in infecting your own fields with something in your own poo, but chances are it wouldn't spread very far.
Given the drug situation back in the dark ages there was little risk of medical contamination either.
I wonder how long it was from defecation to fertilization? I wonder how many pathogens survived a few months of rot. I wonder how many survived being incorporated in a rice plant or a tomato, then cooked, and eaten.
People sleeping in the same barn as their animals probably had a pretty sturdy immune system.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 04 2015, @02:03AM
You have never been to India, have you?
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Saturday July 04 2015, @08:52AM
It also was a lot healthier as fertilizer before people started to take artificially-produced medication, part of which ends up in the waste. Medication is usually good only for people having the corresponding illness.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 3, Informative) by anubi on Saturday July 04 2015, @06:30AM
I note the article specifically referred to urine.
From what I have seen, our intestinal tract removes damned near everything of use and puts it in the bloodstream. The kidneys then remove the excess minerals and products of metabolism and send it out. The end product of protein metabolism is Urea... (NH2)2CO. You can even buy this as a powder in farm supply stores. Extremely valuable source of nitrogen, which has a very high bio-availability to plants.
Urine also has all the surpluses of all the minerals you ate and did not use. Potassium. Phosphorous. And all the other goodies that was in your meal.
Urine, by its very nature, is sterile unless you have a urinary tract infection. It was once part of your blood.
Now, as far as "number two" goes, put it in the loo. Its mostly dead bacteria and things that would not absorb anyway. Its nasty stuff. Smells to all high heaven, messy, and can easily transmit diseases. Best send that down to a treatment plant specialized to decompose the stuff.
I stand by them... I can certainly see nothing wrong with urine as a fertilizer, but I flat will have nothing to do with the other stuff that belongs in the loo.
For the exact same reasons other soylenters are submitting as well.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Saturday July 04 2015, @04:56PM
Peecycling
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/02/140202-peecycling-urine-human-waste-compost-fertilizer/ [nationalgeographic.com]
Pour your pee into a compost pile/composting barrel and let it all do its thing.
Then put on your garden in the fall and let it sit all winter.
Gonna do this this fall (made my own compost tumbler from a pickle barrel (love that pickle barrel smell)). Finally, a use for all my beer pee.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. I have always been here. ---Gaaark 2.0 --
(Score: 1) by anubi on Sunday July 05 2015, @04:37AM
I guess you noticed how fast dead plant matter "rots" when peed on?
A mound of grass clippings, peed on, becomes mulch much faster than one just watered. Alternatively, any meat or other protein containing scraps work as well.
its the same reason pigeons in wood rafters are such bad news. Pigeon poo rots wood big-time.
You supplied the missing element so needed by life. Nitrogen. To make protein with. Proteins are made of chains of amino acids... each one has at an amino (NH2) group and a COOH group, and they all tiggy-tag together almost like tinker toys, all neatly folding when assembled to make the desired building block.
It seems such a waste to me to flush the stuff.
Anecdote: I came home one night and caught one of my neighbor's visitors pissing on my block fence, creating a puddle on the sidewalk. I admonished him and asked him to please use the bush for that. The dogs use it all the time, and it won't puddle for others to step in. It will go into the ground where hungry bacteria will begin breaking it apart seconds after he dispenses it. It will be disassembled long before it can make a stink. He seemed surprised that I actually did not mind him pissing in the bush. But the sidewalk, no... no-one wants to step in a puddle of piss. It will ruin a perfectly good pair of shoes.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 1) by Kharnynb on Saturday July 04 2015, @03:30PM
I've been using a composting toilet at our cottage for a long time, as have many Finnish people, we use the compost, after it has been both in the main tank for 3 months and then in the compost for a year.
After that long in a good composting enviroment, no pathogens should be left and I've heard of no issues with people getting sick because they use the compost for growing things.
Build a man a fire, and he'll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.