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Post by steev on Oct 15, 2016 1:19:53 GMT -5
Every municipality has a sewage plant to process "urban" waste. Fine; people want a toilet but resist the idea of recycling this water for direct human use (not many astronauts down on the ground). Building separate distribution systems for municipal landscaping, or whatever, seems unlikely.
What if this nutrient-rich effluent were used to grow urban crops? How hard would it be to set this up, in warehouses, where necessary? There are already warehouse pig-farms fed on urban chow, so what's the problem? People wouldn't want to eat the lettuce/greens? Feed it to the pigs!
I have thoughts about the ramifications of this on Jews, Muslims, vegetarians, and vegans, but I won't post them, as they could be mis-interpreted as intolerant, rather than just ruminations on dealing with management of the Commons, on which we all depend, even those who eschew pork.
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Post by walnuttr on Feb 16, 2017 1:54:10 GMT -5
Couple of hiccups, Steev:
The volume of water to move the poo through the pipes is so much that it is hard to balance aeration of the soil with irrigation flow;
Secondary stuff like rubbers, baby daipers, razors, especially long hair, tend to clog up pumps, valve seals and pipe corners;
Health issues of real diseases like cholera, typhoid, delhi-belly ( never mind about F. coliforms, they are just an indicator of the real nasties) even after processing through the pig / chook / carp;
When using big sandy outdoor areas to spread out all that lovely water and grow stuff, there tend to be little things like rainfall dumps / snow / ice-heave / salt build-up which play havoc with plant'n harvest schedules when real weather comes along.
Yeh, doesn't have weather issues in buildings, but 200 hectares of buildings gets a bit expensive for a poo-farm;
Fair chunk of industrial waste of heavy metals and acid / alkali is usually mixed in with the poo-water, not so good for veges.
The Chinese had a much more viable system of "night cart men" where the solid waste was used for urban vege growing;
Dealing with a concentrated "dry" waste is so much easier,, As far as I can tell, the Chinese system would still work really well, if only the poo mix was buried at least a foot deep, and the area left for a full year before any food crop was grown on the area; and avoid root-veges for another 2 years.
Almost getting there with "composting toilets".
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Post by templeton on Feb 16, 2017 6:47:06 GMT -5
We have a secondary recycled reticulated water system in the new housing estates here - a second pipe feeds recycled water for non-potable use to the houses. I think it utilises some gold mine wastewater in addition to the sewage. info hereOn conversion of sewage to food, I remember seeing the longdrop toilets in the multi-story hotel i was staying in in Lhasa back in the 80's being shovelled out - presumably for field fertiliser. and then there were the outhouses in Goa in the 70s with a little pig snout-sized door in the back under the seat - disconcerting seeing excrement being directly converted to pork mid-wipe...not sure it would go down well with first world bacon consumers, tho. It kept me on a vegetarian diet...T |
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Post by steev on Feb 16, 2017 12:24:08 GMT -5
As I've posted before, municipal sewage solids here is composted, but no longer sold retail, due to concerns about possible contamination; it's only sold for agricultural use!
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Post by walt on Feb 16, 2017 13:11:08 GMT -5
I had a friend who, in a rural setting, fed his toilet sewer line into a methane digester, and from there to a plastic-lined sand bed, where catails and other water-tolerant plants grew and transpired the water into the air. The plants were cut back when needed and used for mulch, I think. Perhaps composted but I think just mulch.
The kitchen sink and I think the bathroom sink and tub went to a garden. As I remember, there were no root crops in that garden. they had several gardens.
He was never happy about the amount of methane produced, though there was some.
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Post by richardw on Feb 16, 2017 13:43:23 GMT -5
Not sure where in Netherlands but i remember reading about a town there that uses a system where by the towns sewage flows through a sand beds that have bulrushes growing in the sand to filter out the nitrates. Not sure if the bulrushes are mowed and used for compost or not, but it seem like a great idea if that were the case. The water that passes out the end of the system is used agriculturally. Wonder what happens to the solids though?.
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Post by richardw on Feb 16, 2017 13:47:18 GMT -5
Then on the other extreme, the city of Dubai has no sewer system at all, its carted out into the desert by an army of tanker trucks and dumped, what a 'waste'...ya get it?
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Post by philagardener on Feb 16, 2017 20:57:25 GMT -5
Sounds like a load of crap!  |
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Post by philagardener on Feb 16, 2017 20:58:37 GMT -5
As I've posted before, municipal sewage solids here is composted, but no longer sold retail, due to concerns about possible contamination; it's only sold for agricultural use! Makes me feel a lot better!  |
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Post by philagardener on Feb 16, 2017 21:00:18 GMT -5
I have thoughts about the ramifications of this on Jews, Muslims, vegetarians, and vegans, but I won't post them, as they could be mis-interpreted as intolerant, rather than just ruminations on dealing with management of the Commons, on which we all depend, even those who eschew pork. I have never found pigs to be picky! |
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Feb 17, 2017 0:29:04 GMT -5
Then on the other extreme, the city of Dubai has no sewer system at all, its carted out into the desert by an army of tanker trucks and dumped, what a 'waste'...ya get it? Around here, much of the highly organic effluent from the cheese making factories is hauled out to the badlands and dumped on fields. They call it "fertilizer". |
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Feb 17, 2017 0:37:02 GMT -5
Every municipality has a sewage plant to process "urban" waste. Fine; people want a toilet but resist the idea of recycling this water for direct human use (not many astronauts down on the ground). Building separate distribution systems for municipal landscaping, or whatever, seems unlikely. Most of the cities in my area have a culinary water system and an irrigation system. The city where my mother lives pumps the effluent from the sewer plant into the irrigation system. The largest sewer system in the area dumps it's effluent into the river. People downstream use the river for irrigation. |
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Post by steev on Feb 17, 2017 1:55:59 GMT -5
Excellent; the approach so often is to dispose/encapsulate the "waste", which is fundamentally at odds with re-cycling/re-use of natural resources. C'mon, really, the waste from what we eat is what we want to eat wants to grow on; plants seem to have a better grasp of environmental reality than many of us (present company excepted, to be sure).
Granted, we could better not dump stuff we don't want in our food-chain down the crapper; have we only shit for brains? That's just rhetorical; I do have an opinion of our con-specifics' level of common sense, which I won't belabor.
I'm surprised that that cheese effluent isn't fed to pigs or other livestock, not that it isn't excellent fertilizer; just seems like it's being thrown a bit low on the food-chain.
In that concept, I'll note that near my farm-ish, they often dump cannery tomato waste for cattle; I've not yet learned why it isn't dumped on straw or other fodder, to upgrade the nutritional level of other-wise low-grade fodder, but what do I know? I don't have a degree in Animal Husbandry.
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Feb 17, 2017 14:17:19 GMT -5
The effluents from the cheese plants have had every economically viable material removed from them by the time they get sprayed on the fields. Acidified lactose solution isn't worth much, not even as pig food.
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Post by steev on Mar 3, 2017 1:23:15 GMT -5
I wonder what it has; if it's worth spraying as fertilizer, there must be something there besides water. Nitrates, minerals, whatever; I'm not criticizing, just inquiring.
I think there is a lot of thinking "there's nothing of economic value here (which means: there's nothing I know how to make a buck off), but this is based on ignorance. I realize this is a potentially loaded term, but there it is.
I think we need more ecologists involved in our industrial processes, to point out the further-reaching effects of our actions; I think there would potentially be less waste if people saw the ramifications of our actions.
We live in pretty much a closed system, aside from solar energy input; we have approached the point at which we can no longer afford to piss away our readily-available resources. Granted, we are a REALLY big space colony, but that is EXACTLY what we are; we need to address the maintenance of our life-support systems, if we are to survive much longer. A few thousand years? That's not a hiccup in life on Earth, nor a zit on the existence of Earth.
We need to get over ourselves and realize that it's not all about us; it's about the whole package. Our Great Mother is exactly that, and we need to honor and care for Her.
I'm not picking on cheese effluent; I love cheese; I'm just chewing on the notion of "waste"; a highly subjective notion, BTW.
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