Bury Your Shit

So i've been thinking about human waste problems lately and it got me thinking if you wanted to live apart from the government without relying on them for anything including controlling waste wouldn't burying your shit do the trick or what?

I think us humans in general need more efficent ways to control our waste and I think a system based on burying shit might work what do you all think?

 

I agree with you, if you're living out in nature reserves or communes and stuff, but what about people living in cities and towns? You can't just go squat and take a big fat crunch in your front yard, and bury it...

Another problem is, what about whiping your ass? Personally, I couldn't NOT whipe my ass. That'd just be sick. And I have a feeling leaves wouldn't quite do the trick.

 

LoL.

Right on.

 

Actually, when I was in Mexico in the city of San Cristobal, I saw an indigenous woman about 70 years old squatting and taking a shit right there in the street. It was like 5 or 6 in the morning and there wasn't really anyone around but me. Still, I have to admit at the time I was a bit appalled.

The funny thing is that I had eaten some funky sugary treats from the festival they were having, got a serious case of the runs the night before, and I was very, very seriously considering doing the exact same thing! (wait let me explain!). We were living and travelling in a van so we had no bathroom of our own, and I had them all through the night. But I ended up waking up my buddy and asked him to drive the van to a gas station, which was open all night. Not that the bathrooms in Mexico are much nicer than doing it in a street, just a little more private.

 

A more effective solution would be "humanure," that is, composting it. Many places actually spread human feces on crop land, called "night soil" but there is a problem with bacteria that could crop up (ha) in the food supply. However, if you compost it at a high enough temperature (perfectly easy to do in your own backyard) you can kill all those pathogens and then (and only then) use it in crops. This would be preferable to just flushing it into the lakes, rivers, and oceans...even if we do treat it. Or, some of it. If you can't reach those high temperature, you can still use it as fertilizer but only in ornamental gardens.

Check out this link, where you can learn more about it and get a (cheap) handbook about it. http://www.jenkinspublishing.com/humanure.html

 

Cool thanks for the replys!

 

Yeah, you'd have to treat it somehow, maybe as TrippinBTM says, but you can't just bury it, the E coli and other nasties would leach down to the water table and cause havoc on our water supplies.
Plus what about ppl in high population densities, there isn't enough land on the planet for all the ppl in high-rises to move down and be closer to the ground and be independent from the government, it's not workable imo.

 

I think there could be a market for this someday, and the enterprising soul might try to get in on it. Like, a composting machine for home use, sort of like those that exist but made specifically for human waste. Maybe we could just use the existing ones, which is like a barrel that you rotate every so often, it sets up excellent conditions for bacterial breakdown of yardwaste...I'm sure you could do it with feces as well, to speed up the process as much as possible (given that we do shit every day, hopefully, and a family would produce quite a bit of waste that would need to be dealt with).

With peak oil on the way, and what it means to water supplies/pumping, we will no longer be able to shit into several gallons of drinking water anymore (fools that we are), so something like this, or at least knowledge of humanure composting, is going to be vital if we want to avoid spreading horrible diseases like a third world nation. Too bad our leadership is only leading us to destruction, trying with all their might to keep us on the same path we are on, which leads only to destruction and misery, rather tha actually LEADING us, bringing new ideas to the table. I guess that's too hard, too much to ask. It will be up to the people...which in the end, in some ways, is better for us anyways. Still it's a shame to let our well organized system go unused when it could certainly expidite the changes we'll need to face soon.

 

Thier are already incinerators for human waste that reduce it to sterile ash. And composting toilets for home use.

 

paddled down the snowy river last year, an 8 day trip. because it is a national park the environment is completely protected--so you bring it in, you take it out. We had to cart and carry an old ammo box filled with the brown stuff, which was pretty smelly by day 6. Anyway when we got back we burned it all.

I like the idea of burning it through home toilet/incinerators but what a huge transformation that would entail; we still have our urine to deal with unless you like to drink it like the dude off Dodgeball.

 

Yeah urine would be a whole other thing to deal with but im not sure if bacteria concentrations are as high than in our waste.

Thinking of animals though they deposit wastes all over the place without digging holes to put it in,well most animals anyways.I'm just wondering why animal wastes arn't an enviromental problem but human waste is.

I guess the human system just doesn't do a good job of breaking down wastes.

 

actually, believe it or not, urine is sterile once it leaves the body.

 

Well thats good to know.

 

Our foods are full of more preservatives, chemicals, etc. and I think that the problem must exist there. Animal waste I think is much more natural...I am only speculating of course. But actually I would guess that manufactured pet food has some junk in it too. I don't know but I'd like to hear a scientific response.

urine is sterile, but what do we do with it? What would watering our lawns and gardens with pure urine do?

 

yeah, urine is sterile, and works wonders for compost. I wouldn't water the lawn with it (not sure if it'd leave brown spots like a dogs, I don't know if the content is the same) but there's no harm in putting it directly on the soil (though compost would be preferable). It is 97% water, the rest is mostly salt, with a fraction of other stuff (vitamins, minerals, urea, etc)

Of course, it is perfectly safe to drink (it's just a distillate of your blood, like saliva) and can be a way to recycle vitamins and minerals. And any toxins you reabsorb (minimal) would be filtered out by your liver and deposited in your colon. Not that I'm suggesting it! haha. But maybe if you're dying of thirst someday, you'll feel better about doing it.

As for why human shit is worse? Well, I don't know. Maybe it's because we are at least in part carnivores, which are usually pretty sparse in the wild but clearly humans are pretty populous. Carnivore shit isn't bulky, undigested grasses, it's digested meat and such, which has more likelyhood of bacteria contamination. The thing about preservatives and artificial stuff could be part of it too (I'm speculating here). I think mainly the fact that lots of diseases are spread through feces, and with so many of us concentrated in close proximity, that is, lots of people with lots of shit...shit with diseases in them and lots of other people around. Think about it. If we didn't live in such high populations, the worry would be less because the diseases wouldn't have enough people to keep themselves going. They'd run their course and then die out. Cities (and animal domestication) caused most of our transmittable diseases, fecal-transmitted ones being some among many other kinds.

 

i have an outhouse, and we burn our toilet paper. in the summer it's sort of horrible because of bugs, but if it's better for the environment i'm all for it .

 

Are you suggesting we create our own landfills?
If so you are definatley NOT helping our enviornment.
LANDFILLS.

 

.......burning paper is not good for the environment.

 

Burning paper isn't bad, it's the same as if it decomposes: either way carbon dioxide is released.

And who said anything about landfills? Compost isn't a landfill.

 

I've had a calling to live a self sustainable lifestyle for years, and I think I've found a way. I hope someday to move out in the country and build an earthship. They create their own power, use water collected from the rain, and use it four times. Also, they are made from recycled materials, and you can grow your own food in them.