My obsession with shit!

Regular readers, I mean "regular" readers, know all too well that I talk shit. I mean, about "shit."  From wishing you "Bristol #4" to an arty bathroom.  I tell ya, this is one stinking blog! ;)

And then there is that other shit that I am passionate about.  You know about that too--the lack of sanitation infrastructure for hundreds of millions in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.  "If only we can develop less expensive ways of processing shit."  Aha, now you remember.

Do you recall the challenge from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to reinvent the toilet?



In a recent entry at his blog, Bill Gates writes:

I watched the piles of feces go up the conveyer belt and drop into a large bin. They made their way through the machine, getting boiled and treated. A few minutes later I took a long taste of the end result: a glass of delicious drinking water.

Yes, things are happening, even if only slowly.   It is "part of the Gates Foundation’s effort to improve sanitation in poor countries."

Because a shocking number of people, at least 2 billion, use latrines that aren’t properly drained. Others simply defecate out in the open. The waste contaminates drinking water for millions of people, with horrific consequences: Diseases caused by poor sanitation kill some 700,000 children every year, and they prevent many more from fully developing mentally and physically.
If we can develop safe, affordable ways to get rid of human waste, we can prevent many of those deaths and help more children grow up healthy.

The system that we have in this country, or many other countries, is expensive.  It requires sewer lines, sewage treatment plants, qualified personnel, and--to get the system running--electricity, which itself is in serious shortage.

So, if only a re-invented toilet will extract the water from shit and make it potable, and use the carbon in the shit to generate electricity.  My, won't that be multiple birds with one stone?

The project is called the Omniprocessor, and it was designed and built by Janicki Bioenergy, an engineering firm based north of Seattle. ...
Through the ingenious use of a steam engine, it produces more than enough energy to burn the next batch of waste. In other words, it powers itself, with electricity to spare.

 If it were not for Gates Foundation providing the seed money, such efforts to reinvent the toilet might not have even begun?  Isn't that a depressing thought?  To me, this is an example of how we misdirect our talents and capabilities.  We spend enormous amounts on wars.  We develop technologies to send humans to the moon and bring them back. We spend gazillions on sports stadiums that consume more electricity than entire countries in sub-Saharan Africa do.  All these mean that we have the know-how and the resources.  But, we merely choose to spend on things than what are really, really important for humans.

The next step is the pilot project; later this year, Janicki will set up an Omniprocessor in Dakar, Senegal, where they’ll study everything from how you connect with the local community (the team is already working with leaders there) to how you pick the most convenient location. They will also test one of the coolest things I saw on my tour: a system of sensors and webcams that will let Janicki’s engineers control the processor remotely and communicate with the team in Dakar so they can diagnose any problems that come up.

When we talk about the "internet of things" we are only fascinated with examples like how our refrigerators can keep track of the inventory and how an automated drone can deliver milk that a robot will load up in the fridge.  Because, all we do is gaze at our own navels!  What a contrast the Dakar project is--the connectivity that the internet offers is put to such a constructive use.

I will leave it to Bill Gates to wrap this up:

It might be many years before the processor is being used widely. But I was really impressed with Janicki’s engineering. And I’m excited about the business model. The processor wouldn’t just keep human waste out of the drinking water; it would turn waste into a commodity with real value in the marketplace.

Here's the video of the project and Gates drinking the potable water that was once a part of shit.  Give this man a Nobel Peace Prize already!

Water, water everywhere ... but, not always safe to drink

(Earlier in the morning, I submitted this as a possible op-ed in the Register Guard.)
Update: it will make it to print, according to the editor's quick reply

“The next time you come to India, you might hesitate to drink water here” my father laughingly said when I talked with him a couple of days ago. He explained the basis for that remark—a surprise check by government officials at drinking water plants in the city of Chennai, where my parents live, revealed a shocking lack of quality control. He suggested that I read about it on the web, and I did. Officials inspected about 300 facilities that sell packaged drinking water, and even found cockroaches and other insects at one facility.

What a contrast to the situation we experience here in Oregon. The water that comes out of the faucets at our homes is not only safe to drink but also refreshingly tasty. I am reminded of a student who remarked how awful the water tasted when he visited Texas and he wondered why we don’t sell packaged Oregon drinking water in other states.

If you have never thought twice about this tremendous luxury that we take for granted, then make sure you spend at least a minute reflecting on it on March 22nd, which is World Water Day.

A reservoir at Sengottai

Yes, water is a prime requirement for life, and it is that water that makes us fondly refer to Earth as the “Pale Blue Dot. “ As the United Nations notes, “universal access to efficient drinking water supply and sanitation services is the foundation for the fulfillment of basic human needs.”

That very ingredient for life has also historically been one of the easiest ways for disease causing organisms to enter human bodies and sometimes even kill them. A classic example is cholera, which has felled many humans over the millennia. It was during a mid‐nineteen century cholera outbreak in London that a physician, John Snow, systematically linked the disease to water and also to the geographic area that was the source of the outbreak.

Over the 150 years since, the United Kingdom, the US, and other advanced countries invested in sewer systems to make sure that pathogens did not easily contaminate the drinking water system, and improved the water supply infrastructure too. As Edward Glaeser, a Harvard economist, observed, “In 1900, America’s cities were spending as much on water as the federal government spent on everything except for the military and its pensions.” That phenomenal investment alone contributed to a significant increase in life expectancy.

Investment in water and sewer systems do not necessarily have short‐term profitable returns, which is also why they were traditionally public investments. The returns on these investments come via better health conditions that, in turn, promote higher productivity over a couple of generations.

However, back in India, public investment in water has been inadequate compared to the huge population. Even worse is the situation when it comes to sanitation systems to deal with wastes. Open defecation then easily leads to the contamination of drinking water supplies similar to how the dumping of wastes into the Thames River eventually led to the cholera outbreak in London.

It is relatively easy to question the priorities of a country like India, which has not made investment in water and sanitation systems an urgency. If the country can launch satellites into geostationary orbit and operate as the back‐office for the world, then surely it has the technical know-how and resources to develop this critical infrastructure. But, I suppose democracy is a messy process that often skews priorities.

As if the complications of the political process are not enough, precipitation patterns seem to be changing as well. Farmers and urban dwellers alike note that the monsoons do not seem to be along the old predictable schedules and are also a lot more geographically uneven, with some areas getting drenched and others going dry. More than once my mother has asked me whether it is related to the global warming that she often hears about. “It could be” is all this academic can tell her.

So, given all these, what can we do? At one level, nothing much because it is primarily up to the governments and people in the developing countries to make water a priority. However, as a result of awareness, we might be able to support the activities of foundations and non‐governmental organizations (NGOs) that are working on these vital issues in those countries. We can also certainly try to understand the importance of freshwater, including in our own areas. More than anything else, thinking about all these and more on World Water Day will yield a new found appreciation for the rain that falls in plenty in the wonderful paradise that Oregon is.

Cellphones and toilets--the Indian story

No, it is not about how people accidentally drop their cellphones in the toilet, then take them out and use them--after cleaning it, of course ... (hey, yes, I know at least one person who reads this blog who has done that; you know who you are!!!)
But, is about

More people in India, the world’s second most crowded country, have access to a mobile telephone than to a toilet, according to a set of recommendations released today by United Nations University (UNU) on how to cut the number of people with inadequate sanitation. ...
India has some 545 million cell phones, enough to serve about 45 per cent of the population, but only about 366 million people or 31 per cent of the population had access to improved sanitation in 2008.

The issue of lack of sanitation in India is not new to this blog.  I have also written at least one op-ed about this.  I hope this situation will change for the better real soon ...
(photo: from flickr)

India: more than a wounded civilization

It is crazy that we in the US think that we need to worry about the competition from India when the reality is that it is a country with a maginitude of poverty and needs that will be beyond the imagination of an average American. The state with Mumbai as the economic engine for the entire country--Maharashtra--is scheduling load shedding because of a lack of power generation capacity. But, that is nothing when compared to other pressing needs Kalpana Sharma bluntly states: "One out of every two persons in the world compelled to defecate in the open is an Indian."

Sharma follows it up with:
According to the report, out of the 1.2 billi on people who defecate in the open worldwide because they have no access to toilets, more than half are Indian. An astounding 667 million people in this country have no option but to defecate in the open, a country that would like people to believe that it is on the cusp of becoming a global economic giant.
Why then does sanitation remain a subject that is accorded a relatively low priority compared to many other needs, including water and energy?

Yes, I owe VS Naipaul an apology for misusing his book title.

India's scavengers: horrible practice

From the BBC: Official statistics in India say that there are still around 340,000 scavengers working in villages and small towns.
The UN aims to reduce by half the number of people without basic sanitation by 2015.
But in India alone they face a huge task.
It's estimated that around 700 million Indians to do not have access to safe and hygienic toilets.
Experts say that scavenging in India is most prevalent in the states of Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat.