My doctor has been bugging me to get a colonoscopy done. From what I know about the procedure, there is nothing that is attractive. To first drink a horribly tasting liquid which then forcefully evacuates the insides, after which a doctor sends a tube with a camera up from the rear end while I am sedated comes across more as how the likes of Dick Cheney love to torture whoever they label as terrorists. I should note for the record that I am not a terrorist!
After having failed to convince me over the years, the good doctor recommended another procedure. In this option, I have to collect the excrement and send the parcel to a lab. In a moment of weakness, when my defenses were down, I agreed with him.
Then the collection kit arrived. After I watched the video on how to use it, I knew that I couldn't go through it.
I am, of course, not the only one who gets so grossed out by something that comes out of our own bodies. To think that the stuff was inside all the time!
There is a good biological reason for us to be turned off by turd. It is for our own well being. Across the cultures, right from when we are toddlers, we learn to stay away from poop.
Faeces are dangerous shit. When left to nature’s own devices, a pile of poo begins to endanger humans almost immediately. Attracted to the nutrients inside that pile – nitrogen, phosphorous and undigested proteins – pathogens swarm in. Some feed on it, others lay eggs. When faecal matter leeches into drinking water, it spreads cholera, dysentery and intestinal worms causing deadly disease outbreaks. So it’s hardly surprising that humans have a very complicated relationship with their own waste.
A complicated relationship, indeed.
In India, the complication even seeped into the rigid caste system, in which some people born as Dalits were condemned to live as manual scavengers.
In the modern world, we wipe or wash and flush the toilet after we are done, and we don't think twice about what happens. But, Lena Zeldovich writes that we should. In fact, she wants us to learn about how we traditionally dealt with feces in order to recover the nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium that are fertilizers that are being flushed away.
Fertilizer "from people’s bottoms was an easy and naturally occurring resource that never ran out, as long as there were people." Zeldovich writes about how old Japan created a "market" for the night soil:
The Japanese name for night soil was pithy and right to the point: named shimogoe, it literally meant fertiliser from the bottom of a person, according to Kayo Tajima, now professor at Rikkyo University in Tokyo. In the rapidly developing cities of Osaka and Edo (today’s Tokyo), this ‘person’s bottom fertiliser’ was in such high demand that governing bodies had to outline a strict system of its rights and regulations. For example, if a family rented a house, who had the rights to the excrement – the tenants or the landlord? It may seem logical that the tenants, who produced it, should’ve been the proud owners of their poo, but the preindustrial Japanese lawmakers thought quite the opposite. They bestowed the valuable shimogoe rights onto the landlords who sold it to the collectors, who in turn sold it to farmers. In some cases, farmers established tsuke-tsubo – direct contracts with the urban poo producers. The residents would promise the farmer all the poo they generated for a year in exchange for a certain amount of rice as a down payment. Grateful farmers sometimes thanked their contributors with gifts, like special rice treats, sometimes dubbed ‘dung cakes’.
Why was Japan so innovative in creating such contractual arrangements for shit?
Unlike European countries, rich with lush forests or green meadows, Japan was not blessed by wide stretches of fertile land. The country’s poor sandy soils didn’t naturally produce abundant crops. Before a newly created patch could yield some food, farmers had to work hard to nourish it, with every scrap of biomass they could find. ‘A new field gives but a small crop,’ states the old Japanese saying. Fertiliser from people’s bottoms was an easy and naturally occurring resource that never ran out, as long as there were people. Thanks to the fertiliser from their own bottoms, the Japanese converted their unfriendly rocky lands into flourishing fields. Similarly, the Chinese farmers managed to keep their soils fertile for generations, which to the farmers of European descent was nothing short of a miracle. European and American farm fields would start turning to dust sooner or later.
Perhaps you are already racing ahead and thinking, "why don't our sewage systems recover NPK from our crap, and sell that fertilizer?"
Turns out that engineers and planners are already testing these out. Zeldovich writes that "there is no one single solution that would fit every geographical locale" and describes a few attempts in developing and developed countries. My favorite example in her essay is from Washington, DC:
DC Water, a cutting-edge treatment plant in the US capital, takes poo repurposing to new heights. As the metabolic output of the 2.2 million people who live Washington, DC and the surrounding areas arrives, it is loaded up into massive pressure cookers where it simmers at 300°F (149°C) and six times the atmospheric pressure, which kills everything alive. The resulting stew is fed to the hungry microbes in huge concrete biodigester tanks with similar end products – the methane used to generate electricity and a black, liquidly goo. In an uncanny similarity to the fenfu men’s night soil processing, the goo is dried and packaged into bags, which are sold in local stores.
Curious that I always am, I looked up Bloom, about which DC Water has plenty to say:
Applying biosolids to the land helps capture carbon and prevents it from being released to the atmosphere. Biosolids application also helps to recycle important nutrients like phosphorous and nitrogen back into the soil instead of releasing them into our waterways. The use of biosolids also reduces our carbon footprint and saves energy when compared to conventional petroleum based fertilizers.
Sounds like a win-win to me. May more shit bloom!
Now, if only scientists can come up with a better approach to check my GI system!
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