From: radzy@ICSI.Berkeley.EDU (T. O. Radzykewycz)
Subject: Re: Social inhibitions to environmental change
Organization: International Computer Science Institute, Berkeley, CA, U.S.A.
Date: Sun, 13 Dec 1992 05:22:33 GMT

radzy@ICSI.Berkeley.EDU (T. O. Radzykewycz) writes: 
>We can step back a little and say "Gosh, that chicken sh*t is
>good fertilizer.  Maybe I should spend a couple bucks and get
>some of it to spread in my garden."  But we can't admit that
>human wastes would be great fertilizer.
>
>Is there a non-social reason for this?  Disease doesn't explain
>it, since chickens and cattle have diseases communicable to
>humans.  We have things like detergent in our sewage, but 
>they shouldn't hurt the farmland or the farm workers.  Why
>don't we do it?
>
>Does *anyone* know of *any* city that does a single-stage
>processing on their sewage and then sells the resulting sludge
>to local farmers?  Or even double-stage processing?

hart0037@student.tc.umn.edu () writes:
> Columbus, Ohio had a program that was in existence in the mid 80's
> where they took sewage and used it to produce very fertile soil.  It took a
> lot of processing and they were trying to market it.  I think they called
> it CompTill.  I don't know if the program still exists, or how successful
> it is/was.  
> 
>       I hope I'm wrong, but I think they were having a hard time
> making it an economically feasible program...probably b/c of the amount of
> processing involved to get rid of any pathogens and also b/c of public
> relations in getting people to *buy* the product.  It's kind of like how
> you can gross out a lot of people who eat meat by telling them they're
> consuming muscle tissue.  If you mention to some people what fertilizer
> is,  it sets off all kinds of reactions!

Those public reactions are what we have to change if we're to:
1.  Stop pollution of the rivers and oceans.
2.  Reduce waste of a potentially valuable resource.
3.  Break the cycle of using petrolium-based, non-renewable fertilizers
	to make up for the loss of productivity in the soil.

But what about the pathogens?  I *know* that working with sewage is
a dangerous business, but can it really be less bad to dump it in
the river or ocean rather than dumping it on farmland?

I doubt it would be feasible, but I wonder about the idea of having
pipelines to pump the sewage sludge from the cities to the country.
If part of the processing cost is to reduce the water in the sewage,
then perhaps it would be cheaper to leave it wet, and pump the water
back to farms as well?  (OK, it would be expensive water, but it might
be cheaper to pump the water than to remove it.)

I'm really thinking of something like taking the existing post-processed
sewage, and putting it on cropland.  If there aren't nasty things that
can't be put on cropland, then the cost of using this fertilizer would
be no more than the cost of transportation.  If there *ARE* nasty things
in it, then why are we allowing them to be pumped into the ocean?

Bear Blessings!

		-- radzy

------------------------------------------------------------
					|  An it harm none,
	T. O. Radzykewycz	     	|  do as ye will.
	The Incredible Radical Cabbage	|
					|  "Just pray for a
	radzy@cogsci.berkeley.edu       |  tough hide and a
	        			|  tender heart."
	        			|    -- Ruth Graham
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