It’s easy to be pessimistic about life when we get older. Our eyes don’t see as well as we used to, our joints creak and ache, our reflexes are slower, and our hearing is not what it used to be. Some of us are a little heavy and get winded just bending down to tie our shoes. If we’re not complaining about one ailment it’s another. All of these things combined contribute to the daily aggravation of getting older. It seems that everyone and everything ticks us off. It’s easy to see why the younger generation sees us as old and grumpy, because we are.
I recently discussed a book with a colleague telling him that it had moved me so much that I was going to become an environmentalist. He replied that he doesn’t pay attention to environmental stuff, because it makes him too depressed. He agreed with me that there were many things to be concerned about in the world, but someone else would have to worry about them. I thought for a moment and realized that most people probably feel the same way. It wasn’t so long ago that I saw an article about septic systems being blamed for polluting drinking water in a community near here, and I just skipped over it and moved on to the next article, not giving it a second thought. It seems that so many environmental disasters are being reported, that we are becoming complacent and accept these things as a normal part of life.
Maybe it’s because I’m getting older, but I see many things that I think should be done differently, such as the way we create and dispose of sewage. I’ve always felt guilty about using five gallons of water to flush away one cup of urine several times a day. Putting the sewage into the ground gets it out of sight, but what happens next? It stays there ready to pollute, that’s what! Many people believe it’s too late to change the way we do things, but I believe that we can, especially if we have to. It would be nice for our grandchildren have a chance to grow up in a world relatively clean and safe.
The book I mentioned earlier is called “ The Humanure Handbook” written by Joseph Jenkins and available at Jenkins Publishing P.O Box 607, Grove City, PA 16127. I read it free on line at www.jenkinspublishing.com. The title does not do it justice because he discusses a wide variety of topics in great detail citing facts and figures from a multitude of references. He manages to bring our attention to various environmental concerns in a non-pessimistic way, all-the-while entertaining us with funny tidbits.
Humanure is a taboo topic in North America and is often referred to with negative connotation. You know the sayings, manure for brains, manure head, I don’t give a manure, and oh manure!, to name a few. It may surprise you that there is no negative connotation for humanure in the Eastern countries because humanure is seen as a useful product. If you called somebody a manure head in China you’d probably be giving him or her a compliment. You’re probably thinking, now he’s got me turned off, I think I’ll move on to the next article. After all, the Eastern countries are poor, under developed and don’t know any better. North Americans are considered to be the richest people in the world. Just look at our possessions, large houses, cottages, cars, televisions, appliances of every kind, running water, and flush toilets in every house. America has 1/20th of the world’s population yet we consume 1/3rd of the world’s resources. To sustain the entire world at this same level of consumption would require no less than three planet Earths. (Humanure handbook p.19)
Perhaps the Eastern countries are not so backward; after all, they have been growing food for the most populous people in the world for thousands of years without eroding their soil of its nutrients. In contrast, we in North America are loosing agricultural land at alarming rates and depend more on commercial fertilizers for food production, which adds to the overall pollution problem. The Eastern countries have been using humanure to fertilize their fields for thousands of years; disgusting isn’t it! It’s even bought and sold on the black market in some countries. I wonder if that’s where the term “Black Market” came from.
From a health standpoint it’s not recommended to use raw humanure on crops (even though it’s still done in the East), but properly composted humanure is another story. One of several methods of achieving this is with the use of composting toilets. If composting toilets were used in place of flush toilets the saving would be three fold. Not only would we be putting the nutrients back into the soil but also we wouldn’t be using up our drinking water just to flush it away and cause more pollution. This would have a more positive effect than the Kyoto protocol.
Look at it another way. Lets take your five-gallon jug of drinking water at the water cooler. Suppose I defecated in it, then no one else could drink from it, and then I dumped it outside where it seeped into your well, and leached into your favorite fishing pool. You got ill when you ate the surviving fish. You had to put poison (chlorine) in your drinking water so it wouldn’t give you diseases when you drank or washed in it. Now you find out that the poison you put in your water caused bladder cancer. The bottle of water for the cooler became more expensive because it was harder to find uncontaminated water. Of course I would never do that to your jug of water at the cooler, but that is exactly what we all do when we use our flush toilets. How many times did you flush yours today?
Perhaps these things are not important. Maybe my grandchildren will get to go to Mars when the Earth is done. Perhaps our Government will look after our best interests. (HA HA Ha, I couldn’t help myself; that was funny) Perhaps I’m just full of manure, or maybe I’m just old and grumpy.