The Toliet and Western Waste

[Narz]

You ever contemplate the amazing amount of waste that we take for granted in the "Western world"? To me one of the most glaring example of that is the modern toliet.

In many countries people would fight and die for the litre or more of fresh water that we flush away seven or eight times a day.

What is my point here? How am I helping the problem? Hmm, not sure. Just pointing out the madness of it I suppose.

When I'm rich I will have a urinal included in the bathroom (saving some water) but being an outdoorsman I will probably mostly contribute most of my leavings to nature (I'll own a small wooded area behind my house). I also plan to have a farm and grow all of my own food & have my electricity through solar polar and own a solar powered car and basically be 99-100% self sufficient. I will save the details for another thread.

- Narz

 

[superslug]

If you want to save water, just don't flush. Or pee in the sink.

 

[Dark Ascendant]

Chamber pots will also be of benefit.

 

[CenturionV]

Who cares? its just water it will never run out, Once you flush its re-used for you to drink (they might clean it a bit before, maybe ) I always drink distilled water, so much cleaner.

 

[Narz]

Originally posted by superslug
If you want to save water, just don't flush. Or pee in the sink.

I used to do that in college. We had sinks in the rooms and the bathroom was way down the the hallway and around the corner and then down another hallway. If my roommate was around I'd use my neighbor's sink (he didn't care and lost his key so his room was always open. ). Ahhh, the carefree days of college...

 

[Perfection]

Okay, I'll just take all the water that would be going down the drain, bottle it up and send it over to third world countries

 

[Pontiuth Pilate]

We don't "recycle" water, Centurion. Shocking, I know.

First of all, around 97% of the water on earth is salt. Unusable. Blech. Plus it's full of fish piss and gasoline. Purifying it is as yet an unprofitable venture.

Of the remaining 3%, most of it's trapped in glaciers and the ice caps. A tiny amount cycles. And the oceans contribute some too of course. The problem is that we depend totally on rainfall - we can't draw directly from the oceans. But we're messing up the cycle by ****ting up our air and our rivers. Water is actually a pretty expensive commodity.

If you want to save water in your toilet, put a brick or two in it [not in the bowl - in the case in back]. That lowers the amount of water that runs through the system. You don't really need so much - it's just an aesthetic effect

 

[Pongui]

Originally posted by Pontiuth Pilate
most of it's trapped in glaciers and the ice caps. A tiny amount cycles.

You shouldn't talk that way. Some of our members live in the Pacific Northwest, and are about to go through the yearly solid overcast and rain most days and nights for the next 5 months.

I could run a garden hose here in Vancouver, and just leave it on, and it wouldn't make the yard any muddier or the stream in the road any wetter, and it wouldn't change one wisp of one cloud looming up from the North Pacific Ocean.

***

I'd love to have this water piped away someplace dry. Someday we will. We need more hydroelectric power, to power the pumps, and we need more reservoirs. So, more dams, which means man-made lakes *sarcasm* destroying our precious alpine ecosystems */sarcasm* and we'll need lots of concrete for the pipes.

 

[Smaasnekje]

seven or eight times a day.

???

I only use mine 3 or 4 times a day

 

[taper]

Originally posted by Narz


I also plan to have a farm and grow all of my own food & have my electricity through solar polar and own a solar powered car and basically be 99-100% self sufficient. I will save the details for another thread.

- Narz

I hope you're joking about some of this. If you plan on growing all your own food, you better not have another job. Living in North Dakota, I see lots of farms, and it's a job that takes a lot of time and effort. Not to mention there's no way to grow some stuff in whatever climate zone you're in. I'm also a member of my university's solar car team. We won our class during the American Solar Challenge this summer, racing 2300 miles across the US, so I know a bit about solar power. Solar powered cars will never a be practical daily driver. Even 100% efficient cells(current max is ~30%), our car with 8 square meters of cells would develop the equivalent of 10 hp in full sun. Regular cars would be lucky to have 2 square meters. They could supplement, but never replace other power sources.

 

[Bozo Erectus]

Originally posted by Narz
being an outdoorsman I will probably mostly contribute most of my leavings to nature (I'll own a small wooded area behind my house).

Youre going to wait till your rich to go sh#t in the woods? Bears do it for free

 

[cgannon64]

Buy one of those things that turn urine into water. As for crap...

...go find some woods.

 

[Richard III]

Originally posted by Sean Lindstrom


You shouldn't talk that way. Some of our members live in the Pacific Northwest, and are about to go through the yearly solid overcast and rain most days and nights for the next 5 months.

I could run a garden hose here in Vancouver, and just leave it on, and it wouldn't make the yard any muddier or the stream in the road any wetter, and it wouldn't change one wisp of one cloud looming up from the North Pacific Ocean.

And yet Vancouver had water restrictions last summer IIRC, and yet people there still water their lawns all the same.

Which speaks to Narz's point. However disturbing it might be to have a thread on it.

"For us Germans, the toilet is a mundane and routine thing. But for you English, it is the basis of an entire culture!"

- Richtofen, in Blackadder Goes Fourth.

 

[Pontiuth Pilate]

"For us Germans, the toilet is a mundane and routine thing. But for you English, it is the basis of an entire culture!"


I rather think it's the other way round British humor is in the parlor; French humor is in the bedroom, and German humor is in the lavatory

 

[Richard III]

German humor?

 

[SewerStarFish]

Hey a topic about my job

First while I urge all to conserve fresh water, flushing isn't the evil people make it out to be. For those of you who try an concentrate your waste by not flushing as often(and those of you peeing down the sink) remember:the solution to pollution is dilution. If there is less water being used to flush wastes then the concentration of those wastes as they hit the rivers is higher.

The real key to wastewater treatment is time. Wastewater treatment involves mostly alllowing an area for nature to break down the watses in the water.

If you live in a sparsely populated place -- go ahead and pee in the sink. City dwellers should flush, it actually helps the situation, on the back end anyway.

 

[Richard III]

Tell us more. This is fascinating stuff.


Really!

 

[SewerStarFish]

Originally posted by Richard III
Tell us more. This is fascinating stuff.


Really!

Okies,

Suppose you live a realtively non-rural area. The concentration of people would leave a polluting, disease inviting level of waste in the water table. So assuming there isn't a local water shortage, say from a prolonged drought, then the key to fresher cleaner water for the water table and aquifers(esp. for those downstream who have to drink this stuff) depends on adequate sewage treatment.

You may save fresh water in your area by flushing less but I'm willing to bet you're still going to the "loo" as often. The amount of waste remains the same per less volume of water: so now you have a smaller volume of more concentrated pollution.

The only way to treat the organic pollution ( the stuff from you -not your local industry) is for primitive zooilogical stuff (scientific for stalked ciliiates) to digest this matter through the sulfide and nitrate cycles into more usefull organics that higher life forms can use. Fail to do this and you'll have algeal blooms and decreased dissolved oxygen right in your river. Concentrated pollution is harder to treat then less concentrated because the more concentrated pollution is even too strong for the stalked ciliiates and you end up with way to much ameobic and rotifer action to finish the digestion in time at the end of your local sewage facility.

Of course wasting too much water can cause the water to pass through the facility too fast anyway... but that's for another post.

 

[EdwardTking]

Originally posted by Narz

...and own a solar powered car ....

you might well save on speeding tickets too!

 

[onejayhawk]

As an informed organic gardener, I know a fair amount about sewage and its contents. The biggest problem with solid organic wastes is the heavy metals. Everything else breaks down naturally.

There is a product, which goes back 50 years, called MilOrganite. It is Milwaukee sewage solid which have been dried and made into a spreadable pellet form. The biggest problem with it is the high concentration of Arsenic, sodium, zinc, iron, etc. The human body eliminates these naturally, and drying the refuse simply concentrates it. The Lord High Guru of organic gardening, Howard Garrett, wont use it for that reason.

J