Green Group discussion

While it doesn’t necessarily seem like an environmental topic, how we reuse or discard human waste is very relevant. In Flush: The Remarkable Science of an Unlikely Treasure, author Bryn Nelson takes us on a journey exploring the science of human waste. We can learn about the health of populations, discover technologies that help process waste and then ultimately use that resource to input the health of forests , farms and other environments.

Hmmm! True enough, on my ecology course we went to visit the city sewage works.

It is totally an environmental topic. I look forward to your comments, Candice.

It’s much easier to post comments when reading an ebook! I read the paper copy, so I don’t have as many. It was a fascinating book!

I usually keep a paper bookmark and mark down pages with the letters T, M, and B for top, middle and bottom. Then I look back and refresh my memory. It works well for me. I pick out important passages.

“It’s only waste if you run out of ideas.”

“… in addition to speeding up the transit time, insoluble fiber can slow sugar absorption and improve blood sugar levels. It can help remove cholesterol and other lipids from the bloodstream-as well as bind up carcinogens and toxins formed during digestion-and flush them out with the rest of our waste,”

Fortunately, I typed in a few as updates before returning the book. It was very interesting.

Candice

As part of my ecology course, we went to visit a sewage works in Dublin. This is on Dublin Bay so the treated water can return to the environment, and if there are major storms, overspill may escape.

The road storm drains all wash into the same system, and there was a series of filters for objects, before sludge was removed and treated. That was dried into pellets for use as fertiliser.

The final water was treated by UV light before release.

The water is pretty clean from the recovery process. That's the easy part. The sediment at the bottom of the tanks of the processing has a lot of substances in it. A lot of work can go into processing these materials so they can be used for agricultural purposes. Unlike the recovered water, which stays the same over time, the solid materials need time and are dependent on the weather to produce the final product once it has been placed on the land.

Books on the history of sanitation and recycling:

The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic—and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World



Rummage: A History of the Things We Have Reused, Recycled and Refused to Let Go