Who You Callin' Waste?

Feed on: Posts; Comments

Aug 15th, 2010 by wintercow20

More from Rose George’s wonderful book. I promise this is the last post on human waste!

… the material itself is as rich as oil and probably more useful. It contains nitrogen and phosphates that can make plants grown … it can be both food and poison. It can contaminate and cultivate. Millions of people cook with gas made by fermenting it.

… it can be turned into bricks, it can make roads and jewelry, and when in a dried powdered form … it was sniffed like snuff by the grandest ladies in the 18th century French court.

… medical examiners were fond of prescribing it … excrement could be eaten, drink or liberally applied to the skin. Martin Luther was convinced: he reportedly ate a spoonful of his own excrement every day and wrote that he couldn’t understand the generosity of a God who freely gave such important and useful remedies.

This may seem like quackery, except that the fecal transplant is becoming an increasingly common procedure in modern medicine … used to treat “superbug” bacterial infections.

For the creative among us, all manner of problems are merely opportunities for solving them and more.

Posted in Flotsam and Jetsam