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Disposable Toilet To Change the World
captn ecks writes "A biodegradable and self-sterilizing bag for people of the toilet-disenfranchised world (40% of humankind) to dispose of their bodily waste and turn it into safe fertilizer has been created by a Swedish entrepreneur. It's a dead simple and brilliant solution to a vexing problem. From the article: 'Once used, the bag can be knotted and buried, and a layer of urea crystals breaks down the waste into fertilizer, killing off disease-producing pathogens found in feces. The bag, called the Peepoo, is the brainchild of Anders Wilhelmson, an architect and professor in Stockholm. “Not only is it sanitary,” said Mr. Wilhelmson, who has patented the bag, “they can reuse this to grow crops.”'"
You'll sh*t bricks!
Well, Shit!
If you're a poor peasant living in some place where they don't even have toilets, can you really afford bags to poo in? Chances are food and fuel are more important to you.
...and goes on to give it a name that five-year-olds everywhere can laugh at until they piss themselves. Presumably that's how he'll collect the urea crystals.
Nothing lasts forever but the certainty of change.
...can you use it while driving 90mph?
Adj. 1. disenfranchised - deprived of the rights of citizenship especially the right to vote; "labor was voiceless"; "disenfrenchised masses took to the streets"
Although commonly misused, the word doesn't have any other meanings per the dictionary.
Maybe he'll donate a bunch of them to the Red Cross? It still needs to be continually supplied in a viable fashion.
The best solution I can imagine is making deals with local governments... not that they care about the population over there, mind you.
Nothing lasts forever but the certainty of change.
...not posted yet!
Hell, these things would come in quite handy during Mardi Gras when you're on parts of the parade route with no porta-johns.....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
And so what do the poor people in $DEVELOPING_COUNTRY do when the initial "complimentary" supply runs out?
Too bad for Nintendo as I hear Peepoo was supposed to be the name of their next gen console. It actually works with their current naming scheme too. Wii (We) Peepoo (People).
Occam's Razor at work. Much respect to Mr. Wilhelmson.
Living With a Nerd
and here I am using a Mountain Dew bottle like a chump.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
What stops people digging latrines?
Joseph Jenkins --author of the Humanure Handbook-- has been doing this for close to thirty years. His concept also has the benefit of being patent free and simpler. Look see here:http://www.jenkinspublishing.com/humanure.html
All you need is a 5 gallon bucket, some cover material (rice hulls, sawdust, shredded newspaper, or coffee grounds), and teensy bit of brain power.
You can get the book on Amazon or download it for free from his site: http://humanurehandbook.com/downloads/Humanure_Handbook_all.pdf
The most important factor is cost. It will have to be fantastically cheap to manufacture and distribute this if you want to sell it to people who subsist on $0.10 of rice per day. People who are used to flinging poo out the windows of their shacks will probably be perplexed by the idea of paying to take a dump.
And yes, I have dodged chamber pots in India. Prepare to be depressed if you ever visit the third world :-/
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
ok these bags may be better than the current method but it's still pretty much a band-aid solution. It's hardly going to "save the world".
What I don't get is, why doesn't Kenya and all these other 3rd world countries build a real sewer system? It's not rocket science; the Romans did it over 2000 years ago using nothing but hand tools, rocks and some volcanic cement. Yes it was labor intensive, but AFAIK labor shortage isn't a problem in most 3rd world countries, is it? Besides they should be able to get access to some heavy diesel equipment on loan through UNICEF or World Bank or some such organization.
It's a pretty good idea, and one people have been tying to get right for a while, but dude - what's with the name? How is anyone ever going to take you seriously? Nobody wants to see "4,768 Peepoo's" on an invoice.
Fat Bastard: "I don't remember planting any corn!"
http://www.thepett.com/ http://www.thepett.com/index.php?PageLayout=PRODUCTS&pageID=95 Too late. These are already in use. The "poo powder" is some kind of fungus that reacts w/the heat and liquid and gives off gas that kills the bacteria, so you can toss the bag in a trash can, landfill etc.
I can just see the buzz on the street now... "they want me to pay every time I poop..."
I predict 0 adoption.
This is my sig.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/6253564.stm
It's been done.
This must be the famous Sack of Shit I keep hearing about.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
I'm really glad to see that someone found a way to make human waste safe for crops.
That has been a big issue in general for farmers in countries where there are less than adequate water safety facilities.
It's hard to afford fertilizer in war-torn or otherwise de-stabilized countries when you have a bunch of kids to feed.
I'm here for the experience, not the Hyperbole.
It's a bit on the nose, isn't it?
If you don't have a place to shit, you probably can't vote, either.
So there ya go!
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
Saying that "don't worth a crap" gives a hint of how much it should cost to think that it could change the world.
It would be interesting to see a corporate model that allows these items to be sold to the hiker/camper crowd in the first world with revenue for those sales being used to donate the bags to places with a need. For example, I could easily see the Seattle area yuppie hiker crowd paying $10 for three bags at REI. Let's say it costs $5 to produce, package, import, market, and retail these bags. $4 of the remaining $5 could be used to produce more bags and donate them to international aid organizations.
I call bullshit.
Bonus: Captcha = excretes
RTFA
it's for URBAN areas where people already crap in plastic bags and throw them helicopter style, this addresses the sanitation/disease problem.
Oh my god I am so sorry.
Finally, we can get those kids off jenkem!
Twinstiq, game news
But does it run Linux?
He also found that slum dwellers there collected their excrement in a plastic bag and disposed of it by flinging it, calling it a “flyaway toilet” or a “helicopter toilet.”
...
He plans to sell it for about 2 or 3 cents — comparable to the cost of an ordinary plastic bag.
Exactly. Going behind a bush is free and works just as well. This is good for environmentally conscious rich people only!!!
From the article: "He also found that slum dwellers there collected their excrement in a plastic bag and disposed of it by flinging it He plans to sell it for about 2 or 3 cents — comparable to the cost of an ordinary plastic bag."
This.
These "solutions" for fixing the third world all suck. It's just a bunch of Bono and Dean Kamen-style feel good bullshit that doesn't actually make a difference. What these people real need is a stable government and economic growth. We already have technology that works great for shitting, making clean water, etc. The only word that a third world advocate needs to know is "industrialize."
...of a really disgusting version of haggis.
Yes. MORE disgusting haggis!
They may already use bags like this, but they certainly aren't buying them at the market for that purpose. These are the kinds of places where people live on half a dollar per day. No poor person is going to devote 6% of their income to crapping. They'll reuse an old bag if they can find one, but barring that, they're just going to take a dump on the ground or dig a small hole.
e.g.
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=methane+digester
You get methane which can be burned as fuel and the digestate is high in nitrogen, phosphorus and calcium.
Alternatively, lower tech without the gas tight fittings, drop the methane capture idea and use a dry toilet. It's more a matter of education and organisation than anything else.
I'll just point out that by not doing this in the west, we are effectively extracting phosphorus, nitrogen and calcium from our fields and pumping it into rivers and oceans. We then burn a load of fuel to dig up more phosphorus and calcium elsewhere and burn natural gas to produce nitrates to put back on the fields. It's dumb.
Deleted
From TFA: 'Once used, the bag can be knotted and buried, and a layer of urea crystals breaks down the waste into fertilizer, killing off disease-producing pathogens found in feces.
If you pee when you poo, then this is superfluous as pee already contains urea.
Set your phasers on "funky"!
And shovels. Or are you expected to dig the hole with your hands?
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
All he needs to do is to put non-branded thank-you logos on them, and market them to the close-to-the-slums grocery stores. I doubt that those "flyaway toilets" are paid for by the users. More likely they're using the bags that the food originally came in.
This only works if the bags can safely hold food products before being used for disposal at the other end of the cycle.
Most ignorance is vincible ignorance. We don't know because we don't want to know. --Aldous Huxley
In an area where the political system turns over every couple of years, investments are targets, including infrastructure. When trying to control a group, ruining something they invested a lot of time in and need for day to day life is a very effective threat.
If you're a poor peasant living in some place where they don't even have toilets, and you work your farm day in and day out - and you could take part of your earning to increase your production - wouldn't you invest?
No shit
is the bag flammable?
Game: Player 'Donald J Trump' now has AI skill level 'experimental'.
The disposable toilets could also be used after disasters such as earthquakes, floods, hurricanes or tornadoes. It also might be useful for homeowners to use during a several day long power outage after a wind storm or an ice storm. It would be an alternative to grabbing a shovel and going in the back yard or on undeveloped land nearby.
Baby wipes or similar disposable disinfectant wipes could be used to clean the person's hands afterwards, if no working water faucet is available. I sometimes use a baby wipe for my hands after using a Clivus Multrum composting toilet or an old pit toilet in the national forest, where no running water is available. I usually keep several in my day pack when hiking, just in case. The baby wipes could also be used on overnight backpacking trips when camping where no running water is available.
As a child, I remember visiting a several older relatives such as my grandparents, who had an outhouse on each of their farms. Grandpa's was a three hole outhouse. If I remember correctly, they had a small bucket of lime and would sometimes sprinkle a little over the poop. There was also some corn cobs and an old Sears catalog, just in case they ever ran out of toilet paper. If I am not mistaken, the corn cob is supposed to be used together with a page from the Sears catalog. As a child, I also enjoyed using the hand operated pump for pumping water from the well.
Of course they did also have one toilet and running water in the house, but as a child I found it more interesting to use the outhouse and the hand pumped well.
"Mom, bathroom!" [Cartman, during a days long WoW leveling grind]
Instead of giving them things to poop in, give them something that will help solve their real problems: Population. Give them condoms, IUDs, birth control patches, free vasectomies and tubal ligations. After about 30 years their problems will be MUCH more solvable.
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
...who brought you "The Gimp." Another great product no self-respecting adult will ever ask for by name.
If you're a poor peasant living in some place where they don't even have toilets, and you work your farm day in and day out - and you could take part of your earning to increase your production - wouldn't you invest?
No. If you are a farmer and have a field and you work in that field, with shovel, all day long, you might as well use the field. Your contribution will be minor, compared to all other wildlife that is there and isn't going to use this invention.
This device is useful only when a hole in the ground is not an option, like in a city. You'd still need to dispose of the device, though - by flinging it, perhaps? :-)
Porta-potty AND portmanteau
"What these people real need is a stable government and economic growth", and population control. I mean, come on. A guy can't afford a can of beans to share with his special other, but they can fuck all night long for years, creating more mouths to feed. Most Americans can't imagine the poverty in some of this world's cities - but no matter how poor, there is always a ready supply of babies.
The human is an amazing animal. He shares some characteristics with the rats and cockroaches.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Personally, I think it's bullshit advice to assume that poor countries trying to industrialize now will be successful if they follow the same technological path as the countries that industrialized during the Industrial Revolution.
Just as an example, you wouldn't suggest that a poor country should develop a copper voice telecom industry like rich countries did, would you? It's much more effective to build a wireless voice network, since the tech available is so much cheaper now.
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
Anybody have a link to the Darnette Disposable Toilet commercial from SNL? It seems rather appropriate at the moment, and my cursory Google searching isn't turning up anything.
Really makes you think twice about buying Woot's next Bag of Crap.
You'd be best to keep wildlife off of your field, should they eat your crops before you harvest.
Fecal matter alone does not make the best Fertilizer - combining it with certain chemicals does.
Also, crapping on a carrot doesn't mean it'll grow bigger, it means you just infested it with waste that often carries diseases.
This bag is far more than just a new Ziplock - thats why its news.
Gardyloo!
whenever i discuss with a conservative american, they always counter with the bullshit that is 'american system is the best there can be, and "socialism has failed"'. after reminding them socialism != communism, and what they term socialism is named social democracy in europe and has been working miracles in the latter half of the century, i end up having to give them examples. generally i give scandinavian countries as examples. because they have been made believe 'america is the best and there is nothing else', they generally come up never having researched or wondered how people live in other countries.
it always ends up the same way ; when i establish it with various citations and statistics from international sources that all the stuff they thought cannot work well (like public healthcare etc) has been working very well in these countries, they always come up with the same brainmelting objection ; 'but it curtails innovation and enterprise'. no surprise, because since they never wondered what was happening around the world elsewhere, being so self-indulged, i end up having to establish that a lot of the innovations and inventions we have been using lately has been coming from those places. (first osmosis plant, wood chip plant, recently ended 30 year long gsm usage versus cancer rate research, first humongous, datacenter-grade home internet connection test - examples are countless).
this is just another example i will end up using while waking them up to the wide, wide world.
Read radical news here
That's about the cost of a full breakfast for those people.
Forget the article writeup, my first thought was California. All of the illegals working on the fields have no place to "go". Some farms might provide facilities but when the need is there they are too far away. Currently, the field becomes a toilet - be sure to wash that broccoli!!
I might be wrong regarding the severity of the problem in California, but I know it is a problem around Vancouver. Considering how much more produce is grown in California and its general vicinity to Mexico, I would imagine the problem being far worse. This bag provides a possible solution. One would just have to require that farms provide them for their workers. And the farms can afford them.
FOR ME TO POOP ON! But seriously, this is awesome. I want one for my cabin.
I agree on the merits of population control, but in a society where the primary thing is agriculture, rather than manufacturing or other industrialized stuff, one's family's productivity tends to scale with the number of hands one can produce capable of tending crops (or herds or what-have-you). Moreover, the presence of diseases, poor medical facilities, and other factors contribute heavily to child death rates, and thus being able to make more of them is a way to ensure the genetic line goes on.
Clearly, making so many that none can eat is a poor idea, but so is making too few and being unable to harvest enough food to feed the family. Simiarly, you'd feel pretty shitty if your only kid (and co-laborer) went and broke his leg, or blew it off in a land mine, or died of AIDS, or got bit by a snake, or killed by a neighboring group of people.
"How was last year's World Toilet Summit?" "Pretty crappy."
"I'm not a quack, I'm a mad scientist! There's a difference." - Dr. Cockroach
You just say "Peepoo" and the sheer awesomeness of it digs it for you.
Hell, if this Bloombox and other forms take hold I might be able to recycle my tinfoil collection.
I understand what you're saying, and I pretty much agree with you. But, TFA seems to be designing and marketing these things to a more urban market. Disease is still a concern, but the hands to tend the fields doesn't really apply here. ;^)
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Finally someone who posts what we needed to see. *Most* of the African cultures needed to realize higher levels of civilization on their own rather than have it crammed down their throats.
Disposable toilets fertilize YOU!
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
There's a business opportunity here.
A traditional "helicopter toilet" is a problem; it's shit stored in a non-degradable bag. Separating the shit from the bag to make fertilizer is non-viable (for a number of reasons) So it is hazardous waste.
But a load in this bag is quite literally a unit of fertilizer. Not immediately (there is processing time involved) but eventually that bag of shit is going to have a value.
Work out that value, subtract the cost of the bag, storage and handling costs, etc - and then give away the bags and pay people for full ones.
Not only do you encourage the use of the bags (a net benefit to hygiene) you inject money into the local economy and you make a profit - while helping improve the food supply.
Put another way:
1. Give away bags
2. Buy full bags
3. Store full bags until they become viable fertilizer
4. Sell fertilizer
5. Profit!!!
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
Greatest. Product. Name. Ever.
200 years back 90% of the world - including probably your grand parents - lived that standard of life. It is surprising how easy it is to get used to not having a SUV to drive and McD to go to. Even not have electricity and hot water for 24x7. No even have a super market to go buy groceries to and depend just on your wit to earn that extra bread that you would share with your SO.
However, even 200 years back 90% of the world - including probably your grand parents - fuxxed. Human is an amazing animal. He shares some characteristics with the rats and cockroaches.
Dude. Stop looking down on people.
You'd be best to keep wildlife off of your field, should they eat your crops before you harvest.
It's not humanly possible to do even in the USA. The fences around fields are just to mark property lines and hold cattle. Deer jump over the fences with ease, and coyotes crawl under, and wild pigs just go straight through.
Also not all wildlife is damaging your interests. A deer isn't going to eat much grass, compared to your 100 cows, and if you want you can eat the deer when it gets fat enough :-) If you are a farmer, coyotes and foxes aren't going to eat your alfalfa.
Fecal matter alone does not make the best Fertilizer - combining it with certain chemicals does.
The soil contains chemicals, water, bacteria, plants and small animals (worms, insects) to do that work for you. This is hardly a new discovery. Chemicals in a bag are needed only because of the bag. Perhaps they are an improvement, but one that isn't worth 3 cents or even 0.03 cents to a farmer. A city dweller might benefit from that improvement, though - if he cares (big if.)
Also, crapping on a carrot doesn't mean it'll grow bigger, it means you just infested it with waste that often carries diseases.
That's not exactly how it works. Fields are often fertilized with manure, and plants grow bigger on those nutrients. Plants's cells are pretty good on separating good and bad materials. Contamination is occurring primarily during the harvest, when bacteria are placed directly onto the produce. In any case, as I mentioned there are thousands of wild animals at or above your field, and you can't do anything about them. Typically they are not a health problem. But you are expected to carefully wash the produce anyway; that's the step that was probably missing in those recent contamination stories in the news.
These places usually don't have much of social safety net to care for the aged. Therefore, if you want to be taken care of in your old age you better have as many children as you can, while you can, in the hopes that they will be able to share the burden between them to do so.
Why does Daryl McBride carry a Peepoo around on his shoulder? Because "two heads are better than one!"
What's the difference between a Peepoo and a Windows fanboyz brain? The sack!
What did the fly say when he saw the Peepoo? "That's some good shit, man!"
Who named this product? The inventor's two year old child?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
No, but if you put a copy of Windows in the bag, bury it and when you come back in 10 years, you will have an old copy of Windows.
They'll stop pooping.
Lots of owners have tons of natural fertilizer on hand that I'm sure they'd love to use in their backyard gardens. Same thing with farmers on an industrial scale.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Gardyloo!
And Gardypoo too.
--
Engineers do it reliably.
That didn't address the issue: poor peasants who can't afford toilets still live in urban areas.
If the third world doesn't have the will to build and use toilets, why would anyone think that they, if given this poop-bag, would deficate in it and then use it as fertilizer for crops? Someone might have overlooked the fact that to the third-worlders, there isn't any problem to be solved. It would seem that to at least some of them shitting on a beach is normal (as shown at http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=ae0_1264118582).
how will you afford this?
And human waste can already be taken care of by a simple pit dug in the ground, with maybe some specially selected plants if you really want to get fancy.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
They have little else to do for entertainment. That's why we need cheap laptops, so they can get on Slashdot instead of fornicating. The more time someone spends on Slashdot the less likely they are to procreate.
This is a solution looking for a problem, a solution has been already discovered that is more self-sustaining:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outhouse#End_of_pit_life
So I agree with most of what you say- but dude, how old do you think he is? "200 years back"? "Including your grandparents"? :-)
"Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway" -Andrew Tanenbaum
This is happening today, look at the Mobile vs. Land Lines numbers for East Asian, Africa and South America....
They already have population control. It comes in a surprising number of natural flavors: poverty, disease, crime, disaster. For some strange reason, we demand population control only on the procreative terminus.
Actually, I know the reason: it's because a biologist by the name of Garrett Hardin wrote an essay in 1968 called the "Tragedy of the Commons" in which he claimed that humans must adopt a new kind of outlook in order to protect the earth's common resources. There is this class of problems, you see, that has no technical solution and the only way around them (according to Hardin) is to reprogram our sense of morality--of what our legitimate Rights are.
If we give up the natural and human right to procreate and have families, abdicating that right to a managerial class, then we can continue to enjoy "the greatest good for the greatest number" (proportionally speaking).
This entire argument is predicated on the unexamined assumption that the overriding human purpose is not a teleological one, but an instinctual one: the individual need to have, at minimum, "my fair portion" of the commons. It is an assumption of greed or avarice as the natural human state--the idea that people will typically maximize their own "good" even if doing so ruins the commons for everyone else. Although Hardin's essay contains some rather unassailable logic in it, I find scientists have always made poor philosophers, ethicists, sociologists, and so forth.
So, while your argument for population control (and by this you mean restricted procreation) is a valid one, it is not the only approach to this problem that has no technical solution.
If you're a poor peasant living in some place where they don't even have toilets, do you really CARE? Having lived in Africa for many years, I can tell you for most of these people, the answer is almost certainly no. Throughout history they have urinated and defecated behind some convenient bush. Giving them bags to poop in will likely get you a blank stare at best, more likely an incredulous 'you want me to do WHAT in here and put it where?'
Also, are they going to provide them with shovels to bury the bags too?
I thought horse manure to grow crops was disgusting, imagine last nights calamari and red wine!
Who's looking down? I allowed my hormones to lead me around when I toured the world's cities. When I mock man, I'm mocking myself, right along with all other men.
Rats and cockroaches, I say . . . .
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
I could also imagine a beowulf cluster of these
Everything costs money. Cleaning up poobags (non-disposable) costs money. The government (or the neighbors) might be willing to give out these bags if it meant not having to deal with poo.
A joke about corruption in Latin America vs. Africa:
An African diplomat was visiting his counterpart in Mexico. The Mexican diplomat had a 10 room house and a Rolls Royce.
The African diplomat says: "How did you afford all this?"
The Mexican diplomat points to a nearby highway. "You see that highway? I got 10% of the construction cost."
Years later the Mexican diplomat visits his African counterpart. The African diplomat has a 100-room mansion and 10 expensive cars.
The Mexican diplomat says: "WOW! How did you afford all this?"
The African diplomat points to an empty stretch of countryside. "You see that highway? I got 100% of the construction cost!"
A guy can't afford a can of beans
there is always a ready supply of babies.
I have a Modest Proposal for you...
So you use it, dig a hole, throw this inside, and you cover the hole. Now, what's wrong with using the hole in the first place?
If you are a subsistence farmer -- as poor peasants tend to be -- a device that lets you turn otherwise-dangerous human waste into safe fertilizer is, in a sense, food. Or at least, a tool that directly contributes to your supply of food.
Most of the first world has done a great job of population control without resorting to restricted procreation.
Some will argue that wealth automagically brings down population growth rates.
I will argue correlation not causation.
Many societies became wealthy at about the same time as they started to educate their women for more then just housework.
When half the population does the hard work in procreation we can hardly be surprised to see less procreation going on when that half the population gains economically. Especially if they are now working much harder and longer to achieve their economic gains. (Yes I just ripped on how hard housewives 'work'.)
We need to do more to educate middle eastern women. That will fix those bastards real good.
I guess you could call that a form of restricted procreation.
This is /. We know all about 'restricted procreation' via picky women.
Finally I would argue that 'space for spawn' is not purely an example of commons to the extent that parents pay their own spawns way.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Economic growth and stable governments providing strong social safety nets are population control. Not of the mandatory, authoritarian kind, but there the one thing that has consistently led to declining family sizes in human history, because they are the things that stop people from investing in creating children as a form of old-age support.
All pyramid schemes ultimately fail...
Hmmm, I get the feeling that you're about offer us a modest proposal.
If you're a poor peasant living in some place where they don't even have toilets, can you really afford bags to poo in? Chances are food and fuel are more important to you.
This still has applications in a semi-first world nation like the US, especially during a disaster scenario. Before you say food and water are more important, you might want to reflect back on the Superdome incident. Feces from thousands of people in 100 degree weather contained in the Superdome and it starts to become more important than food (but not water).
"During that lonely and frightening time, Norton starved himself in fear of having to use the restroom facilities. An unthinkable stench of feces permeated the Superdome. As disgusting as the restrooms were, Norton vowed to only drink water to keep from dehydrating. Fearing for his safety, he urinated only in the upper level of the dome."
Former USM student is finally able to tell of Katrina nightmare:
http://www.usm.edu/afterkatrina/Bueto.html
*cough*
Have you looked at historical charts of the world's population? You mention China. Prior to the 1800's, China never had more than a half billion people. The rest of the world's population was proportionate.
Thanks to a number of factors, we've seen a tremendous population explosion in the last ~175 years. Something needs to change, or like rats, we'll consume all the world's resources, then starve.
Ehhh. Whatever.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
From the article: "He also found that slum dwellers there collected their excrement in a plastic bag and disposed of it by flinging it He plans to sell it for about 2 or 3 cents — comparable to the cost of an ordinary plastic bag."
Bagged poo flinging?! Hey, when you're poor you have to get your entertainment any way you can.
If I was poor I'd carry my poo-bag on a stick like a hobo. Then I'd use the stick as a make-shift treb-poo-chet to launch it at some rich bastards house.
Why would people who are comfortable with their present methods switch to another that costs them a portion of their daily food ration? I applaud the fellow for trying to solve the plight of the third-world but, the only place this would be accepted and have utility--were it actually legal to do so--would be in the developed world where access to ordinary means of doing your business are unavailable.
If the first-world truly cared to solve the problems of such people we would be intelligently investing in their education and infrastructure (hiring predominantly local labor) not dumping our surplus food stuffs onto their markets thereby robbing the farmers of their livelyhood. Moreover, we would provide the training and tools necessary for their farmers to meet our standards of wholesomeness to permit access to our markets. We would also stop raping their lands of natural resources with out fair compensation to the people in forms useful to them (see above) rather than a handful of autocrats to finance their petty wars.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
That's the sound of K. S. Kyosuke's joke whizzing over your head. (Hint: Click his link, or even just pay attention to the fact it only spans one word.)
Relax, it's just Slashdot slowly composting into a clone of TED. Let them eat cake, indeed.
It's not about "poor peasants", but about urban slums, who would not be able to grow food anyway for lack of space to plant the crops on.
From the fine article:
Once used, the bag can be knotted and buried, and a layer of urea crystals breaks down the waste into fertilizer, killing off disease-producing pathogens found in feces.
Urea would do wonders for the taste of the ground water, and the beautiful bags would make for spectacular "helicopter toilets" (term used in the very fine article).
But Therese Dooley, senior adviser on sanitation and hygiene for Unicef, said that inculcating sanitation habits was no easy task.
How about using some of the money spent on making sure poor stupid people don't do drugs, have sex before marriage or cross borders without permission, and build sewers ?
Reading this kind of neo-Victorian crap on Slashdot does make me feel old ... in the days of yore there were flame wars about filesystems, *BSD vs. Linux or Perl vs. Python, while the poor peasants were perfectly able to compost their own feces without help from sanitation advocacy groups. Now the poor peasants are in need of shit bags, and this is news for nerds, stuff that really matters.
Fixing poverty is the best population control.
http://www.gapminder.org/videos/what-stops-population-growth/
Maybe GP is from a family where they don't reach child-bearing age until 67 or so.
Momentarily, the need for the construction of new light will no longer exist.
Blame Catholicism (or at least Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo).
The idiots won't let people wear condoms and spread FUD that condoms can't help prevent HIV.
Can Condoms Kill?
Hardliners in the Vatican say condoms can kill - they have holes in them and fail to protect against AIDS. Furthermore they claim there is science to prove it.
In the film, the European Union condemns the Catholic Church over "bigotry" in its approach to condoms. But leading Catholic Churchmen in Latin America and Africa say that condoms could actually be making the AIDS epidemic worse [...]
WTF is wrong with these people?
... but no matter how poor, there is always a ready supply of babies.
You are suggesting someone invent a bag that turns babies into fertiliser?
Free Poo Movement!
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
In the developing world, an estimated 2.6 billion people, or about 40 percent of the earth’s population, do not have access to a toilet, according to United Nations figures.
It is a public health crisis: open defecation can contaminate drinking water, and an estimated 1.5 million children worldwide die yearly from diarrhea, largely because of poor sanitation and hygiene.
To mitigate this, the United Nations has a goal to reduce by half the number of people without access to toilets by 2015.
This is an incredibly brilliant idea for Wilhelmson to make money! Wow! Poop and pay him. Meanwhile, the bear will continue to shit in the woods. Some people are so hung up.
... for New York City dog owners before it's even tested in Africa. How could the inventor not have realized that the most lucrative market for this is dog owners in cities?
If you're a poor peasant living in some place where they don't even have toilets,
Where? I've never seen a peasant farmer who did not have a toilet of some sort.
In the very first paragraph of TFA it says these are for city slum dwellers.
you can always light it and throw it on someone's doorstep, ring the bell and run.
Assuming a method can be found to transport the filled bags - otherwise they'll just become helicopters too.
Hell, I'd love to have a dispenser full of these in my RV.
Well, living in a land where 90% of the rural population shits on the ground (Nepal) I don't see this idea coming to fruition here. As noted, no one is going to pay for it, and if given away by the UN and other agencies, it will be dismantled and used for parts (biodegradable shopping bags and water containers?). Currently, there are numerous projects building sanitation systems that look like better ideas then distributing millions of peepoo bags. Back to the drawing board on this one!
I think therefore I can't be ~TTNH
Hang on, didn't terrorists use Fertilizer as one of the two major components in the 1993 Oklahoma city bombings? I smell a rat.....(or is it something else?)...
how are you going to deal with fraud? Would you give me cash for a bag of dirt I scooped up around the corner outta sight?
730 dollars for a lifetime, you spend more on toilet paper in one year
black soldier fly (SF), Hermetia illucens, makes fertilizer fast, and its food, cleanest fly ever!!!
Engineering, Separation and Recycling LLC
Prota(TM)Culture & The BioPod(TM) - Advanced Composting Using Black Soldier Fly: The Future of Food Waste Diversion & Recycling
I am not sure about poop, but surely some of these people can't afford a pot to pee in.
Geez, I'm paying 5 cents for plastic bags in the supermarket now!
Maybe I could use things to take home the groceries in!
I just have to make sure though that when I get home, I don't get confused as to which bag is which...
.
- aqk
F U
So you can't light one, ring, and then run.
Which is all very noble, practical, ethical etc.
But lest we forget, they're still in the middle of a fucking drought zone. Time to stop throwing money, food, farming implements at them and do the practical thing first. Help them move to a place where farming is actually likely to succeed more than one year per decade.
Then put a cordon around dirt bowls like Ethiopia, or use it as the world's dumping ground, while the farmers can actually farm in decent growing conditions in more temperate climates.
Watch it!
.
- aqk
F U
...to refer to a sack of sh!t, they had to use PeePoo? Third graders will get a real kick out of it, at least...
Just off the top of my head: Humanure (if it's not already patented), Green Latrine, Peecomposition, PissOff (contributed by my fiance), WasteAway, BuryIt, Poo4U, Re-Cycle, Poo-rify (purify), etc. I'm sure someone else can come up with better, too.
$0.02 != 0.02 cents
Have we learned nothing? Though since you switched units once in each direction the math is still correct.
I probably spend less than $200 directly on TP per year. But I probably use more than $730 worth, most of that provided gratis and its cost hidden to me. Your point stands.
I mean, the invention of the indoor toilet was named (I think) Thomas Crapper. We need something catchier. PeePoo doesn't seem to do it.
Cover the cost with sponsorship. Bonus, charge extra for advertising someone else.
I could see McDonald's being more than willing to pay for shitsacks printed with Burger King's logo.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Against my principles, I have to reply an AC. Be a man and use your account!
Dude, it's hard to "industrialise" when you're too busy dying from dysentery, pneumonia, meningitis, tuberculosis, hepatitis, tetanus, cholera, malaria, etc. It's hard to keep a factory working when half your employees have chronic diseases and acute infections kill someone every month or so.
All the diseases listed above are hygiene related. You don't get to see them in your fancy suburb, but in the third world they are commonplace.
The problem with this model is that success is dependent on owning/renting cropland, to which the average slum dweller does not have access.
Shit collection, however, anybody can do.
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
Except they aren't paying for the existing bags
'a layer of urea crystals breaks down the waste into fertilizer'. Isnt there a readily available source of urea that doesnt have to be purchased? Does poo not turn to fertilizer if pee poo was just done in a hole and covered?? Am I missing something here?
You'll also have a copy of Windows that seems more functional and popular than the current version.
The ancient Romans were smarter than we are. At least they were, until they started drinking water from those lead pipes.
Economic growth and stable governments providing strong social safety nets are population control. Not of the mandatory, authoritarian kind, but there the one thing that has consistently led to declining family sizes in human history, because they are the things that stop people from investing in creating children as a form of old-age support.
So, do you believe the U.S. has strong social safety nets, or is it time to go screw my way to retirement? I'm thinking there might be more to "Big Love" than meets the eye.
Just another day in Paradise
True. It does seem somewhat strangely aimed as a product.
Rich people who backpack might want it (I think I would!).
Poor people in developing countries will poop in a latrine or a humanure contraption, and wonder why they need to pay extra for a bag.
It does, however, sound like an awesome bit of technology. Very Cool.
> True. It does seem somewhat strangely aimed as a product.
Yes, you certainly wouldn't want this product strangely aimed.
Requiring every single bag produced everywhere to be biodegradable, duh. They can be used as peepoo bags, AND they won't clog the world's oceans, landfills, and city streets.
http://members.socket.net/~llile/ConcreteStain/Compost_Toilet_50_gallon_drum.html
I'll be your candy shop of infinite deliciousity if you'll be my discotheque of endless rump-shaking.