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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!
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.
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.........
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).
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?"
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.
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.
A recurring cost revenue model for using the toilet is not exactly what I would call a "simple solution." Especially not for people who can't even afford a toilet today.
Now proper fecal composting, THAT'S a simple solution... and damned near free, too. Hell, if you do it right, it's not even supposed to smell.
If I had a nickel for every time I had a nickel, I'd be richcursive!
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.
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."
I don't know why, but in many parts of India, the government needs to pay people to use a toilet. Even when the government supplies a deluxe porta-potty, the likes of which you can only find at a multi-millionaire rapper's BBQ, the people simply won't use it. I don't know if it's a cultural taboo, or that squatting on the side of the street is believed to be cleaner or easier, but the people just won't use them. I wonder if this bag would be useful in that kind of situation, or if the people just wouldn't use it either.
Remember, we live in a world where many Africans believe that having intercourse with a virgin will cure HIV. Then there are some cultures that punish women with floggings, execution, or even immolation, for having the audacity to be raped. Men are killed for wearing shorts, and lesbians are raped in an effort to cure them. Some people even believe that the moon landing was faked, and that the U.S. government caused the 2001 WTC attacks.
Even if people own a shovel, many simply won't use it because they're too lazy, or too stupid.
You're just not looking at the problem the right way. This is a simple solution to the problem of "how to get paid every time a poor person takes a dump". It's the pinnacle of capitalist science, really.. a major achievement. It's all downhill from here, folks. This man has successfully applied the razor and blades model to human existence: free human, $0.02 per poop for the rest of his life. Let no one claim that western civilization never accomplished anything.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
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
...who brought you "The Gimp." Another great product no self-respecting adult will ever ask for by name.
"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
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.
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
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.