waste not want not

[David Zhang]

this morning i read an article about how the water and sewage systems in many cities are badly in need of repair. this comes at a time when the government is broke. what a pickle!

if sewage systems were designed at the neighborhood (or city block) level, it would have prevented a lot of the costly problems we face today.

every block would have a bio-digester located near the center where all the sewage goes. we have an option of using either aerobic or anaerobic microbes to treat the sewage. aerobic decomposition is faster and less smelly, but anaerobic will give us natural gas (methane), which can be piped back up to houses to be used for cooking or heating.

a good system would have an anaerobic system with an aerobic overflow tank. in other words, if there's too much shit for making gas, the excess will be allowed to compost at a faster rate. the end product of this system will be fertilizer. i would suggest it be used on trees and perennials, so there's no risk of contamination from fecal coliform.

wouldn't it be awesome if all the crap in the city transformed into nutrients for the forest, instead of contaminating our rivers and streams? think of the health benefits!

would you guys like to see a more detailed proposal of this design? if i get enough responses i'll draw it out and describe how we can implement this system.

[David MacLeod]

Thank you David for sharing this. Brian Kerkvliet and Tom Anderson are working on a bio-digester to demonstrate at the Great Unleashing.