How Poop Could Help Feed the Planet
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This system, called Varcor, was designed by the Seattle engineering firm Sedron Technologies and is owned by the SanFrancisco-based company Generate Upcycle. Wastewater treatment plants across the country are using high heat, composting, and devices akin to pressure cookers to transform leftover biomass into rich fertilizers, mulches, and other soil additives with names like Bloom and TAGRO (short for "Tacoma Grow"). Some process the wastewater in a separate step to extract phosphorus-an essential plant nutrient and a common element in the human diet-and layer it to form round pellets, in a technique a bit like building pearls. This technology, developed by a St. Louis-based company called Ostara, creates a slow-release fertilizer that can be sold back to farmers.
"We love tackling the yuck factor head-on," says the CEO of Epic Cleantec, which transforms wastewater into clean water and a natural soil additive.
Even portable toilets can be vehicles for nutrient recovery, through nitrogen-capturing methods developed by "peecycling" groups like the Rich Earth Institute and Wasted in Vermont and by Sanitation360 AB in Sweden. Because our protein-rich diets contain abundant nitrogen, the element can be readily recycled from both urine and feces.
Making fertilizer from the nutrients that we and other animals excrete has a long and colorful history; for generations it helped Indigenous cultures around the world create exceptionally fertile soil. These systems fell out of favor in Western culture, but researchers and engineers have joined advocates in reframing feces, urine, and their ingredients as invaluable natural resources to reuse instead of waste products to burn or bury. Several companies are now showing how to safely scale up the transformation with energy-efficient technologies. "We love tackling the yuck factor head-on," says Aaron Tartakovsky, cofounder and CEO of Epic Cleantec, which uses a chemical reaction and heat to transform wastewater into clean water and a natural soil additive.
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.