Dear Andrew Leonard,

Good idea in principal!The Chinese have been using "night soil" for fertilizer for centuries.In the organic movement we Hot Compost bioactive wastes to kill weed seeds and microrganisms ,today there are more challenges to consider.Cafeine and drug residues,hormones and chemical residues ,contaminate all of our sewage.Untill people live healthy lives thier sewage will be tainted by thier biology.

To remove the modern contaminants from most sewage would be a dificult task.This sludge can only be used for non food consumer products,like turf food,see Milorganite TM reg.Heavy metal residues,and drug residues and .....who knows what lurk.. in our sewers...at one time this may have been a viable option.I actually developed a plan in the 70s to make a biogas generation plant for apartment buildings. The waste would be composted(hot) and used for roof-top gardens to feed the buildings.The plan is totally unworkable now. Keep dreaming! johnny hempseed ,ludite@smokesignal.talkingdrum

I prefer the term "humanure".

One of the reasons why processing human waste is so difficult and expensive is that we are flushing it down the toilet. One pound of waste can contaminate hundreds of gallons of water. And all that water needs to be extracted before the waste can be composted.

I'm not saying that we should all be pooing in a bucket and taking it out back, but there are alternatives.

I just finished reading "Garbage Land" by Elizabeth Royte, which had an interesting perspective on how to handle this waste.

Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it. Back when the Socialist Party ran the city of Milwaukee, they developed a program for recycling the biosolids which was marketed under the brand Milorganite. They were subsewuently dreided for practicing "sewer socialism." Just another instance of what goes around comes around. ;>)

Those who used Milorganite (back in the 1960's by the way..., hardly a new idea)to fertilize their yards where rewarded with several small tomato plants sprouting in their lawns. Tomato seeds, its seems, are nearly indestructible. So stand by for a return to 'victory' gardens in the suburbs.

The Humanure Handbook by Joesph Jenkins is a do it yourself guide to composting humanure (human feces) at home. It sheds a great deal of light on the subject. It changed my opinion of crap as a resource not a waste material.