Book review of "The Humanure Handbook" by Joseph Jenkins, dealing with composting the human excreta

Currently I am reading this book - "The Humanure Handbook" by Joseph Jenkins. I am impressed. If there is one thing human beings don't want to talk about, it is their excreta. I don't remember discussing managing the excreta with anyone - either at home or at school. All I knew about excreta was that it stinks and is host to millions of pathogens. Today it is "the thing" that is killing the planet. We all know that excreta is organic in nature and just as any organic substance, under the right conditions and time frame, it will turn into humus. But we are putting our excreta in clean water and pushing it out of our house. In few cases the excreta is stored in a pit just in front of the house. But in most of the urban areas, it is ferried away for hundreds of kilometers just to be dumped in a river, with almost no treatment. Nobody wants to own the waste created by oneself - let it be vegetable peels, plastic covers or human excreta. To start with, almost 60% of the Indians do not have safe drinking water. To add to this woe, people are building leach pits and allowing the waste water to seep down into groundwater sources. Human excreta contains all kinds of pathogens. If not treated properly, it can contaminate water sources and spread various diseases. I keep saying this - People talk about HIV, but in India, number of deaths by dysentery and diarrhoea is greater. If we want, we can blame the government and continue shitting with our eyes closed. But the danger is looming. 70% of our rivers is polluted either with domestic or industrial waste. It is time to cut down this pollution. What is the option? The best option which people would like is - treating the waste water. But this requires infrastructure to carry waste water from every corner to the treatment plant and huge amount of energy and chemicals to treat it. The best option nature would prefer is - composting the waste - let it be kitchen waste or toilet waste. Daily Dump, a small initiative to compost kitchen waste is picking up in Bangalore. But most people fail to compost properly and complain about smell, flies and maggots. The key lies in keeping the mix dry by moist enough to encourage microbial breakdown. Composting is an art. If performed right, it can create the very essence of soil - [W:Humus] Human waste can be composted. The stinking excreta turns into fragrant humus within a year. The 'How' part of it is technical and lengthy to be put into a blog post. Good thing would be to read the Humanure handbook. Best thing is - it's available free of cost. In India, composting human excreta is done through ecological sanitation ([W:EcoSan]). There are many villages near [W:Kolar] and [W:Mysore] which are reaping the benefits of human compost. EcoSan is a dry toilet. You don't need water to flush the excreta instead you deposit it directly in a pit. The urine is collected separately, stored, diluted and used on crops. The combination of human compost and urine replenished the fertility of the soil. Farmers don't use fertilizers thereby avoid the damage imparted to nature in producing and using it. Humanure eliminates the need for clean water to carry the excreta and puts an end to the pollution caused by dumping human waste into rivers, lakes or leach pits. Countries like Singapore are struggling to meet their water demands. Singapore recycles waste water to manufacture bottled drinking water.

But people have not accepted this form of recycling fully. Last week, our CEO, Sunita Nadhamuni got us a bottle of [W:Newater] from Singapore. I tasted the water and just could not find any difference. The problem lies in our culture - we treat our excreta as waste - but it is a precious resource that returns the fertility back to the soil that fed us. Singapore is ahead in thinking. Singapore does not use words like waste water treatment plants or water reuse. Instead it uses words such as Water Reclamation Plants or reclaimed water. I am constructing an EcoSan at my house. It should be ready by September. I will update you all on my findings. In the meantime, you read the book and let me know about your opinion.