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It's a fertile market for recycled human waste
Milorganite pellets are made from recycled waste, a.k.a. biosolids, and used to help fertilize crops and improve land
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TEXT OF INTERVIEW
Bill Radke: A project to turn human waste into fertilizer pellets has run into opposition. Not because of the ick factor, but because of cost. The Chicago project has been in the works since 2000, and it's just started churning out the pellets for commercial use. Marketplace's Sustainability reporter Adriene Hill did a little sniffing around and joins me now in the studio. Good morning.
Adriene Hill: Good morning.
Radke: Did I just say that Chicago is recycling human waste?
Hill: You did, and you're right. Chicago's not alone; lots of municipalities all over the country, all over the world actually, recycle human and industrial waste heavily treated into little pellets that are fertilizer.
Radke: Well I'm glad they're heavily treating it, but even so, is it safe?
Hill: The EPA regulates this whole market and it's called biosolids. And basically the EPA has set limits for the amount and type of pathogens and chemicals that can be in any of this material that's put on the land. We are talking about some serious stuff here, like Arsenic, Lead, Mercury. But municipalities need a place to put all this sludge -- in the past, they would just dump it out into oceans and lakes. So recycling it is preferable.
Radke: And there's somebody to buy it? There's a market for sludge pellets?
Hill: You mean you don't 'em in your lawn?
Radke: Actually, I do use a lot of worm poop in my garden.
Hill: Yeah, so maybe this is for you! It turns out there is a big market for this stuff. Milwaukee has been making these pellets since the 20s, you can actually go buy them at the Home Depot. And the Chicago plant, the owners are making six semi-trucks full of these pellets every day. They say they're selling all of them for agricultural use. Golf courses love this stuff, sod farms, anyone who wants a lawn is really interesting in this.
Radke: OK. So there is a market for sludge pellets. But why has the Chicago factory taken some heat in the press lately?
Hill: Well the Chicago factory took years and years to get up and running. The operating costs for this facility are also about 40 percent higher than the city guessed when it sort of made this contract years ago; that's according to the Chicago Tribune. I talked to the company about why that was, they say it's all energy costs, it's all out of their hands. That means taxpayers are on the hook for more than they anticipated. You know I hate to say this so early in the morning, but the history of sewage treatment and the way this piece of it fits in is fascinating, and I've put some reading up on our website at marketplace.org
Radke: I think we can take it. Marketplace's Adriene Hill. Thanks.
Hill: Thanks.
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This story brings to light one of the significant issues facing municipalities, large and small, that provide centralized wastewater treatment services to their residents. This being: finding cost effective methods for responsible management of residuals generated as a byproduct of the treatment process. There can be little arguement about the significant improvements in surface water quality achieved since the passing of the Clean Water Act in the late 1970's and the subsequest upgrades in municipal wastewater treatment over the last 35-40 years. However, the challenge remains to effectively manage the stabilized residuals generated as a result of significantly improved wastewater treatment processes. As Chicagoian's are finding out -- the cost of treating these residuals to increased levels of stabilization is not fully within their control (i.e., sensitive to energy cost flucuations. However, if the cost is viewed in light of the benefits gained from improved water quality, reduced risk of waterborne disease, enhanced protection of the Great Lakes, etc. -- perhaps the incremental cost incurred really isn't too much to pay. Estimated operating costs for the facility have been reported in other media (www.chicagobreakingnews.com, 07/06/2010) at $256 per dry ton as compared to $117 per dry ton for their normal processing costs � or an incremental cost of approximately $139 per dry ton. Since an individual typically produces about 40-50 dry pounds per year of residuals the incremental per capita cost is probably about $3.00 per year per person � less than a cup of coffee in a lot of places in the city. Is this really too much to pay?
Interesting, so the only links you can provide are from water contamination? The article is about bio solids and farmland and not about pouring treated water into water ways. Sewage treatment facilities are a whole different conversation which you (T M) want to impose.
We may be made up of chemicals, but we don't all share the same chemicals. If JPM would like to read current research, he can start here: http://biology.usgs.gov/contaminant/endocrine_disruption.html
And then there's the evidence linking hormone disrupters to hypospadias: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11713004?ordinalpos=1&itool=PPMCLayou...
There's much more if he cares to read up on it.
I just love all the uneducated comments. Plant physiology and soil chemistry are a complicated things. I suggest the commentors read more about them. Plants have grown in many toxic locations and have not picked up 1 toxic molecule. UV light is the best source of chemical degradation and the living microbes in soil also do a lot of degradation of chemicals. We live in a world surrounded by chemicals. O2, C02, NH4. In fact we are made up of chemicals. Food borne illness and MRSA infections are as more of a result of poor food handling and mass production then it is from manure usage. Research doesn't include reading novels which make up science. It's best to read the textbooks.
Municipal governments across the U.S. are in desperate need of getting rid of sewage sludge and want us to believe that it is a safe product. They are waging a massive PR campaign to get farmers and gardeners, including school gardens, to “fertilize†their veggies with sewage sludge. They would have us believe that the chemicals in sewage sludge—thousands of them present in every degree of hazardous and toxic combination—are somehow magically gone from sewage sludge once you “apply†it to your garden. BEWARE! Be sure you purchase "sludge-free" fertilizers. Become an active lobbyist. Join Sewage Sludge Action Network! More info at www.sewagesludgeactionnetwork.com
50 years ago it was probably OK to use sewage sludge for fertilizer. But today it should be avoided at all costs.
See links there are hundreds of documents
giving concerns about endocrine hazards in today's "modern" sewage.
http://pubs.acs.org/cen/news/88/i32/8832news.html
http://www.wsbt.com/health/Little-testing-being-done-locally-of-drug-lev...
Sewage treatment plants are in-effective at removing many of these "modern compounds".
It appears that the improved composting toilet (earlier comment) is the most effective at sequestering and mineralizing these compounds (rendering them harmless).
Al White
Millerton, PA
Hill should really do some research before she pretends to be an expert on sludge. From 1986 to 1999, foodborne illness exploded from 2 million cases to 76 million cases. MRSA jumped from 1,900 hospitalization in 1993 when EPA opened the sludge floodgates to 368,300 in 2005. EPA's treatment processes temporarily inactivates some pathogens and the test procedure inactivates others. Putting these pathogens on food crops is insane if not criminal. http://thewatchers.us/book/wrongfocus-plague.html
In theory recycling waste should be a positive sustainable practice. But sustainability principles encourage us to look at the big picture, and with biosolids/sludge that means considering the negative impact household and personal care chemicals will have on our food and water. Then there are the pharmaceuticals. Did you know that the body uses less than 10% of many drugs, including birth control pills? That means the other 90% ends up in our waste water and biosolids. Current treatment technology cannot even measure those chemicals, let alone remove them. When they do breakdown, the heat of transport/composting can cause them to reform into structures that we have no knowledge of.
So from my point of view, the Sustainability Desk really messed up this time.
Recycling human waste also has a fairly long history via use of a product called a composting toilet. Thirty or forty years ago, these were really primitive devices, consisting of nothing more than a 5 gallon bucket fitted with a toilet seat and some sawdust for covering your "addition." Today, however, there are a number of professionally manufactured composting toilets that are actually pretty technologically advanced products. They look a lot like traditional toilets, and are designed with special venting systems to keep them odorless. Essentially, they take your waste and, over a period of time, turn it into harmless, dry compost that can be used on your garden (a.k.a. plant food). Some composting toilets have even been tested to certain NSF/ANSI standards that regulate the amount of pathogens that can be present in the end product (much like the EPA's regulation of the biosolids industry).
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