Really a Public Enemy?
Can Life on Earth
be sustained without our poop,
on a LONG
TERM?
Whoever has seen on
his wanderings in life other than concrete over pavement – say, he rambled the
wild, where animals are wont to excrete without barriers whatever, unmolested
by echelons of cleansing teams teeming in the rear, or he observed a peasant
bringing back his animals’ dung to the piece of land that gave them feedstock –
he may then arrive at a vague hint that there could be a role around (known or
not, foggy or clear) for every piece of droppings, be that came from the
livestock or from their master. In a more pensive mood, especially for those
with a backpack of natural sciences, the thought may roll until discovered: poop and dung are brotherly part of
Nature.
Then – since thinking at large used to act on the bellies –
on a tootle groping towards the loo, these philosophers of their passing mood
waste no further precious thought as they flush their body-waste down with
plenty of drinking-quality water that their load, after having travelled held
captive through a labyrinth of tortuous tubes beneath, will not arrive fresh indeed
at the sewage-station, which is put there to act uttermost vigilant in
destroying the ordure arrived to its last speck. Since, on that far-away post,
our detached part gets assigned and treated as Enemy, allegedly full of horrible
dangers towards us.
The following articles in this blog will
definitely enumerate how many new (more resistant, intractable, pesky) real
enemy is beget from the declared one via the half-baked struggle that bears the
robe of Sewage-treatment, which stands
as euphemism for obliterating the matter declared previously as Enemy. Here I only
touch upon the question un-put: Whether anything is lost by this adamant
annihilation. Or, as the poet would have writ: Is there any soul around weeping
for the poop gone by?
While I try fast not to come up
with any platitude, I must underline that every living creature on back of
Earth consumes viand of some kind. Among this ever-chewing crowd very few
species have a diet that is confined exclusively to inorganics, the
overwhelming majority would soon die without a bite of organic nature. So, if
the general public in a dumb subdual meekly accept, approve, applaud the practice by which the highly
organic poop is turned to wholly dead inorganics (assisted by wide consent of
citizens in the form of paying their wastewater-bill) and this as a ruling
system is let to go on, then, after a little more than a wee time but certainly
parallel with events of distributing Prizes
of Ordurance for lifelong dense perseverance in the field, there would
emerge innumerable hungry mouth gulping air only among these organic-dependants,
unable to be relieved even by the greatest ever surge of dole.
I
venture to enlighten
the syndrome. Suppose that after a breakfast composed of caviar and smoked
salmon on a piece of tofu bestrewn with dried bamboo shoots (or a somewhat
simpler hotdog taken in hurry) the passing hours have a call on you to order a
meal in an eating-house. And then, you sitting in comfort bearing the rolling
waves of gastric juice, instead of your usual beefsteak the chef serves you
with a cup of steaming-water and a bottle of fresh mountain-air, and he leaves
you with them and his polite whisper of wishing you good appetite. Which course
of dealing is highly probable to evoke certain harsh notes and perhaps deeds
too, up to your wits and humours, all left to go on undisturbed until you opt
to leave for another bottle of fresh-air next-door or die on the spot of
hunger.
Or, with a patience and self-restraint of few, you mark time sat fixed
for the period needed for those microorganisms that are able to thrive solely
on inorganics until they re-build from water (consisting H and O) and air
(consisting O2, N2, CO2…), via their lazy and nonchalant ways, getting
casual help at times from other likewise partners, those amino-acids (composed
of C, H, O, N…) which serve as starting-material for
another build-up, at the end of which may lurk the beefsteak you longed for to
receive immediately.
Arriving at this bifurcation it seems time to make up your mind: Which
way should we go?
The dilemma in more concrete form
is worded by its recognized tester as follows:
To test sustainability
of Water-closet let us see its eco-balance clear:
·
The amount of water wasted
by a person in a WC over a year is roughly enough
to irrigate the piece of land that gives his food.
·
The amount of biomass
flushed down (that
is: his poo and pee) and sent for
annihilation to sewage-plants (where they transform into inorganics causing only pollution and
eutrophication) would be sufficient in form of compost to keep the same area
productive and healthy each year.
·
Which sums up: every
person on Earth relying bedazzled on the deceptive benefit of a WC destroys the very foundation of his own food-supply.
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