It’s a human wasteland out there

We’ve decided to jump into the lovely topic of human waste management. Have you ever really thought about where your waste goes? Next time you’re sitting on the loo, give that one a thought. It has to go somewhere; it doesn’t just vanish into thin air.

Before I dive in here, we highly recommend that you watch the documentary “You Don’t Know Shit” by Vice. I will post the link at the end of this post. The doc follows one of their journalists around New York City figuring out exactly where our waste goes once it’s flushed down the toilet.

What’s interesting about the document is that cities are so hush-hush about where your waste is going. It can’t be good if they’re trying to hide it, can it? You’ll probably actually be surprised. The waste that is pulled out of the sewage as well is scary. Imagine baby wipes, hospital waste, viles of cocaine and…. Live puppies? Yes, you read that right. They have even found live dogs in the sewage ways.

First of all, do you know that America alone produces 5 billion gallons of human waste every day? No, that’s not in one week, or one month. That’s every. Single. Day. Between 8am and 9am each morning, New York City deals with about 90 million gallons of waste. They call this “the big flush” and all of this sewage is taken by boat to a plant where the sludge is turned into biosolids. Now what are bio solids you ask?

The sludge is classified under two different types. Type A and type B. Type A being clean enough to create biosolids. Biosolids are then resold to places around the world as fertilizer for golf courses, cemeteries, and basically to help grow all that food you’re now eat and going to shit out again. The cycle begins over. Oh the irony.

What I would really like to know is, where does the rest of the sludge and type B go? It doesn’t look like we’ll find out any time soon.

– K