Brown-tech

by Brian Hildebrand

As Niece Septic Pumping proudly claims to be the Island's number one exporter, we can't help but ponder what possibilities there are in harvesting this raw material we've so nonchalantly designated as "waste."

In this age of "fracking" the earth to get at its natural gas reserves, allowing our water supply to be contaminated by said reserves to the point that we can, in fact, light our drinking water on fire, should we not consider the natural gas that we are releasing on a daily basis ripe for harvesting?

For example, I heard of a setup at a recent Island Greentech round-table wherein manure was loaded into a drum, with a valve connected to an inner-tube that the methane gas, created as the manure continues to compost, could then escape into. The inner-tube expands as it fills with gas, which can then be detached from the valve and transferred via the inner-tube into a proper tank. Meanwhile, manure keeps breaking down until you have yourself some nice soil to grow with. Granted, I think we're talking about animal manure with this particular project, but the process would still seem to be feasible for the human animal's fecal matter.

Another waste issue on the Island is that which comes from our yards and gardens.
Being as we can burn our yard waste, and many of us choose to do so, we have to wonder how much tonnage there would be getting hauled away if someday we found we could no longer burn on the island.
As it is now, the yard waste that comes into the transfer system is being hauled to a processing plant in Maple Valley. One can't help but wonder why we can't do the processing of this material on the Island. In fact, such an idea was brought up little over a year ago.


The clear-cutting that took place on this island as recently as the 1970's has left the Island with lousy soil for growing in, the nutrient-rich topsoil having long since washed away. We are left with the need to create our own fresh soil if we wish to do any gardening.
Unfortunately, the Dirt Yard at Center was shut down for code violations in 2008, having failed to provide a concrete base to keep composting run-off from seeping into the soil. Little seems to have arisen to supply this need since their departure.

Perhaps it is not feasible to operate on such a large scale; it could be that what we really need is a compost on every corner. If a company like Cedar Grove can run an operation with giant, $100K a piece Gore-tex covers, how can we take and reduce the scale of such an operation so that it can feasibly be established and run as an Island-wide network of neighborhood composters?

The idea of harvesting the gasses from your compost is a step up in sophistication from your grandmother's pile in the corner of the garden, but it's still operating under the time-tested basic formulas that has fueled such agricultural operations for untold centuries.
And, of course, the composting toilet was our go-to method of disposing of our personal "waste" for as long as we've been collectively expelling such amounts that we could no longer get away with leaving our droppings in the woods amongst the other creatures of nature. After all, although sewers have been with us since the time of Rome, the septic system is a modern invention.

And so, as we've seen the waste of our empire expand ever outward until our society approaches the collapse that Wall-E finds himself cleaning up after, perhaps we should step back and ask ourselves, what would a world without human waste actually look like?

If food for thought is digestible, perhaps a nourishing idea can be grown in the composted soil it leaves behind.