Food for Thought Lecture Series. Closing the Poop Loop: Rethinking human excreta management

Our 4th Food for Thought Lecture for 2018 will feature a look at waste disposal with Postdoctoral Research Fellow Michael Boh (Bioresource Engineering)

For millennia, human excreta often has been treated as a waste product to disposed of in spite of documented evidence of its value to improve soil health. Management systems are engineered to “flush and forget” human excreta through sewer systems. Then excreta eventually ends up in water bodies after undergoing varying degrees of processing. In this process organic matter and valuable plant nutrients are lost, in most cases causing eutrophication as seen in the rapid growth of algae in the receiving waters. Apart from the loss of aquatic ecosystem services, of growing concern is the loss of phosphorus which is derived non-renewable rock phosphates. This loss of non-renewable nutrient threatens the sustainability of our food production systems. Rapid population growth and urbanization demands that urgent solutions to this wasteful approach to human excreta management be developed. Is closing the loop on poop the way to go?