Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Reimagined toilets at a South Korea university transform human waste into biogas

atlasobscura.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 49 posts

Re: Reimagined toilets at a South Korea university transform human waste into biogas

#31

Post by macksd »

Nextgrid wrote: post #7
kmarc wrote: post #3

What a "shitty" topic to talk about, shall we? I am happy to see a growing number of headlines about "rethinking" human waste management at any scale. Flushing toilets with potable water seems just very wrong, and a luxury I always thought western societies can afford only.* The system that the article describes is a funny one, or at least is sold with humor ("get paid as you poop"). Apart from the technology itself,…

> Flushing toilets with potable water seems just very wrong, and a luxury I always thought western societies can afford only. I assume the cost and potentially even environmental impact of reusing existing potable water infrastructure to provide water for toilet-flushing is much less than manufacturing, installing & maintaining separate local systems (to collect rainwater, etc) for this purpose.

My house has a non-potable water supply used for irrigation, and is in fact required by the town to. I know the same is true in some parts of Utah and probably other places. In such cases, also requiring toilets to be supplied by the non-pot line would be a trivial cost that would pay for itself eventually.

Re: Reimagined toilets at a South Korea university transform human waste into biogas

#32

Post by cbmuser »

kmarc wrote: post #3

What a "shitty" topic to talk about, shall we? I am happy to see a growing number of headlines about "rethinking" human waste management at any scale. Flushing toilets with potable water seems just very wrong, and a luxury I always thought western societies can afford only.* The system that the article describes is a funny one, or at least is sold with humor ("get paid as you poop"). Apart from the technology itself,…

They have used human feces in North Korea to fertilize their fields with the effect that people got worm parasites:

> https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/16/body-of-north-korean-defecto...

Also, human feces can contain anti-biotics and other stuff that you shouldn’t be spreading over soil. There is a reason why hospital waste water gets special treatment before disposed of into the sewers.

I don’t think using human feces as fertilizers is a good idea.

Re: Reimagined toilets at a South Korea university transform human waste into biogas

#33

Post by cbmuser »

leipert wrote: post #21
foreigner wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used a toilet once that was connected directly to the sink next to it. The sink had a faucet but no controls. When you flushed the toilet the water started coming out of the faucet in the sink so you could wash your hands, and then was routed from the sink's drain directly to refill the toilet's tank for the next flush. When the tank was full the sink shut off automatically. It was genius! So simple and cheap yet e…

Pretty common in Japan, if I recall correctly.

Yep, used these myself multiple times.

Re: Reimagined toilets at a South Korea university transform human waste into biogas

#34

Post by specialist »

I keep expecting to see squat toilets. Especially for public facilities. Nothing to break. Use power washer to clean. Doubles as a floor drain.

I'd use a squat toilet in my house if it had some kind of air lock. Maybe like the Tidy Diaper Pail. https://www.walmart.com/ip/Tidy-Diaper-Pail-Pearl/900658925 Pure frikkin genius.

Re: Reimagined toilets at a South Korea university transform human waste into biogas

#35

Post by jhbadger »

cbmuser wrote: post #32
kmarc wrote: post #3

What a "shitty" topic to talk about, shall we? I am happy to see a growing number of headlines about "rethinking" human waste management at any scale. Flushing toilets with potable water seems just very wrong, and a luxury I always thought western societies can afford only.* The system that the article describes is a funny one, or at least is sold with humor ("get paid as you poop"). Apart from the technology itself,…

They have used human feces in North Korea to fertilize their fields with the effect that people got worm parasites: > https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/16/body-of-north-korean-defecto... Also, human feces can contain anti-biotics and other stuff that you shouldn’t be spreading over soil. There is a reason why hospital waste water gets special treatment before disposed of into the sewers. I don’t think using human feces as…

When my father was stationed (in the US Army) in South Korea in the early 1960s, human "nightsoil" was the primary fertilizer there as well. It's an obvious source of cheap fertilizer, even if it has some health drawbacks. Obviously the economic success of the South has allowed it to not do that anymore.

Re: Reimagined toilets at a South Korea university transform human waste into biogas

#36

Post by dandanua »

LargoLasskhyfv wrote: post #13

Don't mean to shit on it, butT central waste water treatment plants also do this. At least some. So I don't really get the novelty of it?

The novelty is that they want to use feces as a universal currency. This idea is very precious indeed, if you look close enough.

Re: Reimagined toilets at a South Korea university transform human waste into biogas

#37

Post by Nextgrid »

macksd wrote: post #31
Nextgrid wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Flushing toilets with potable water seems just very wrong, and a luxury I always thought western societies can afford only. I assume the cost and potentially even environmental impact of reusing existing potable water infrastructure to provide water for toilet-flushing is much less than manufacturing, installing & maintaining separate local systems (to collect rainwater, etc) for this purpose.

My house has a non-potable water supply used for irrigation, and is in fact required by the town to. I know the same is true in some parts of Utah and probably other places. In such cases, also requiring toilets to be supplied by the non-pot line would be a trivial cost that would pay for itself eventually.

If you’ve already got it then it makes sense to use it, but this doesn’t remove the cost of building and maintaining separate infrastructure at all.

In some cases it might be worth it or necessary, in others I think the process of processing & delivering potable water could be made (or is already) so efficient that building & maintaining separate infrastructure for non-potable water would be a net negative both in terms of cost and environmental impact.

Re: Reimagined toilets at a South Korea university transform human waste into biogas

#38

Post by mikro2nd »

LargoLasskhyfv wrote: post #18
mikro2nd wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Excellent manure, feedstock for compost. Still too toxic for dumping into rivers.

https://humanurehandbook.com/

Deeply familiar with it :) and the Humanure Book goes on at length about how to compost the shit and make very sure it is safe to use. The solids that come out of a methane digester must be composted to render them safe.

Re: Reimagined toilets at a South Korea university transform human waste into biogas

#39

Post by DoingIsLearning »

hulitu wrote: post #16
DoingIsLearning wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty there are all sort of health issues in using human sewage as compost. Look at North Korea for an example of that.

I would like to look. Do you have some links ?

As far as I understand they have a shortage of everything, including livestock, so they end up using human feces as compost. This becomes a disease vector and you end up with ground water and vegetables contaminated with all sorts of parasites. This is specially critical for children because intestinal worms effectively hijack what little nutrients they can eat, creating even more malnourishment. [0]

[0] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-northkorea-unicef-idUSKBN...

Re: Reimagined toilets at a South Korea university transform human waste into biogas

#40

Post by kmarc »

windoze123 wrote: post #20
kmarc wrote: post #3

What a "shitty" topic to talk about, shall we? I am happy to see a growing number of headlines about "rethinking" human waste management at any scale. Flushing toilets with potable water seems just very wrong, and a luxury I always thought western societies can afford only.* The system that the article describes is a funny one, or at least is sold with humor ("get paid as you poop"). Apart from the technology itself,…

Speaking of eastern europe, here is some anecdata. There are villages and towns in Romania that received EU funding for water and waste treatment. Naturally money have been embezzled and instead what they got was “drinking” water with traces of fecal matter (bacteria and the resulting chemicals). When confronted about it, the locals (not even those responsible for the issue), said that the water tastes real good and…

Hi there; although I can relate the (corruption-induced) negligent use of EU-money in Eastern Europe, as the guidelines [1] instruct, please avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents while commenting.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Post reply on HN