Only 60 Years of Farming Left If Soil Degradation Continues

Re:Only 60 Years of Farming Left If Soil Degradation Continues by mooman219 on Friday December 15, 2017 @03:22PM (#15934753)

If by waste you mean excrement then this is not a good idea in the slightest. First you have bacteria, viruses, and parasites that must be killed off. If it isn't properly treated, you end up with a situation similar to that of what we saw in the recent North Korean refugee who suffered from parasites. After that, as you mentioned, there are pharmaceuticals which are notoriously hard to filter out. Next on the list is heavy metals that can become concentrated in excrement. Even after addressing these concerns, if the process to treat the waste is too costly, then there goes the benefit.

I would compare some of the challenges this faces to those that are faced when turning salt water into fresh water through desalination (probably not a direct comparison).

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Re:Only 60 Years of Farming Left If Soil Degradation Continues by simook on Friday December 15, 2017 @03:51PM (#15934987)

I encourage you to do a little more research on this. Bad and good bacteria exists in this world regardless of how Human's try to control it. Waste processing plants use a combination of bacteria and UV to treat wastewater. That process is very similar to what nature does with animal and human waste.

However, moving human waste is a tough problem and requires substantial resources (fossil fuels, infrastructure, electricity, etc...) and the act of moving it is usually the source of contamination.

I think it's completely valid and beneficial to compost human waste, but that needs to be done on a local/individual scale.

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