Hey, guess what this bus runs on?

That's right—poop! 

Read the whole story of this British bio-bus here.

These biodegradable doggy poop bags are sort of exaggerating, what?

"HARNESSING THE POWER OF NATURE!"

Wow! Oh, that just means they're made of corn starch? *shrugs*

What can we learn from poop?

A gentleman named David Waltner-Toewes has written a new book called The Origin of Species: What Excrement Teaches Us About Evolution, Ecology, and a Sustainable Society. (This is a funny title; check Charles Darwin to get the joke.)

National Geographic interviewed David about his book. Here's a selection:

Question: Explain what you mean by “Unless we change how we think about [poop], we are doomed to forever live in it.”

Until very recently, people thought of poop like just a big pile of manure [that needs to be disposed of]. So it ends up in waterways, creating pollution that leads to people getting sick. We need to think about ways to use the energy in that poop in various ways. For example, people are using poop to produce electricity and heat with biodigesters. Countries like Rwanda have mandated that public institutions have to take waste and put it through biodigesters—this creates methane that in turn produces heat or electricity. So it’s not just waste. 

Q. Can you describe some more unsung benefits of poop? 

The thing about excrement in general is that it’s part of life. Part of the argument I make in the book is that as soon as you have life, you have essentially poop. As life developed, the waste for one animal became food for another animal. We depend on a web of recycling of nutrients, and poop is an important part of that. People get sqeaumish but they shouldn’t be. If you don’t think of it as poop, but instead think of it as recycling nutrients, this is a really interesting and sustainable way to produce food.

"Born to Poop Wild"!

Behold the eco-friendly motorcycle "Toilet Bike Neo"! It uses bio-fuel from discharges of livestocks or waste water.

In other words, this motorcycle runs on poop! (The toilet paper roll sure seems oversized.) Via.

"Big wheels keep on turning/Brown poop keeps on burning…”

This is the coolest story I’ve seen in a while: A Japanese toilet maker named Toto has released a hybrid toilet-motorcycle that runs on poop!

Yes, that is a toilet seat ON the motorcycle. You can poop right into the motorcycle while you’re driving it, and your poop will be converted to fuel to keep you rolling. Okay, that’d be pretty weird, so you could also just poop on the motorcycle while parked in the privacy of your garage.

Just put a roll of toilet paper on your handlebars!

Story from here (via), photos from here.

Bathroom Drama!

I heard something funny last night. It was a Brit talking about toilet paper.

But for his quote to make sense, you need to know two things:

1. Some people think recycled (or "eco") toilet paper is rougher than regular t.p.
2. Brits sometimes call toilet paper rolls by the name "bog rolls."

Okay, here it is:

"I’m as eco-friendly as the next guy, but a recycled bog-roll is like taking a cheese grater to a bullet wound."

Sloths only poop ONCE a week?!

I love sloths. And now I respect them, too! It turns out that sloths only go to the bathroom weekly. Man, that's got to take willpower!

This video shows how orphaned baby sloths get potty training. The sloth-lings have to be taught to come down from the trees to take care of business...just like the big sloths do!

But maybe "holding it" for a week isn't that big of a thing to sloths.

Sloth 1: Dude, I didn't go for EIGHT days!

Sloth 2: Please. Go two weeks and then brag about it.

(And hey, follow the Amphibian Avenger blog!)

Guinea Pig Poop and "Caca-Cola"

Photo by ilovebutter

Guinea pigs are native to South America, where they are known as “cuy.” And down in Peru, there’s a town called Pachacama that runs on guinea pig power! Yes, when the people living nearby watch TV or cook or turn on the lights, it’s guinea pigs that make that happen.

Do thousands of guinea pigs running on little wheels generate the electricity?

Photo by David Masters

Nope. Their poop does all the work! Poop can generate its own power. See, the guinea pigs are kept on a ranch where they’re fed especially good food. Then someone collects their rich guinea pig poop.

How much poop can 1,000 guinea pigs make? Oh, about three tons every month! All this pig poop produces methane gas. The gas is trapped and stored in inner-tubes! (For more on this part of the process, see this dog-poop power story.)

The poop also produces a dark brown liquid plant fertilizer. I call it guinea pig diarrhea, but the locals call it “Caca Cola”. The following video is about the whole process.

WARNING: The British narrator matter-of-factly calls guinea pig poop “sh**”, so please don’t watch if that will offend you!

The complete story is at Wandering Gaia.

German Urinal Humor!

We’re all familiar with the idea of sorting recyclables into the proper container. This idea has been taken to an extreme by a jokester in Germany.

Writer Cory Doctorow was in a German restaurant when he saw these signs above the urinals in a restroom. The top sign reads, “Please help us separate.” The specific urinal signs are “Beer”, “Wine”, “Non-Alcoholic”, and “Other”!

Cory Doctorow’s photos can be seen here. 

Recycling bin photo from here.

Dog Poop Can Save the World!

Did you know that dog poop can provide power? No, not by tossing dry dog poop in the fireplace and lighting it. Gross! No, all you need is something called a Methane Digester. The way these work is surprisingly simple. You just throw dog poop (or ANY poop) into a container. You stir it into the mix and methane gas rises from it. And you can use that gas to create heat and light!

In Cambridge, Massachusetts, a guy named Matthew Mazzotta wondered, "Why not use the methane gas from dog poop to power a lamp in a city park?" Since dogs are ALREADY pooping in the park, it seemed like the perfect idea!

Mazzotta called this idea the Park Spark project. For it, he installed a Methane Digester above-ground (it’s underground in the diagram below). The Methane Digester has a tube and a hand-crank, so that people can feed poop into it and stir the mixture inside.

The methane captured by the Park Spark is then piped to a gas lamp…and ta-dah! Let there be light! Yes, it’s a poopy light, but so what? And what I like about this is that the dog poop doesn’t just end up in a landfill…or on my shoe! And now, here is a BBC news story about Park Spark. (It’s a radio broadcast with photos.)

The Park Spark website is here. 

Top photo from the good people at Sprinkle Brigade.

Hey! That CAN'T be right!

The U.S. Geological Survey issued a press release yesterday titled "If the Water Looks and Smells Bad, It May Be Toxic."

What a rip-off! What am I supposed to drink now?

It's Time to Eat Some Bugs!

It's the right thing to do!

I mean, the United Nations has figured out that raising and butchering cows, pigs and sheep takes up most of the world's farmland. And it also makes 20% of the gases that create global warming. (Plus, it’s pretty cold-blooded to kill intelligent animals just because they taste good.)

As for insects and other bugs, they are great nutrition. Raising them creates hardly any greenhouse gas and takes hardly any space. Plus, bugs can grow to colossal sizes in the tropics…and they eat almost anything! (I’m talking about meal worms, grasshoppers, and locusts mostly...but even scorpions are pretty good!)

So why aren’t we already eating bugs? Because people in western countries get grossed out by it! This, despite the fact that 1,000 different kinds of bugs are eaten in 80% of all nations.

Dutch bug expert Arnold van Huis is an expert on this stuff, and he admits that for some people, “psychologically we have a problem with [eating bugs]. I don't know why, as we eat shrimps, which are very comparable.” Totally; shrimp are just big sea bugs!

Top photo by William Neuheisel,

scorpions by Claro Cortes.

Nice POOP Button!

A friend visited yesterday, and I was surprised to see her wearing this button:

She explained that she'd made it herself from a domino (!) and that POOP is an acronym for "People Outraged Over Pollution."

Good to know! (Because the OTHER explanation for wearing this button was a little scary.) 

BONUS: My wife has begun sneaking this button onto my clothes. So if I put on a jacket and don't notice it's there for a couple of hours, she thinks it's funny. (Nice. Really nice.)

When Do You Need a Deodorant Cannon? (Never!)

Have you ever smelled someone with bad b.o. who has drenched himself with deodorant and cologne? It doesn’t work, does it? You still smell the rotten stink underneath the perfumey stuff! 

The Chinese government hasn’t figured this out yet. China has more people generating more stinky trash than any nation on the planet. If the people did a good job recycling, this wouldn’t be a huge problem…but they don’t! In Beijing, only 4% of all garbage is recycled. (For comparison, New York recycles 36% of its trash.)

So what do you do when you end up with huge, smelly landfills of garbage? The Chinese solution is to fire deodorant cannons! According to this article, the cannons spray gallons of fragrance into the air.

But I’m going to predict that this isn’t going to solve the gross smells. After all, we have a big fan blowing bad air out of our bathroom, and even it isn’t enough to keep it smelling good in there! 

Got Scratch Paper? Turn It Into Wiping Paper!

Just load 40 sheets of used office paper into this machine and —PLOINK!— out comes a roll of toilet paper!

Lethal Wallpaper

At first, this 1947 ad confused me. “How could wallpaper kill bugs?” I wondered. Then I read the ad and saw that the wallpaper is dipped in DDT.

Gross!

DDT (“dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane”) came out in the 1940s. It was used to kill bugs, but like other poisons, DDT didn’t disappear when the bug died. Instead it stayed in the food chain and poisoned other animals… and people!

It’s now illegal to use DDT in countries with responsible governments. But this ad still gives me the chills!

Cow Burps and the End of the World

The world’s most problem burpers are cows. That’s because cows have stomach bacteria that helps them digest food. These bacteria pass gas in the cow's stomach. Rude!

What's weird is that the gas that these bacteria are farting has methane. That’s really rude! Methane is one of the gases most responsible for global warming.

But can a few billion burping cows actually warm up the planet? Apparently so! The average cow burps (and bombs) 200 to 400 pounds of methane a year. And that's why the United Nations says that livestock like cows pose a bigger threat to global warming than all the world’s cars and trucks put together.

Luckily, responsible farmers are now feeding their cows foods that are high in Omega-3 fatty acids, like alfalfa. This makes the cow burp less than it would on the usual cow diet of corn and soy. And farmers who use this feed think that cows are happier and healthier. (Hey, if my burping stopped heating up the planet, I’d be happy too.)