The Livable Blog

Here in South Delta where we are surrounded by farming and the other allowable farm uses on farm land, composting is actually becoming a growth industry. Cheaper than paying to dump certain farm byproducts at the Vancouver/Delta Landfill and they have something to sell at the end of the composting process.

Now, in the world of agricultural fertilizer, 90% of nitrogen fertilizer comes from natural gaz, and with Peak Oil, any fossil fuel fertilizers may not be very affordable in the future. When our "turf sod" growers here roll up their fields of sod, they have to replace the loss of dirt or growth medium. They do this by bringing in truckload after truckload of "compostable" medium. Manures of all types from the Fraser Valley and many loads that I won't bother mentioning here. The biggest problem is how local residents of Ladner react to the smells generated by this use of composted materials.

Most of us in North America are simply disgusted at the thought of having to deal with our own excrement, not to mention having to talk about it. But it is a reality that will soon be upon us, in ways many of us never could have imagined. Most gets flushed down to the local sewage treatment plant and then a certain amount gets flushed out to sea. This site http://www.alanmacfarlane.com/savage/DUNG.PDF. gives an interesting history of what the Japanese did and I would guess still do.

Really, this is just another aspect of recycling our waste and our future.

...'We are told that 'Rent was adjusted on the basis of how many tenants there were and was raised if the number of occupants dropped.'The excreta might even be sub-divided. 'The value of human wastes was so high that rights of ownership to its components were assigned to different parties. In Osaka, the rights to fecal matter from the occupants of a dwelling belonged to the owner of the building whereas the urine belonged to the tenants. Feces were considered more valuable and hence commanded a higher price.'The commodity became more and more valuable, so that 'as the price of fish and other fertilizers rose, the value of night soil rose correspondingly, and vegetables were no longer sufficient to pay for it. By the early eighteenth century, with the increase in new paddies in the Osaka area, the price of fertilizer had jumped to the point that even night soil had to be purchased with silver.'The competition for night soil even led to open conflict. 'In the summer of 1724, two groups of villages from the Yamazaki and Takatsuki areas fought over the rights to collect night soil from various parts of the city.'Even in the 1930s 'every scrap of human manure is used to-day...The school and village office rent out the right to collect their night-soil.'....