The Future of Sewers

Netflix right now. But some of my favorite episodes of The X Files are the ones where Molder and Scully end up descending into a sewer. Oh Man, Lukeman, one of my favorite episodes of all time. That's maybe my favorite monster design I can think of I've seen yet. He looks he looks kind of like a like an amphibian mummy. It's my second favorite monster design and X Files. But I don't know if you've gotten to my favorite.

And we'll talk about that some other times. Okay. Well, and he was played as a guest star by Darren Morgan, the amazing writer. Oh yeah, he wrote all my favorite episodes. What what's the title of that episode? The host Anyway, it got me thinking about sewers, though that's not the reason we're doing this episode today. We're going to talk about sewers. I was thinking about sewers because I recently saw you another production of Le Miserabla, but just two

different pathways to the same test. Wait, no, hold on, I thought you were making a slight against the lamb is as a production, But no, you're talking about the scenes in the sewers. Thenardier has the song dog eats Dog in the sewer while he's rating bodies in the sewers. Yeah, it's a very part warming love song. You know, there are a lot of things people don't like to think about, yet are absolutely crucial to our quality of life, but

also to the teenage mutan ninja turtles. Yes, yes, so, like where your meat comes from or where your sewage goes when you flush it, And it matters. But it matters precisely because you don't don't want to have to think about it or deal with it yourself. You want to be able to get on with your life without worrying about what's going to happen to human waste. Right, you don't want to think about the possibility of having

to take a job as a night man. Those would be the the people who were hired in uh in pre plumbing days to go and muck out cesspits with buckets and then take them away from cities. Yeah yeah. If if you've ever seen anything kind of like that odd on micro's dirty jobs, then then then that that is a by far more pleasant experience than what used to go on before modern sewage. Right. Well, the first point about this is that you should be thankful and

appreciative of your local sewage and water treatment workers. Yes, thank you. But the second main point is that the history of how we deal with sewage is remarkably interesting. Yeah. Fast, in nineteenth century London, I want to tell you this story. In nineteenth century London, after the adoption of water closets around the city, sewers that were originally designed to allow rain runoff to drain into the Thames, the river that runs through the center of London, suddenly started filling up

with human waste. And for for that, in various reasons, all of this human waste was suddenly running into the river in the center of town. And major river they the the heart of London. Parliament is built right along the town exactly right. So in the summer of eighteen fifty eight, the stink of the river got so bad that the members of Parliament could not put up with it.

They had to. They had to soak the curtains of the windows of Parliament with calcium hypochloride the stuff you put in a swimming pool, and chlorine powder to try to protect their delicate little nostrils from the poop smell. But within a couple of weeks Elament was turning out legislation to modernize the sewage system of London. So then this event was known as the Great Sting. If there's a lesson to be learned from this podcast, y'all, it's

if you want something done Philip politician's room with poop, poop. No, it doesn't have to be poop. I'm just you know the Okay, The broader takeaway is, if you want something done in a society, make it personally unpleasant to the politician, right anyway. Uh, the so, how do you revolutionize a sewage system in a big city like London. Well, it was an impressive engineering project and it was taken on

by a guy named Joseph Basil Getty. I think I'm not sure quite how you pronounce his name, but it's b A z A l g E T t E. I can I can guarantee you the way that the Brits pronounced it is totally different from wherever that native wherever wherever that that name is native to. And he was the head engineer of London's Metropolitan Board of Works.

So Basil Getty oversaw the construction of drink edge systems that interlocked throughout the city and they would divert waste away from London and into a downstream estuary, so all of the human waste is draining away from the city instead of into the centera directly. Yeah, so that was especially bad by the way when they were draining into the river, because they were also getting their drinking water from the river, and this was the time of Cholerado.

There was actually a in the article you site, there was an illustration that an artist made at the time of the Thames showing London it's children and it's children were three diseases, one of which was cholera. Yeah, that's right. And actually that article I want to site because where I read about this was in a slate Atlas Obscura article that was mainly highlighting actually how beautiful some of

the pumping stations constructed during this sewage renovation were. And looking at these pictures, there are some truly gorgeous places in London that were created to funnel human feces. Yeah, in fact, I'm not kidding, they're beautiful. I've seen them. They do look really amazing. You can actually tour some

of them. In fact, one of them is rentable. You can rent it for parties or for and I'm quoting the article, I don't know if this is actually on the website for the the the pumping station for viral videos. So one of the other funny things is that the equipment at some of these pump stations, well they ran

on steam. This is Victorian era, so it was all steam pumps and at one location, Cross Nest, the pumps were named after the royal family, so each of the the Queen Victoria pump and the Prince Consort pump because royals are used to push and crap around. I guess yeah, I thought it was funny too, But now that the pumps themselves are enormous, which not a big surprise when you consider what job they have to do. And also

steam technology a little bit more clunky. Yeah, And the design of the actual stations has kind of this Moorish patterns worked into the Byzantine and beautifully painted. It's it's remarkable that something that you would think most people would never ever see is still so ornate Victoria. That's the

way that Victorians did things, y'all. Well, I do think it's very impressive and it gets one thinking about how monumental this task is of removing all of the waste that we produce and don't want to see and don't want to smell, and don't want to think about, and still have to get rid of in some way. Yeah, And so taking all that away in a way that's efficient, effective, doesn't break down, doesn't stink up the place, and doesn't

cause disease and unsanitary conditions. Sure, and so that kind of brings us up to well, so how do we do that now? Like what's our current state of affairs with with sewer systems? And it really depends um. Actually, there are a lot of sewer systems out there, especially with older cities where the sewer systems haven't really been updated that much since they were first built. Um, in fact, to our city, Atlanta, it's not that old of a city, especially if you consider that it was it was burned

down at once. But the sewer system still is in some places and badly need of repair, maintenance, upgrading, that kind of thing. Um in fact, so much so that there have been some really well publicized criticisms of the sewer system here in Atlanta and how badly needs to improve. There was a deadline for the city to finish mandatory upgrades, which was a federal mandate because of the water quality in the Chattahoochee UH and UH other rivers around it

the Atlanta area as well. The mandate said that by July first, two thousand and fourteen, this big list of upgrades had to happen. It was not gonna happen by July first, two thousand and fourteen, and so the city applied for an extension, and after some a the judge granted it, and now the deadline is two thousand, twenty seven to get those mandatory updates upgrades in place. And according to the city, the real reason and extension was needed in the first place, the reason why the upgrades

had not happened was due to financial constraints. They just didn't have the money in the budget to dedicate to sewage system upgrades. UM. This was despite the fact that the sewage rates in Atlanta increased significantly over the last several years. I think it originally was somewhere around sixty dollars a month and went up to like a hundred

and fifty a month for some places. And there's a fear that after two thousand and sixteen they're going to go up again in order to try and make these mandatory upgrades happen on schedule, even as far out as two thousand twenty seven. So this is a monumental task. These are enormous infrastructure pieces that are not there. They're hard to access, right they're underground, so that doesn't make

it any easier, and they're everywhere, so it's tough. Um And in fact that Atlanta still has some combined sewer lines, which are not a good idea. You want to have separate sewer lines. Combined sewer lines essentially means that the sewer lines you have for your wastewater, your human waste, and the sewer lines you would have to deal with runoff like rainwater or if a water main were to

break or something. That they're combined into one system, and that means if it's a really heavy rain, that system can overflow, which means untreated waste can seep into the water table. That makes me wonder if that has anything to do with If you're out taking a walk after a very heavy rain in Atlanta and you sometimes smell sewage e smell, that would likely be the problem. That these are pipes that have overflowed flowed, and they are

this combined sewage type. Not all neighborhoods in Atlanta still have these. A lot of them have been upgraded, but there's still some historic neighborhoods that have not yet been upgraded. And by the way, I know I'm talking a lot about Atlanta, this is not unique to Atlanta. This is

just an example of a problem that lots of cities have. Uh. There there are a lot of cities that after a hard reign you might be familiar with certain stinky kind of sewage e smells And it's probably because they too have some combined sewer lines and they have this overflow issue. Uh. Now, they're basic structure of a sanitary sewer also sometimes called a foul sewer, which is funny because those seem like

contradictions sanitary and foul. Um. It's a series of underground tunnels and passageways that serve as a transportation system for sewage, for wastewater, and human waste. You can think of sewers kind of like a tree, So the pipes that go from your home are like the twigs that meet up with larger pipes in the neighborhood. Those would be the branches.

Those eventually empty out into the main sewer lines also called the trunk mains, so that's the main the largest ones, usually several feet in diameter um those lead to water treatment plants, and will get more on those in a second. But this isn't all just moving due to gravity, No, No, Mostly you try to design a sewer system so that gravity does as much of the work as possible. So you would normally put whatever whatever treatment facility is at the lowest end of an elevation and let gravity do

a lot of the work for you. But that's not always possible, and it's you know, it's not always convenient. Atlanta is a city that has lots of hills in it. It's not always easy for you to direct waste to go specifically where you want it to go. Sometimes you have to give it a little help. And so there are pumps or there are lifting stations that will continue to move waste, water and waste along to get to the destination. Um So, depending upon the geographic nature of

the city and also the ground underneath it. Right, if you hit like really rocky ground and that that presents a problem, um you you may have to have pumps to facilitate this. Now the sewers are covered. That means that the components are almost all underground, with the exception of the wastewater treatment plants, and those are in sealed pathways. And that's to limit any interaction between the sewage and the environment, because that is a bad thing. You don't

want that to happen. Um. And that's very different from the open sewers that preceded these kind of systems, which were obviously uh breeding grounds for disease and could cause lots of issues, not just quality of life, but I mean could be a significant health risk factor in a city. So the sewage ends up heading toward some sort of wastewater treatment facility. Yes, yeah, in in developed countries, you usually have like some sort of wastewater facility that is

working on um some scale of sophistication. They're generally speaking, three different processes you can go through in order to to remove waste from water and eat it. And depending upon the sophistication of the plant, it may do one or two or all three of those, and they are in a specific order, so uh, they actually have names of primary, secondary, and tertiary. UM. And you want this because if you don't treat the wastewater, it doesn't just

smell bad like we said, it causes disease. There are a lot of types of bacteria that can be found in human waste, including stuff like E. Coli. Even if you yourself aren't sick, you can have bacteria in your in the waste you produce that could make people sick. Um and organic material in wastewater would end up being like a big old buffet feast for all sorts of bacteria. And that bacteria in turn consumes oxygen while it's eating

the organic matter. Now, if that organic matter happens to be in water, that means the oxygen supply of that water gets depleted, which means anything living in that water, like fish, have less oxygen available to them, so they could actually suffocate in their own environment. Um. Also, wastewater has nitrogen and phosphates in it that can end up promoting the growth of algae which can block sunlight. It can also foul waterways, so that's an issue. And uh, this,

this can become a catastrophe. Right, this can end up causing enormous issues all along the way, not just for people, but for the general Uh yeah, ecosystem around the city. Yeah. So these wastewater plants, like I said, have these three main methods of treating the stuff that comes out through the sewers. Yeah, so I'm going to guess the first method has something to do with those big pools we

see around the water treatment plants. You would be correct. So, uh, now, have you ever lived in a place that had a septic tank? Yeah? I have? I I have you, Joe or def you always lived in a place that had sewer systems. We always had sewer systems. You're lucky. Uh, septic tanks no fun. But the way a septic tank works is in general the same way that the primary means of of removing waste from wastewater works in that

it allows solid waste to settle at the bottom. Anything that is lighter than water floats on the top in what is called scum for obvious reasons, and then the water in the middle is relatively free of waste. I say relatively because there's still bacteria. There's still other things like phosphates and nitrates in there um, and so you can treat that water, usually with something like chlorine, and kill off a lot of that and allow the water

to pass through the system. So septic tanks, a lot of them are designed to drain, but they retain the solid wastes and the scum. It's just the water that they allowed to go through. If they in fact, they can be treated and then eventually you have to have someone come in and pump out all the solid waste that accumulates, because it will eventually get to a level

that you have to have that happen. Uh. Similar to that is this primary treatment approach, where these large pools are where it allows organic matter to sink to the bottom, scum floats to the top, and then the water will flow into a secondary holding pool and this process is repeated as it goes from pool to pool each stage, removing more and more of this particulate matter the pooh in other words, and it gets rid of quite a lot of it, really, yeah, quite a lot of it,

although not as much as you might want before discharging it into your local water supply, because it can be around half total of all the solids, organic material and bacteria from wastewater. So now keep in mind that there are a lot of wastewater plants that this is their only real means of treating the wastewater. There are more sophisticated plants that then have a secondary approach which involves removing more organic materials and nutrients by introducing bacteria to

the water on purpose. So this is still with then the water treatment plan. It's not released out into the wild yet. They use aerated tanks because again the bacteria need oxygen as well, and they allow the bacteria to just chop down on all that organic matter that's inside there, and then they move that water to settling tanks to separate the bacteria from the water because you don't want

to release the bacteria into the wild. And that approach can remove up to the solids and organic materials and wastewater, which again you have to treat with like chlorine or something, and then you release it out the third stages the tertiary treatment. Uh Yeah, very easily easy to remember because you know, if they have all three, it's primary, secondary,

in tertiary, tertiary. There are actually a couple of different approaches to it, but in general, it's using more chemicals to remove stuff like nitrogen and phosphorus from the water and also could include filtration systems to clean the water as much as possible before again discharging it. So uh, in developed nations, you usually see ones that have at least two, if not all three of these. Some of them may only have one, but they're all used to

remove as much waste as possible. Now here's the thing. You remove all that solid waste, you allow it to settle at the bottom. You still got to do something with it. You know, it can't just sit there forever. Plasma waste converters, That's what I said. Yeah, plasma stolen your thunder. No, No, it's perfect. That would that would be ideal if you could, if you could create a

plasma waste converter facility. Now granted, ideally you would have a plasma waste converter facility that was adjacent both to a wastewater treatment plant and a landfill, which otherwise would be the worst neighborhood in town. But but this would allow you to do things like take that organic waste, put it into a plasma waste converter, which would then plasma ify the material. It would gasify it because it's

it's carbon base, it's organic. Uh. That gas could be used to create sin gas, which is a fuel that you could use to generate electricity, possibly even enough electricity to keep running the plasma ice converter if you had enough material to put into the furnace. You probably wouldn't with a waste management facility because you wouldn't be removing the solid waste that frequently. I would imagine you would

allow it to accumulate a little bit. But with a handy dandy landfill, Yeah, with the landfill next door, then you could just start mining the landfill for fuel. This is not how we deal with solid waste right now, by the way, We mostly just dump the solid waste in a landfill or we incinerate it. Both of those obviously have environmental impact, yes, less environmental impact than just letting it hang out in the water. Yeah, but still and and different from that too, but still yeah, yeah, still,

I agreed. It is not the same at all as just letting the waste flow into the rivers of the world. Right, So this is all what's going on right now in developed countries. But what about in developing nations? Yeah, so for billions of people, this is a real current issue, of serious problem there. They're more than two billion people who do not have access to sanitary waste treatment infrastructure

at all. Um. A lot of developing countries lack any sort of organized sewer system, or they might have open sewers, and as we've established, those are ongoing health hazards. Uh. There are a lot of charities that are dedicated to trying well, not just charities, but foundations and organizations that are dedicated to trying to make a difference in this and to create ways for various nations to create to to build these infrastructures, these sewer infrastructures and treatment facilities.

So there's the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. You probably have heard of Bill Gates, one of the creators of Microsoft UM and you know he is. He and his wife have famously dedicated billions of their dollars to various causes, and the Bill and Gates, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation rather has spent a lot of this time and money on trying to bring clean sewer infrastructure to developing nations.

Their web page points out and that these are are facts that come from the United Nations that there are about two and a half billion people in the world who practice open defecation or lack adequate sanitation facilities. So two and a half billion people, it's hard to imagine living where we live and having access to that all our lives. It is it's hard to imagine that. I mean,

that's a staggering number. So another two billion rely on septic tanks that aren't safely maintained, or they're using other systems that dispose of raw sewage by essentially draining it into like open systems like fields or rivers or whatever. So they're in a condition that is similar to the one that you were talking about with London back in the nineteenth century. So the United Nations has a division called U n Water dedicated to bringing solutions to fresh

water issues, including sanitation. It's not solely focused on that, but that's under its purview, and their purpose is to help developing nations implement systems and solutions to improve sanitation and access to freshwater. So they're trying to help nations implement the stuff too that it's not like, you know, just jumping in and doing it themselves. They're they're trying

to facilitate. There are also some other ones. There's charity Water, which is dedicated to bringing clean drinking water to developing countries and includes some strategies for water treatment. Its main focus is really creating ways to make clean drinkable water, but it does have a few of those projects that related more to water sanitation UM. And then there's water dot org, which is a charity that focuses on clean water and sanitation and developing countries that was co founded

by Matt Damon. UM. I was going to do the the Team America version of Matt Damon, but I'm kind in this case, in this in this instance, I'm going to do. I give him his do. Actually I give him his do anyway. He's a he's a great Yeah, Like, how could I even make fun of someone who is already going well out of his way to promote these sort of things. Water dot Org also founded a division called water Credit, which uses micro loans as a way

to help fund clean water infrastructure and developing countries. And I thought that was really cool. And of course there are a ton of other organizations, whether their charities or foundations or political organizations, that are dedicated to bringing modern infrastructure to developing countries with a water sanitation, which obviously that's a huge, huge deal. Of course. So that's the past and the and the present of sewage. But what my fellows, I ask you, is the future of sewage.

So many ponds. But I'm going to hold no no, yeah, see I same same here. I'm going to ask you, Lauren, because I have a feeling that you can tell us what the future of sewage may. In fact, b I can, in the grand tradition of our hosts here asking questions that only we can answer because our notes are about that subject. I have a bunch of things to tell you, guys about the future of sewage. Uh. First of all, okay, so when you think about it, sewage is our very

grossest biosign. It contains traces of all kinds of data about our lives and our health through our sewage. You can find out like what nasty viruses and bacteria were infected with, what good bacteria we have in our guts, whether we're on antibiotics, what other prescription and illicit drugs we might be taking, especially if we're trying to smuggle them in our rectum. Especially then this reminds me of the Scrubs musical episode where they have a song that

actually says everything comes down to pooh, it does? It does? We can even tell whether our bodies are stressed out. And that last one is a little bit more complicated. But in the past few years there's been all this research into bio markers like isoprostanes, which are products of oxidative stress in our selves and are therefore correlated with our overall well being. That is crazy. Yeah, So we're

letting this wealth of data go to waste flush. So that was a way weaker pun than it was necessitated. Voice um but uh, but there are teams that are looking to tap into this datas. Specifically, there is a research group out of m I T that has that has really big plans for our humble sewage starting in Cambridge. Would you call it a data dump? Yes, Also, I'm sure that's the first time I've heard that. I'm sorry, guys,

I'm twelve. So so this this team is testing out how they can collect and use our sewage to keep an eye on the on the health of the population and to predict and possibly therefore help prevent the spread of disease. So yeah, while I make these little jokes, I think that this is fascinating, the idea that we could use this kind of information to potentially save thousands of lives. Oh yeah, okay, So so it's called the Underworld's Project, right, Uh No, no vampires or a werewolves

that I'm personally aware of. Still, I'm still okay with that. But it does involve collaboration among architects and designers and engineers and microbiologists and geneticists and computational biologists, so multidisciplinary. Yeah. Yeah. These are researchers from five different m I T Research labs, plus Quwate University and the Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research, and they've they've got a two year planned that's already in its beginning stages. Um. First, first they need to

figure out the prime time or times to collect sewage. Well, because because you want a maximum of human waste in the water and a minimum of like household appliant way like getting human waste, not what's being washed off of the dishes and the dishwasher and the and the washing machine. Yeah, especially because that kind of stuff probably contains like detergents

and cleansers that are going to start erasing your microbial data. Okay, So like commercial breaks for the super Bowl would be you know, prime time or if you're in my house, the super Bowl between the commercials would be the prime time to grab it. So o, K, Joe, I'm just imagining a lot of pooping. You know, let's not delve too deeply into my my personal history with the super Bowl. It is called the super Bowl. You are an endless font of I did an episode of tech Stuff about

toilets with Josh Clark. I could go see. Okay, so you've got to figure out this this perfect time where you're or as close to perfect as possible, where you're going to not have a diluted or or contaminated source that you can actually get valid information. Right, you want a pure, pure, it's as close to pure as possible human waste. Yes. Uh So, so next they're they're going to work on building software that's capable of of blending.

And I really wish I had a better verb for this, because it sounds so gross when you put it like that, of blending the data that they've pull out from the sewers with the demographics of the neighborhoods that it comes from in order to build a comprehensive map of Cambridge's sewers and its population. And that's that's capable of keeping itself updated in real time. Alright, So not not just knowing like what information is contained within the waste, but

where that waste came from. So that way, if there is a problem, you know how to address it. You can't. It's not just oh, somewhere in the city there's an outbreak of a serious disease. You would have a better idea than that. This is how to attach metadata to your poop. Yeah yeah, yeah yeah. And okay, next, robots, all right, because you knew that there had to be

robots in this episode. Somewhere it has been severely lacking robots. Well, that's probably because in Cambridge, the the need for night men has drastically dropped. No longer need to have someone muck out cesspools every night. Well, well right now they're they're out there actually collecting samples from the sewers by hand. Oh so I guess there are nights, so they're kind of our night men right now, our night students rather.

But but yeah, they're they're building a set of sewage collecting robots that will be able to automatically, uh draw in process and analyze sewage from key sites at key times, and then upload the data directly into this software map. So I'm I'm pretty sure I haven't read like extremely specific descriptions of these robots, but the idea that I get is that, yes, they are planning on sending robots

that have mass spectrometers and DNA sequencers down into sewers. Uh. I'm almost certain a horror movie has got to come out of this particular scenario. I'm just not sure if it's Chud the Terminator or some common Yeah, it could be Googlies. The Googlies, though I think that the cover of that movie overplayed the toilet. I agree. I agree very unfortunately that Flukeman. I will say, however, that's the only drawback the movie Googlies has. It's the misleading cover

of the VHS tape. Other drawbacks that I could imagine people potentially objecting to surrounding the system is I mean, okay, I'm sure that a few of you y'all out there are some of our crossover audience that also listens to stuff they don't want you to know, or is just generally concerned about their privacy. Um, and after all, shouldn't the contents of your privy remain private? Nice? Maybe if you're on the privy council, you can know the King had a whole bunch of people on the privy Council.

So but don't worry, don't worry the team. The team says that the system will absolutely not be able to tell what specific buildings the waste came from, only from like a larger network. It's it's going to be more on the trunk side, the trunk side, so so essentially you're talking about the the larger pathways that many different businesses and households empty into before it goes on to

the wastewater treatment facility. Share. So during this initial run they're going to be focusing on viruses and bacteria that cause common diseases in the United States, like the flu, but it's really a pilot run for larger systems to be built in other places, starting with Kuwait City hypothetically in if all goes well. The project, by the way, is funded by a grant, like a four million dollar grant from um the joint Kuwait M I T Center for Natural Resources and the Environment, which I did not

know existed until like yesterday. And I think it's pretty rad. It's really interesting. Um And and in the future, you know that this isn't just for for the flu, you know, like I was saying earlier, it could be used to monitor like the effects of public policy, like changes in patterns of disease when vaccines become available, or when new regulations like the one where trans fats were banned in a lot of foods, whether people get healthier as a

result of that. Or it could even study the way that relatively unpredictable viruses like stars or a bola moved through a community and and hopefully use that kind of data to to help stop people from getting sick in the first place. Um Oh, and it can give officials a way of watching businesses and making sure they're not actually putting housards waist down into the environment. Excellent. But hey, I know what you're thinking. I don't think you do. What if you do want to monitor your own waste?

What if you want someone following up with you about that? I still corrected you were thinking what I was thinking. I was thinking that what you're getting at is those Japanese poop analyzing toilets that I've heard about for years. Now, Okay,

they're not poop analyzing yet. Okay, but there is a Japanese toilet company called Toto that has a line of smart toilets UM that have your an analysis units that will record your glucose levels UM and they've got sensors that will record like your your body weight and your blood pressure and stuff like that. And they can now, in this age of smartphones, automatically send that to to

you or to your doctor or whatever you want. I just don't ever want them to be like Twitter functionality, where it's just tweeting to all you know, you know what's happening, you know is happening right now. I certainly listeners. I promise I will never activate that feature. Now checked in toilet, the Super bowls on, and then suddenly you see him tweeting a lot and actually, okay, well not

the Twitter thing, but the poop thing. UM experts at m I T S Sensible City Lab that's s E N s E an Sensible Stee Lab, which is part of the team that's working on Underworld, thinks that in the relatively near future there will be enough demand for for this kind of service that manufacturers will begin supplying, if not toilets, to consumers that are capable of automatically doing this and at the very least little things that you could kind of drop in the bowl micro sense.

Actually this doesn't surprise me at all, just based upon the the trend we've seen of people wanting to get more data, more feedback about their daily lives, everything from how much movement they do, to the stuff that they're eating, to how much sleep they're getting. Uh, this is something that I think is completely rational in that approach, because we have this this need to quantify things in our life that previously we thought were unquantifiable. Yeah, we're like,

oh well we can so yeah. Well also, there's so much research into um the microbiome and how important that is to our overall health, not not only our gas or intestinal health. But our mental health and everything else. I think that's a good point. But one thing that I would see in the future of waste is not just what information we can get out of waste, but smart things we can figure out to actually do with the stuff of waste, as opposed to just burning it

or throwing it in a landfill. Right. We already mentioned a waste conversion, which is just a fun thing to apply any waste product too. But is there anything else people have proposed doing with human waste that would be relatively clean and safe and useful to do. I mean, I know there is. They were like composting toilets and things like that, But I mean, if you're interested in that,

that technology is around today, but on a larger scale. Yes, there is a company out there that's processing sewage in order to create clean cellulose, which can then be used to make recycled paper. Definitely, and maybe with a little bit more materials research stuff like road pavement or home installation. So could you use this recycled sewage into paper to make it into toilet paper keep the cycle going? Interesting? Sure? Can. The company is called Applied Clean Tech, and and it's

a truly global business. It's run by Israeli entrepreneurs out of San Diego and has facilities in Canada and Holland and Mexico and Israel. And they they what's the word like, franchise out their technology to waste treatment plants to let basically anyone who wants to and can pay for it take it on. And they're currently producing six tons of cellulose per day in the process. They claim that they're reducing um the sledge formation in water treatment plants, which

is stuff that kind of clogs the infrastructure. It's all the all the food matter that you didn't digest and and toilet paper waste stuff like that. Uh, They're they're claiming they're reducing that by about That's fantastic. I mean, like that is one of the things that I'm interested in is finding these these responsible ways to uh to dispose of waste or recycle it in some way so that we don't just create another environmental issue that will

have to deal with further down the line. And uh, while well you know, we did mention plasma waste converters, and that is one of those things I just love to talk about because I had such a fascinating conversation with the guy at Georgia Tech who was one of the minds behind the idea. It's admittedly a difficult thing to sell to anyone because it's it's an incredibly expensive proposition on the front end, uh, in order to get

a facility like that up and running. And if you could do that, and you could prove that it was sustainable in the long run, then I'm sure you would see a lot more widespread adoption. But that initial barrier to entry is so high that it remains one of those um difficult technologies to really push. So this is really cool. I think it's really interesting. And you know, I know that, uh, this is an incredibly important we

We've stressed it many times. It's an incredibly important uh um uh topic and uh and one that that lends itself to endless number of puns. So we've had both some fun with this and and really wanted to make sure we end saying this is a really big deal. If you are interested in helping various efforts that are trying to bring sanitation to developing countries, I highly recommend you do some research. Find an organization that you're comfortable with.

Always do research on any charitable organization. Just make sure that they're being run, uh, you know, responsibly, and they're being held accountable, and definitely do help because this is something that makes a real difference in lives and uh, it was a really fun topic to look into, honestly. So, guys, if you have any suggestions for future topics that we

can look at here on the show, email us. The address is f W Thinking at how Stuff Works dot com, or you can drop us a line on Twitter, Google Plus or Facebook. At Twitter and Google Plus, we are f W Thinking on Facebook. Just search f W thinking in the search bar will pop right up. You can leave us a message there and we will talk to you again really soon. Problem For more on this topic and the future of technology, visit forward thinking dot com.