The age old problem of what to do and where to put human excreta is alive and kicking. People have dealt with it various ways over the years.
The earliest known sewage systems dating to c. 2600BCE, are those of the Indus people in Mohenjo-daro and Harappa in modern day Pakistan. Waste from toilets in houses flowed into brick drains, street side channels and into soak pits.
The Minoans in Crete had sophisticated drainage systems from around c. 2500. The Palace of Knossos had flushing systems in which the toilet was linked to a hole outside the toilet door by an under floor terracotta pipe. When it rained, the water from the roof would flush the loo, while in dry weather, it is likely an attendant would pour water into the hole and flush the waste through a system of stone built drains and terracotta pipes to a soak pit deep underground. Other Minoan palaces had similar systems.
The Romans were famous for their toilets but for them places like the River Tiber were handy exit points for waste disposal.
Today, much human excreta is processed in sewage plants, then dumped in the sea. Excreta from humans and animals that is washed from land into our seas, rivers and lakes contributes to water pollution.
What to do?
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AI has come up with the following:
Society could adopt several less polluting methods for handling human excreta:
- Anaerobic digestion: Waste is processed in sealed digesters to produce biogas for energy and nutrient-rich slurry for fertiliser.
- Urine diversion: Separating urine, which contains most nutrients, allows for nutrient recovery and reduces treatment loads.
- Constructed wetlands: Natural reed bed systems filter and break down waste with minimal energy input.
- Blackwater recycling: Closed-loop systems treat waste locally for reuse in irrigation or toilet flushing, avoiding discharge to the sea.
- Composting toilets: Dry or waterless toilets convert waste into compost via controlled aerobic decomposition, producing soil amendments instead of effluent.
Each method focuses on resource recovery and minimises environmental contamination compared to conventional sewage plants and marine outfalls.
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Could any of these AI suggestions realistically be implemented in all new homes, and eventually in all homes? Is the government likely to be thinking big on sewage matters?
The idea of anaerobic digestion producing biogas for energy sounds good, but would biogas have a bigger negative impact on the atmosphere than other methods?
Anybody got ideas for a better system than we currently have?
