The value of human excreta continues to baffle the mind. Some important areas of focus that this country can depend on human excreta to achieve are land restoration, beautification projects, co-existing with other waste and extension of agriculture in non-agriculture land.
Most of our lands are being degraded through several human interventions such as illegal logging, illegal mining, bush fires, excessive erosions, indiscriminate refuse dumping, just to mention a few. The effect of these practices have led to deterioration of water, air and soil environment, eradication of wildlife and ecological systems, depletion of valuable natural resources and destruction of human lives as well.
How can we restore degraded lands to their useful state? Though the restoration process cannot be achieved completely, but relying on human excreta can improve largely on degraded lands. Some mining companies have relied on top soils which have similar characteristics of human excreta to regenerate forested areas which were lost as a result of mining activities. This clearly shows that effective management of human excreta can be an effective resource in these projects. Some countries have been able to reclaim lost lands through indiscriminate dumping into recreation site using sewage sludge known to have higher content of heavy metals.
This therefore prove that if we have a processed plant that treat human excreta, areas that have been destroyed through excessive waste dumping can be restored. Through research, several plants are being discovered to purposely extract valuable resources from tailing sites, thus serving two purposes, restoring degraded land and economically recovering valuable resources from the these dumping site. The question then is; how can these plants be cultivated in sites filled with toxic substances? Human excreta has the potential of supporting the grow of these plants in such harsh environment. The next time you flush off the toilet, remember, it is not waste that your just flushed but rather a vulnerable resource, in fact, you just flushed off real money.
One distinguishing difference between the developed countries and developing countries is their attitude toward nature, how they really admired nature. It is a common knowledge that developing countries are closer to nature than developed countries. Yet, developing countries have been the most destructive and abusive towards the beauty of nature. Almost all the beautiful natural sites in this country are destroyed or in the process of being destroyed. Admirable river bodies, which many could swim, relax at their banks in some time past, have an awful story today. One could walk through the streets of Accra and Kumasi and hardly find a beautiful land decorated with grasses, flowers, trees, in such an artistic nature that one would love to stop and take several hours just to snap a picture with just a beautiful background.
The funny aspect of this is that during important occasions such as weddings, birthdays, family reunion, people would be roaming about just looking for places with such beauty. Today, people are paying huge cost to have their wedding pictures at few areas with such artistic flower designs which would be uncommon to find in most streets in developed countries. Beautification and landscaping are very important to the environment in all aspects and if you have huge quantities of treated human excreta, it would just take few months to restore the beauty of our cities which had been lost for a very long time. In America for instance, sewage sludge had been used in golf courses, growing lawns and parks including the White House lawns. School parks and environment can fully rely on human excreta to provide beautiful flowering layout in schools. Writing on the importance and significant of using flowers and plants to beautify our environment would require a full space.
Human excreta possesses a special quality of effectively combining with several organic waste to produce quality compost for agricultural purposes. Waste such as sawdust, coconut husks, plantain suckers and the likes are dumped in landfill sites. Others are washed into rivers bodies negatively affecting the quality and the health of the rivers. All these materials can be co-composted with human excreta into quality compost to support plant growth and agriculture. There have been several research works to attest to the fact that human excreta contain important micro-organisms which effectively enhance the degradation of such organic waste to suitable forms readily absorbed by plants.
I recently watched a documentary in one of these Asian countries where many households are turning their roof tops to agricultural lands. Most of them are cultivating shallow rooted vegetables and leaves in pots and cans which are placed on their roof tops. There are some important vegetables and leaves that do not need well prepared lands to be cultivated. Even the “Kuffour galoon” can be designed to support growth of such vegetables in lands difficult to cultivate plants. All you need is just a can or pot, filled with soil mixed with treated human excreta exposed to sunlight and within some few months, your cabbage, lettuces, carrots, dandelions, and the likes would be cultivated on your roof top.
What would you choose, gold and human excreta? Like what a scientist said, “I will pick gold to get money to improve the production of human excreta to boost agriculture because, when human excreta become useful, it can be relied on when the gold is depleted. Besides, you need human excreta to recover the destruction that extraction of gold would cause.”
The next time you flush your toilet, just know that it is money you have just flushed.