May 2009
→ Flush
(21st May 2009)
If you want to know what a half-time flush is, read this thorough and thoughtful piece on San José's sewage plant from San José's weekly newspaper. Recommended.
→ Cruising
(20th May 2009)
Cruising is a dirty business. The environmental group Oceana reports that every day, cruise ships produce:
25,000 gallons of sewage from toilets
143,000 gallons of sewage from sinks, galleys and showers
Seven tons of garbage and solid waste
15 gallons of toxic chemicals
7,000 gallons of oily bilge water
For some reason, cruise ships are not required to get permits to dump sewage in the ocean, though on-land businesses ...
→ Struvite
(18th May 2009)
An excellent article in the Globe and Mail about a recent wastewater conference in Canada where capturing phosphorus was one of the main topics of discussion. And quite rightly. As conference organizer Ken Ashley told a press conference (which I suspect was not particularly well populated), recovering phosophorus from sewage "may be the biggest uncovered news story on the planet." Why? Because without phosphorus ...
(17th May 2009)
Though you cannot find one for love nor money these days in France, bidets are nonetheless feted, à la française ie most intellectually, in a book by Julia Csergo and Roger-Henri Guerrand. Using the rather odd heading of "Le secret de l'élégance française," Le Monde reports that Csergo and Guerrand's 1997 book - "Le Confident des dames. Le bidet du XVIIIe au XXe ...
→ Fan mail
(17th May 2009)
Dear Miss Rose George,You there, my sewage cutie. Why would you deal with SUCH SHIT? Leave that up to some flat-faced, humorless policy wonk to sponge around in such topics so TRAGICALLY PROSAIC and DISGUSTINGLY ZANY. . . . . your publisher sent over a copy of your wonderfully fucked-up, revolting book over to "The Moyers program", as in "NOW: with Bill Moyers" ...
(16th May 2009)
Two new things in the world of US sewers. California's State Water Resources Control Board has set up an online mapping facility that allows citizens to check on every instance of sewage overflow in the state. On 16 March at 1pm, for example, 51,000 gallons of sewage were discharged at Orange Avenue. The full incident report gives the cause of the spill, in beautifully ...
→ Omega
(13th May 2009)
NASA proves yet again that it is planets ahead of most of the earth-bound in its visionary attitude towards "waste". After space shuttle toilets that recycle urine, the space agency is now using plastic bags called OMEGA - "offshore membrane enclosures for growing algae" - to produce biofuels and clean wastewater. Take some sewage, put it in an OMEGA along with some algae, and leave ...