Sludge Watch ==> The Scoop on Poop - waterless toilets - energy from poop etc

[maureen.reilly at sympatico.ca]

Sludgwatch Admin:

The end of the story signs off with the suggestion that a $2000 
waterless/composting toilet is expensive.  But, it is not expensive compared 
to hooking up a household to a sewage treatment plant.  Communities could 
have rebate programs for the use of these green machines.

Toronto already provides a $70 rebate if you change your toilet from big 
flush to low flush.  So what should the rebate be for toilet that doesn't 
flush at all?  I think a $2000 rebate would still save the City money over a 
twenty year period due to the lowered flow into the city sewage treatment 
plant.  These waterless toilets do not need to be emptied often if you get 
say, the Clivus Multrum version.  When the time came, the contents of the 
waterless toilet could be land applied in the backyard (since it would meet 
the Class A standards) or go for further composting at a compost site.

.................................................................................


The scoop on poop
Entrepreneurs say waste need not be wasted.
By Marc Gunther, FORTUNE senior writer

June 21, 2006: 5:12 PM EDT

NEW YORK (FORTUNE) - This is a column about poop: cow manure that can be 
turned into electricity, "green" baby diapers that can be put in the toilet 
and waterless urinals that don't flush.

Hold your nose if you must, but it turns out that there's money to be made 
in finding ways to dispose of waste in ways that are cleaner and better for 
the planet.

A company called Environmental Power Corp., with headquarters in Portsmouth, 
New Hampshire, operates three methane digesters in Wisconsin that process 
cow manure into natural gas, which can then be converted to electricity. The 
company is developing poop-to-power projects in Texas and California, too.

Then there's a startup called gDiapers, which sells a "diaper system" with 
an inner layer that can be safely flushed down the toilet, thereby keeping 
disposable diapers out of landfills - where 18 to 20 billion are thrown away 
each year.

Finally, a number of U.S., Canadian and European companies are marketing 
eco-friendly toilets, including some that compost waste, without flushing. 
The market is growing, albeit slowly, for these no-flush toilets because 
they save water and reduce pollution.

None of these companies will break into the FORTUNE 500 anytime soon, but 
they are part of a trend that is driving growth at such big firms as General 
Electric (Charts), Wal-Mart (Charts) and Whole Foods Markets (Charts) - the 
greening of American business.

Environmental Power (Charts) (www.environmentalpower.com) has been around 
for more than 20 years, experimenting with different forms of renewable 
energy. But its business has picked up since starting a division called 
Microgy, which extracts methane-rich gas from animal and food waste. Its 
technology, licensed from a Danish firm, has operated on a commercial scale 
in Europe for 20 years; small scale methane digesters have been used since 
the 19th century.

"We see ourselves as gas producers, not unlike a well-driller," says Al 
Morales, the executive vice president. The difference is, his "wells" don't 
run dry - a single dairy cow produces about 18 gallons of manure each day. 
Farmers welcome the technology because it reduces odors and brings them a 
new revenue stream.

One Wisconsin dairy farmer, with 875 cows, has installed a methane digester 
that produces enough electricity to power about 600 homes, according to 
Environmental Power. Its Texas facilities will be bigger, and the company 
has signed a letter of intent with pork processor E.M. Swift to build a 
digester at a big plant in Nebraska.

"We haven't even tapped the swine manure market," Morales says. In 2005, 
Environmental Power generated about $56 million in revenue and $11 million 
in operating losses.

Gdiapers, a smaller company that launched just last year, currently sells 
diapers in about 100 supermarkets and natural foods stores in the West, as 
well as over the Internet. The G in the company's name stands for green and 
genuine, as well as baby-friendly words like giggle and groovy, according to 
a spokeswoman for the firm, which is based in Portland, Oregon.

The gDiapers consist of an outer layer of washable pants and an inner layer, 
made of "farmed tree fluff pulp" and a super absorbent material known as 
SAP, designed to keep babies dry. Flushing the disposable inner layer means 
that it ends up at a wastewater treatment facility, where sludge is removed 
(and sometimes used as compost). By contrast, the plastic in disposable 
diapers can take hundreds of years to decompose in landfills. The average 
child is diapered 5,000 times before being toilet trained, a University of 
Minnesota extension service study found.

Founders Jason and Kimberly Graham-Nye discovered green diaper technology in 
Australia when their son was born in 2002; they licensed the idea from its 
inventor and brought it to the United States, where they have raised $7 
million in venture capital, they said. Previously, they pursued varied 
careers - he was a stockbroker in Japan and taught Japanese, she did AIDS 
work in Africa, worked at an orphanage in Mexico and ran a telecom startup.

"Trying to find work that made meaning and made money was really the key for 
us," she says. For more about the diapers and the company, visit 
www.gdiapers.com.

No-flush toilets, meanwhile, have been sold mainly for second homes and 
rural areas where conventional plumbing is unavailable. Now more are selling 
to environmentalists and advocates of green building who want to save water 
and waste.

In a compost toilet, which is an indoor, high-tech version of an outhouse, 
accumulated waste is usually collected below ground and aerated until it 
decomposes into organic matter that can be used as fertilizer. The 
Chesapeake Bay Foundation in Annapolis, Md., installed a dozen Swedish-made 
no-flush toilets five years ago; they save on water and sewage bills, and 
produce a fertilizer that feeds the surrounding landscape.

"It's pretty trendy," says Scott Smith, vice president of marketing at 
Sancor, a Toronto-based firm that sells no-flush toilets. "There are people 
who buy them to be more environmentally conscious and to get off the grid."

The difficulty is, compost toilets cost considerably more - up to $2,000 - 
than the standard models available off the shelf at Home Depot (Charts). 
That's a steep price to pay for going green.






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Find this article at:
http://money.cnn.com/2006/06/20/news/economy/pluggedin.fortune