Poo-power

Last December, I wrote an article detailing where to find the best bathrooms on campus. To my great pleasure, much of that column was devoted to discussing the act of “pooping.” Now, four months later, I will again indulge my inner-fecal appreciator and review the subject once more.

Unlike my previous article, which merely discussed the nuances of pooping in public places, I’d now like to examine the life-changing abilities of this vile bile. Although poop is a topic that fosters puerility and disgust, under its brown and nutty surface resides enormous potential.

This summer, the town of Didcot, Oxfordshire, will take a giant, triumphant dump on anti-environmentalists and coprophobics everywhere by converting human fecal matter into energy. In a bold move, British Gas, Thames Water and Scotia Gas Networks have decided to siphon biomethane from the city’s sewage into the houses of 130 customers as natural gas. Here’s how the process works:

You’ve just flushed a sizable fudge nugget down the toilet, and now our chocolaty hero, we’ll call him Pooey Louie, is traversing the gooey innards of the sewage system.

Soon Louie shawshanks his way out of the sewer and arrives at one of the town’s many settlement tanks. From there, he’s diverted to an anaerobic digester, where he is beset by microorganisms that convert him to methane. The feculent caterpillar is now a gaseous butterfly, and he flutters over to a Biogas plant where he’s turned into clean gas. From there, it’s off to the National Grid, the U.K.’s electricity and gas company, where Louie is pumped into someone’s home.

Now the brand-new Louie can power your oven and help you cook a nice slab of meatloaf — meatloaf that will soon become a weighty piece of excrement, thus repeating the cycle ad infinitum.

I applaud this measure, as I think it shows a real commitment to conservationism. Poop is the ultimate renewable energy source and will continue to be so as long as humans feel the need to eat Steak ’n Shake and drink prune juice.

Furthermore, the 130 people who agreed to have their refuse pumped back into their homes are certainly a fearless bunch. Can you imagine stepping into a shower with the knowledge that those steaming jets of water were mostly powered by your own poo?

And just think of the fun you could have while trying to sell your house.

“Welcome to our home! Here you can see our poo-powered dishwasher, and right over there is our poo-powered TV. Oh, and here’s our poo-powered vinyl-record player.”

For the same reason that fart jokes never cease to amuse, the power of poop will always endure. We might have whispered of its graces in empty rooms. We might have pondered its abilities in some forgotten bathroom stall. But now my friends, I urge you to be open about your fecal experiences and your guano daydreams and push for poo-powered cities and poo-powered countries. Perhaps, even, a poo-powered world.  


E-mail: joskraus@indiana.edu