beware…cantaloupes?
Posted by: Anca on: March 25, 2008
There’s a nationwide outbreak of salmonella connected to tainted cantaloupe. “The melons grow on the ground, where they are likely to be contaminated with fertilizers and other bacteria. [...] The rough cantaloupe rind [...] provides easy lodging places for salmonella and other bacteria.” I always preferred watermelon and honeydo to cantaloupe.
toilets of the future and other things I learned at the wastewater treatment plant
Posted by: Anca on: March 23, 2008
It’s only a matter of time before everyone will have replaced standard toilets with composting toilets. In fact, the IslandWood School on nearby Bainbridge Island, WA, uses only composting toilets. These devices would reduce the work a wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) has to do to the organic waste we flush away. At the WWTP, new organic waste is mixed with oxygen and older organic waste that now has a high bacteria content (called “sludge”). What happens when bacteria and organic waste meet? Remember Pac-Man? Water containing a mix of old and new sludge is sent to a tank where the solids separate from the water by either settling to the bottom (most) or floating on top (fewer). Long “arms” scrape the solids from the tank, and some is sent back into the cycle as old sludge and some is sent to a tank to continue being eaten by bacteria after more water is removed. After a month the volume of solids has been drastically reduced. It is now sent to farms as fertilizer. For use on home gardens and lawns it is further processed and mixed with sawdust.
The WWTP would like you to know that you should only be putting 4 things down the toilet, and they are biodegradeable and all start with “p”: poop, pee, paper, and puke. Everything else causes problems for pipe systems and needs to go in the trash. But even more importantly, do not put grease/fats/oil down the drain, nor hair, because they combine to form large grease-balls that will clog up the 4″ pipe leading out of your house.
Flickr Photos
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