Many have done it — you’re out, far away from a modern toilet, and yeah, you decide that you’re going to have to go, “ancient school” and urinate right there on a bush.  In a modern society, this is not the best option (obviously) but if one uses discretion, it is unlikely to cause much of a stir before or after the, “evacuation complete” voice is heard (yeah, the one from Austin Powers).

Of course, you don’t want to go in the middle of a parking garage as Jerry Seinfeld did in an episode (as did George, both of whom were caught and used the same, “uromisitisis” excuse if my memory serves).

But I digress.  What if the bush you were peeing on were a blueberry bush or a few stalks of corn?  It might seem rather disgusting to us to think that people would be eating the harvest and that they had been “irrigated” in such a manner.  People actually do this and many have no other, or very little, choice.

In fact, a report shows that that is happening on a large scale in many developing countries/regions, with about 200 million farmers in China, India, Vietnam, sub-Saharan Africa, and Latin America partaking in the “pee party” (yet another reference to a Seinfeld episode; George decides to use Jerry’s bathroom, but doesn’t close the door — Jerry protests, “It’s a pee party!”).

According to the article in National Geographic:

Facing water shortages and escalating fertilizer costs, farmers in developing countries are using raw sewage to irrigate and fertilize nearly 49 million acres (20 million hectares) of cropland, according to a new report—and it may not be a bad thing.

Wow!  Really?  Yeah, really!  But like they said, it may not be a bad thing, because the alternative is hungry (or starving) people, or using what would be drinking water to irrigate crops.

The article continues:

When this water is used for agricultural irrigation, farmers risk absorbing disease-causing bacteria, as do consumers who eat the produce raw and unwashed. Nearly 2.2 million people die each year because of diarrhea-related diseases, including cholera, according to WHO statistics. More than 80 percent of those cases can be attributed to contact with contaminated water and a lack of proper sanitation. But Pay Drechsel, an IWMI environmental scientist, argues that the social and economic benefits of using untreated human waste to grow food outweigh the health risks.

And what’s more:

Agriculture is a water-intensive business, accounting for nearly 70 percent of global fresh water consumption.

So this of course is not without risk, but often the farmers see little or no other option, in fact breaking into sewage pipes to divert the needed waste product for use as fertilizer and irrigation.

With fertilizer prices jumping nearly 50 percent per metric ton over the last year in some places, human waste is an attractive, and often necessary, alternative, Redwood said.

In cases where sewage sludge is used, expensive chemical fertilizer use can be avoided, he said. The sludge contains the same critical nutrients—nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium.

While it may sound disgusting to those not in that position, using untreated human waste in this manner is a way of life for many.  Still, there may be examples of methods these people could be educated about to reduce the chances of illness spreading because of food-borne bacteria.

There are also low-tech solutions for “treating” human waste. IWMI suggests employing appropriate and time-tested indigenous practices.

The report cites examples in Indonesia, Nepal, and Vietnam. There, farmers store wastewater in ponds to allow solid feces and worm eggs to settle, possibly reducing bacterial content in the residual water.

Composting, in which heat kills much of the bacteria, is another option, according to the report.

What can you do?

For one, stop wasting your food!  A recent report (pdf) From the Stockholm International Water Institute states that about one-third of the food that is produced in the United States is thrown away each year.  The cost?  About $48 billion, wasting about ten trillion gallons of water, used in the production of said food.  Let us not forget the wasted efforts and carbon emissions due to farming and transportation, either.  Furthermore, half of all food worldwide is wasted, according to the report.

So, you can help put a stop to that waste.  Stop buying food that you don’t end up eating.  Plan your meals out around what you have on the shelf, to reduce the chances of spoilage, and also include leftovers in your family’s meals.  This saves money and helps to reduce the problem here at home, so that potentially, more food could be exported to countries where it is needed (of course, in a manner that does not to undermine the efforts of the farmers in those countries).

Part of the solution also is to help those countries’ people to learn ways to cheaply and effectively treat human waste.  Also, methods such as this free refrigeration method, highlighted by Matthew Phillip, could help reduce the amount of food wasted in developing countries.  Also, look to continue reading sites such as this blog, or read a Big News Page on The Huffington Post, such as: Green Living.

Welcome to the August 22, 2008 edition of Cirque du Vert: Circus of the Green! Thank you for all of the submissions, unfortunately this will be a shortened edition due to BlogCarnival.com being down the last couple of days, preventing more submissions from being accepted.  Look for CdV to return to its normal form with Volume 4 in 2 weeks!

Wesley Joseph presents Once you go Black, you might still go Back… to Google posted at EnviroHumanImpact.  He says “There’s been a lot of debate concerning ways to reduce the carbon footprints of our PCs.  We take a “Mythbusters” approach to finding out if you really can save energy by using websites with black backgrounds.  We also look at some other ways to save energy and money while using your computer.”

Louise Manning presents How sustainable is the global food supply model? posted at The Human Imprint.  Louise discusses the long term viability of the global food chain, specifically looking at the poultry supply chain model which has been under growing pressure lately due to rising grain costs.  Check out her extensive article and paper on the topic.

Ena Clewes presents Dealing With Garden Pests the Organic Way posted at Organic Gardening. Ena has a great article on organic gardening.  She details ways to lower your consumption (read: use) of insect repellants and eliminate harsh insecticides. Probably best of all, she gives multiple recipes for making your own home-made bug sprays (to kill bugs) and pest repellents (for keeping them away in the first place).

AdmirableIndia.com presents Lalbagh Botanical Garden, Bangalore: Part 1: Ancient Watch Tower and Organic Cultivation posted at AdmirableIndia.com.  Finally, this is a neat little article with pictures of a Botanical garden in India that is partially dedicated to organic cultivation!

That concludes this edition.  Submit your blog article to the next edition of Cirque du Vert: Circus of the Green using our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

What to do with all that poop? If you have a dog and a yard, you’ve probably wondered at some point, “Is there a better way to dispose of all the little landmines left by man’s best friend?”  Well, if you’ve just been sending turds off to the local landfill along with the rest of your garbage, Alas! There is a better way!

If you haven’t heard of it already, there’s an on-site pet waste disposal system known as the Doggie Dooley, which basically functions as a septic tank for your pets’ backyard droppings.  I first found out about this while visiting my local pet store and thought, “Wow, that makes a lot of sense but is it really environmentally friendly or is this just another case of corporate green-washing?”

So what’s a Doggie Dooley and how does it work? The Doggie Dooley basically functions on the same premise as a septic tank, collecting organic waste and breaking it down into a liquid form that can be drained and absorbed by the ground below, with the assistance of bacterial and enzymatic additives.  Set up is relatively simple: Dig a hole in the ground, set the tank in the hole, and start filling it with feces.  They recommend adding a quart to one gallon of water to the tank on a daily basis along with their “Super Digester” (also called “Waste Terminator” – “I’ll be back!”) enzymes to facilitate the breakdown of waste.  Also, keep in mind that the breakdown of waste only takes place in temperatures over 40 degrees and is more effective, the warmer it gets.  There’s even a handy foot pedal to open and close the lid without bending over!

Are the Doggie Dooley chemicals and enzymes safe for the environment? This was our big question upon finding the system as the overall concept of on-site waste disposal is clearly beneficial to the environment (no plastic bags in landfills, no carbon fuels to transport the waste, no mixture with other toxic chemicals in landfills, etc.).  Think how many millions of dogs pooping everyday of the year a few times (let’s say 50 million times 3 x 365 = lots of bags, lots of poop, lots of wasted fuel and landfill space!

So back to the additive — is it safe?  Well, from all the research we found, the “Super Digester” is nothing more than basic septic powder similar to Rid-X.  So basically, you’re looking at more of a biological additive (enzyme based powder) that facilitates poop-eating bacteria as opposed to a chemical one.  Based on this, we approve it as being eco-friendly.  Find more information at Doctors Foster and Smith.

Looking for a DIY (Do It Yourself) doggie septic tank, try this! Find a small garbage can with lid and drill out many small one-inch holes in the bottom with a drill or jigsaw.  Dig a hole in your back yard (preferably in a far corner or low-traffic area) approximately the same size as the can and place it in the hole.  Fill the bottom with gravel followed by larger stones.  Enter poop, water, and Rid-X and you’ve got your own pet septic tank for probably under $20!  Sure, you don’t have the handy foot-operated opener like on the Doggie Dooley but aside from that and some other niceties of the Dooley, they’ll be pretty darn close, and for a fraction of the price!

EHI There!  Have a tip for greening your pet’s life or reducing their carbon footprint?  Tell us about it below!

Did you prepare any produce today?  Make coffee?  Peel a banana?

Plenty of waste to go a(g)round Chances are you have plenty of organic waste produced at home, including yard and garden waste, much of which could have a place in a composting bin or pile.  While we will discuss a little about how you could do some composting here, most people have a pretty good idea of what composting is: you either have a pile or bin of organic material that breaks down, rots, decomposes, by thriving worms, bacteria, fungi, and insects who feed on the pile.

Never composted? If you never have composted before, you are going to love how cheap the process can be (for free, if you want), easy it can be if you do not mind waiting for nature to do its thing, and how great this is for the environment.  For those who are impatient, managed compost bins can produce finished product in as little as three to four weeks.  But am I going to go into the nitty-gritty, the germy-wormy, the slimey — oh, blimey…?  Thankfully, no, that will be the subject of future articles.

And, the reasons are… Today, we will be discussing the reasons for why you should compost — one of the easiest daily habits you could carry out to improve your envirohuman impact!  Near the end, we’ll share some resources detailing the ways you can go out and actually do some composting in your own backyard.  But before then, let’s take a look at why you ought to putting your biodegradable items outside your home on the ground (or in a bin) rather than having it hauled off to be buried in the ground.

1. Wasting a resource: Having organic material hauled away as garbage is a systematic way of taking good, reusable organic matter to a large hole in the ground, where it is mixed with a host of inorganic, toxic substances and debris, such as plastic items, styrofoam, battery acid, leftover chemical detergents, and heavy metals, like lead and mercury.  Hands down, getting that organic material back is extremely difficult to impossible.
2. Causing extra fuel consumption: Hauling away that organic matter takes a lot of fuel to haul away to landfills.  According to CompostGuide.com, “The average household produces more than 200 pounds of kitchen waste every year,” and that does not include yard and garden waste, which is obviously a lot more.  So, let’s say that the average is only 200 pounds.  At that rate, every ten families is having a ton hauled away to landfills every year, contributing to global warming and particulate matter in our air by having trucks haul even more away to be buried.
3. Filling up limited landfill space: Organic matter takes a lot of space in landfills and the space is limited.  Granted, the concept of landfills needs a major overhaul — we need to send much less material to be buried, and recycle more.  But the point is that we’re limited on spaces where all of that “junk” can be buried, and we don’t need to inflate it with hundreds of millions of tons of compostable waste every year.
4. Robbing nutrients: We’re literally robbing our soil of a rich natural resource that provides necessary carbon, nitrogen, and other nutrients.  We already have erosion and soil fatigue to fight, we do not need to compound the situation by taking excess organic matter and shipping it far from where we need it — wherever we want and need to grow trees, shrubbery, and gardens.  The solution is not to go out to your local home improvement store or nursery to buy organic matter, manure, mulch, and often, chemical fertilizers.  According to CompostGuide.com, “Using compost improves soil structure, texture, and aeration and increases the soil’s water-holding capacity.”  Even if you do not garden, help keep your land’s resources fertile by composting.
5. Squandering an opportunity for which we and the environment already have paid: Much of our produce is imported from far away — we are paying for that transportation cost financially and the environment pays in that it takes fossil fuels, most of the time, to move that food from plot to table, meaning more dirty emissions and more greenhouse gases.  Having had the environment already pay (and we’ve used our dollars), are we seriously going to throw away that banana peel, those coffee grounds, that avacado peel and pit, and your (now dead, whoops!) African violets, into a pit full of toxic trash, when we could use it to enrich our soils?  Seriously?  Even if it’s not imported, it likely travelled a thousand or more miles to your home — and our soils around our homes could use the nutrients as local growing of produce gains popularity.
6. Composting is an (easy) sustainable practice: Our potential future sustainability will sit upon sustainable practices.  It’s sustainable to compost our organic matter where it falls, meaning, where you dump it right outside.  When done right, it can be done with no lingering odors or pest problems, and this practice can play a huge role in replace our dependence upon synthetic fertilizers.
7. Compost helps dilute toxic substances in our soil: As air and water pollution also pollute our soils, adding clean (or relatively clean) organic matter to our topsoil will over time help reduce the proportion of toxic materials, like lead and mercury, to organic matter, by diluting the toxins in a soil of organic material.  This also helps our soils to deal with future pollution and to remain fertile and to not be toxic for foods and trees to grow.

These are some of the main reasons for why you should begin composting in order to do your part to impove your envirohuman impact.  Need more information? A great place to start, with explanations and links to other articles on the subject, as linked to in this story, is www.CompostGuide.com.  But if you are looking for a good peer reviewed article, check out Wikipedia’s on the subject.  Bottom line is, the soil in your backyard could make great use of your coffee grounds!

It can be a traditional watering can, an old pitcher or jug, but whatever it is, you should use it on your plants.

What?  Who is this guy telling me to water my plants with a watering can?  I don’t even have plants!

Well if you don’t have plants, you should get them in order to clean up the air in your home, as they can absorb unwanted chemicals from your air, leaving it healthier for you and your family.

Now, why use a watering can?  Obviously, your plants have to be watered.  You have them (or you’re going to get them, right?  For you and your family’s health!) and they require water.   Okay, glad we cleared that up.  So I was stating the obvious, but work with me here.

This may be something you already do without thinking much about it, but in order to further green your activity of watering plants, over the course of a day, pour excess water you did not drink into your watering can.  Sometimes I leave a glass sit overnight and the next morning, I don’t care to drink water that sat overnight and in any case, I would like a new glass.

But my plants could surely use that water (filtered, no doubt with some backwash!).  Also, hold your watering can under the faucet while you run the water through the faucet to get hot water.  Have ice leftover after you drink your beverage?  Put the ice into the watering can rather than down the drain.  Then use that water that otherwise would go unused on your plants.

Don’t leave water sitting in the can for more than a day, and use it as needed on your houseplants, garden, or landscaping and you’ll be greening your home a little bit more.   Just make sure to keep it near the kitchen sink (or maybe the bathroom) in order to catch that extra water for other use.

And how does this green my activity? Simply put, getting water to your home and then back away again is energy- and chemical-intensive.  From pumping it to a treatment facility to using chemicals and processes for cleaning it (and leaving some, like chlorine in the water) to pumping it to your home and up into your building (if you live in a high-rise, you may have seen water pressure drop if you had a power outage) and back to pumping the water away and treating it again before releasing it back into nature.  Just remember that when the water is running, pollution is also, “running.” The less water you run for your functions, the less pollution.

What do I buy? If you’re going out to buy a water can, I recommend one that has an optional end with holes for giving plants a shower, in case you’re watering a surface of small plants (like wheatgrass) or for watering seeds that you’re starting and you can remove it for free pour.  Remember, in almost all homes, there’s already something that will fulfill your watering can needs, a pitcher or an old juice or milk jug would work, for example, so you need not go out and buy something new — just clean whatever you use out with a little dish soap.

Plastic or metal? Hard to say.  Both are technically recyclable, both have to be removed in some way from the ground (oil for plastic, ore for metal).  Metals tend to rust (unless you get copper or stainless steel, which in most instances will not) but as a general rule, if you have an opportunity to buy something other than plastic with very similar results, go for the non-plastic product – there’s no telling what our longterm exposure to plastic products in so many of our applications will do to humans, and as time goes on, we’re seeing that its coming into contact with our food and water may be carcinogenic (saran wrap and plastic water bottles, as two examples).

Action item: Go (right now) to your kitchen (or at least visualize what you would choose) and pick out an item that will work for your watering can.  You might have one already, maybe in the basement??  If not, choose which jug in your fridge might make a good candidate, or consider buying new.  And if you do not yet have plants, go pick some nice ones out to spruce up your abode, as well as the air you breathe!  Might I recommend philodendrons for you?  Might I?

EHI is here, everyday, bringing you new tips, product reviews, and environmental news, all to help our readers become more aware and to make both small and large changes in their lives toward a more sustainable future.  We hope you will join us again.  You can get daily feeds through our RSS Feed or through Email Updates (found below!).

We have mentioned the virtues of gardening before, but with spring ending and summer heating up, we encourage our readers to take a look at what can be done.

You don’t have room for a garden? Most living situations, even in tight quarters in the city, provide some opportunity, even a small one, to do a little gardening. My garden last year was two plants that produced several tomatoes and peppers for my own personal consumption. They were planted on a one-foot by three-foot patch of ground behind my apartment building.

Literally no ground to plant on? Try finding a 5 gallon bucket. Drill half-inch holes in the bottom for drainage, fill with dirt, and you have a planter ready for a small tomato or pepper plant.

How does planting a garden green your life? So how does this improve your envirohuman impact? Take a look in your refrigerator. How many pounds of produce did you buy at the store this week? Do you know how far those items traveled? Okay, unless you go full-scale gardener, as many still do (a worthwhile pursuit) you’re not going to replace all of that with your backyard garden.

But what if you replaced three pounds of it weekly for the spring and summer months (potentially a solid twenty or more weeks), by growing a few items: tomatoes, lettuce, peppers, carrots, or cabbage? Even a novice could read and learn to do those items with just a small amount of space. Grow a few herbs in an indoor window box for a year-round benefit.

Again, it may only be one person, that is, you, decreasing the need for tomatoes shipped across the country (among other produce). But sixty pounds (three pounds multiplied by a twenty-week summer) adds up if you get just one million additional Americans to buy back into what once was the norm (that is in addition to current gardeners). That would be sixty million tons of food grown in backyards rather than being shipped across the country!

Imagine if even more people partook, the reduced amount of greenhouse gases released just to put food on the table would be realized.  So start gardening and once you have learned how to do it well, encourage friends, family, and neighbors to take this opportunity.

Gardening can save you money, too!

Use a few packets of seeds, or if you are getting a late start, use seedlings, and watch as sales increase in stores this summer (have you seen how the cost of a barrel is affecting everything we buy!?) and you have produce to help you finish off a great many home-cooked meals.  Don’t buy into synthetic chemical and/or petroleum-based products, either.  You can make your own compost or try such products as Terracycle’s Worm Poop, instead, reducing demand for oil, and improving your envirohuman impact even more!

One of my favorite blogs, Lifehacker, recently linked to an article about how you can make a DIY (Do It Yourself) solar powered lawn mower, which was originally published by Appropedia here.

Well, it takes a little bit of work because they take you through everything for replacing the actual gas engine with an electrical one but it’s very thorough, even for building the solar panel and hooking everything up. If you’re looking for a slightly easier way to do this, I’d recommend just buying an electric mower and building a solar panel to charge it.

While preparing the bed of soil that will be my urban garden in just a few weeks, pulling larger weeds and cutting back the intruding crawling vines, I saw that the vines which just last year were only on the fence behind my apartment building are now also covering the garage and retaining wall.

Why did this capture my attention? Well, it’s mostly concrete back there. The one fence sits between a sidwalk and a parking lot and barely has any soil available, but yet the climbing vines are back every year.