Mastodawn

I don't think the main issue is hazard.

The real barrier to this is that most people don't want to, to the point that many such approaches, while perfectly safe, would face serious regulatory pressures.

yeah, public opinion is indeed a thing...
People sadly are not always rational beings, and I mean, they are not at all to blame. You can't trust governments, much less corporations and it is not easy to understand which scientists are truly interested in your well-being.

I would suggest to start with non-edible crops to normalize the use of human-derived fertilizers.
And to explain very well how safety issues are addressed, because this is the main concern (at least from what I see in studies about the issue).

Luckily, legislation is going into the right direction, at least in Europe. But it is still way too slow, because politicians are very hesitant to give their adversaries this easy attack surface.

I mean, we are currently in a situation where in many countries the water from sewage treatment plants is almost directly channeled as intake for potabilization plants producing drinking water, especially during droughts. (The sensation of people learning about this is the "yuck-factor"). This is not much talked about in public for obvious reasons.

I doubt most people care much on the crop end. It's the "production and collection" end that's most visible and visceral. If you look at the humanure handbook, for example, you'd basically be asking people to use buckets and leave them on the front step once a week to be collected. That's a deeply unpleasant ask for most people, and it's to help with a problem that most people aren't even aware of.

Yeah, but be aware that there are already way more comfortable approaches developed. We are not in the 90s anymore. I have to look up, but I saw a model of source-separated toilet for high-rise buildings.
I mean, until society doesn't break fully apart, it won't be necessary for people to manage their own excrements.

Such solutions for "convinced freaks" is a major obstacle with so many solutions, and often a problem of pioneers in fringe fields promoting ideas that seem for them completely justified and natural, but nothing for mass-adoption.
I see some parallels to the techies saying "just self-host" when people complain about corporate software here on Mastodon, lol

If you want to look at separating things at source to avoid anyone handling their own excrement, you've got another HUGE problem; cost.

It's not merely enough to convince everyone to buy and use one (or more, really, many people have two or more toilets) of these fixtures. You'd also need to entirely rebuild sewer infrastructure. And not just copy/paste, but develop an entirely new way for it to even work. Modern sewers work, in part, because their contents are largely liquid.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0043135424003804

There is a ton of research on the topic.

Of course, we need more studies, and especially more pilot projects to test and obtain experience.
But if you look at how expensive and inefficient the conventional wastewater system is, one can just stratch one's head...

"expensive and inefficient" compared to what? As measured how?

how much does the sewage system in your place cost?
How are the energy costs?

Add the costs of fertilizers that need to be purchased from far away (Russia and Gulf states say hello) because sewage treatment plants try to eliminate Nitrogen loadings. And add phosphorus to the equation (Morocco-occupied Western Sahara makes a tired gesture).
Think about the problem that our current sewage system mixes together effluents from industry, hospitals, thousands of polluting household substances that people for some reasons flush down the toilet. Add heavy metals from traffic. Plus PFAS and a ton of microplastics. Makes nutrients contained in sewage quite inaccessible.

Consider a water consumption of 5-10l to transport meager 200 ml of pee from a flushed toilet. A household consumes around a third of its water just for toilet flushing.

...

Cost to install? No clue; it was here when I bought the house. Probably less than 1% of the cost of the structure. To maintain? Nothing, for the last three-plus years. Energy costs? To me, about zero. I'm sure the sewage plant uses quite a bit of energy, but of course any material handling system uses energy.

BrambleBearSnoring 9h ago

Tagging for #SolarpunkSunday

Earthworm 🐌9h ago

@BrambleBearSnoring

Hey, thanks! Definitely a hashtag I want to follow, too

abby 9h ago

@earthworm took the leap last year and did my entire kitchen garden in certified compost made partially from human waste and had my best garden year ever lol

incredibly affordable, no issues or complaints