French project turn dog poop into fertilizer

[onehandle]

Across the street from a bowling alley in Toulouse, a French scientist unlocks the passageway to a hidden refrigerated laboratory where a centuries-old blight is about to be wiped up.

"Show him Project Propec," says Cedric Cabanes, president of Agronutrition SAS, a boutique fertilizer company with annual sales of $26 million, which may be on the cusp of transforming a global industry that plowed 163.7 million metric tons of nutritional muck into the soil last year. The metal door swings open and the foul aroma of the excremental experiment inside the chamber overwhelms the possibility of accurate visual observation.

"What we have here is endomycorrhiza, the molecular detoxifying mechanism for a diffusive airborne substance with a 100-meter radius that provokes an immediate intestinal ejection at a precise position," microbiologist Hicham Ferhout says, thumping shut the steel door. "In layman terms, we've finally discovered how to make a dog s- in a specific spot, disinfect the deposit and convert it into environmentally friendly energy or fertilizer. I have to think like a dog."

The origin of feces is no laughing matter in France, where pedestrians can come upon little piles of dog poop on pavements in even the most fashionable of streets in cities from Paris to Bordeaux. France has 8.8 million dogs, according to the Societe de Protection des Animaux. At an average of 22 pounds a year each, they produce about 194 million pounds of stools, some in public spaces, costing the country millions to clean up, according to Toulouse Deputy Mayor Jean-Michel Fabre.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/04/22/BU9Q1J5A9B.DTL

[Fumesucker]

1. "The origin of feces is no laughing matter"..

:rofl:

[ThomWV]

2. Dog poop has always been fertilizer, all that's happening now is someone's processing it.

[KittyWampus]

10. All waste needs to be turned into energy. In Europe, Waste to Energy is already happening.

[Botany]

3. this has been done already

[Turbineguy]

4. It's the end of civilization as we know it.

dogs are supposed to crap on those bumpy crosswalk aprons so that blind people can step in it.

[cali]

5. My dad used to use Milorganite- and they've been making that *shit*

for decades.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milorganite

[MineralMan]

6. My lawn, near the sidewalk, must generate that stuff.

Every darned dog in the neighborhood craps on it. While there are a few good neighbors who bag their dog's crap and carry it off, most do not. Uff da!

[EFerrari]

7. Is it just me or do the French overthink things?

lol

:shrug:

[TheManInTheMac]

13. I did some pedestrian research on this a few years back.

I wanted to find out if I could safely compost my dog's waste for fertilizer. The issue is the similarities between dogs and humans are so numerous that many diseases can be passed to humans through dog feces. A county extension service in Alaska had done a lot of research in this and did not recommend its use for food crops. Commercially done, it can be safe, but you have to get the temperature above what is normally found in residential compost bins.

Due to the fact that about 90% of what I was composting was nitrogen (grass clippings) my compost pile spontaneously combusted, so it turned out it wouldn't have been an issue with me.

[JohnyCanuck]

8. If this works for dog shit, why not use it on human shit too?

In Asia human excrement (aka night soil) has been used as a fertilizer for centuries and enabled their soils to remain productive over extremely long periods of time before they had access to artificial fertilizers. Artificial fertilizers will be affected by our rising energy prices and become increasingly expensive. It only makes sense to recycle the nutrients from our poop back into the earth rather than just flush them away using fresh, potable water that is also increasingly under threat.

[a la izquierda]

12. There are places that do...

and call it "humanure." There's an eco-village in Missouri that does: http://www.dancingrabbit.org/
And I stayed at a eco-village in Michoacan, Mexico that does the very same, using composting toilets to do it. I think part of the problem with having really safe humanure is that there are too many preservatives in our diet...but I could be misremembering something I read.

At any rate, when my husband and I buy a house, we're going to buy these things called Doggy Pots. You sink 'em in the ground and enzymes break down the poo. http://www.amazon.com/Dooley-3000-Septic-Tank-Style-Pet-Waste-Disposal/dp/B0002DI35E

[jody]

9. So what, in the US we turn bull shit into politicians! n/t

[jody]

11. Joke "You don't know shit"

A congressperson was seated next to a 10-year-old girl on an airplane. Being bored, the congressperson turned to the girl and said, "Let's talk. I've heard that flights go quicker if you strike up a conversation with your fellow passenger."

The girl, who was reading a book, closed it slowly and said to the congressperson, "What would you like to talk about?"

Oh, I don't know," said the congressperson. "How about nuclear power?"

"OK," she said. "That could be an interesting topic. But let me ask you a question first. A horse, a cow and a deer all eat the same stuff... grass. Yet a deer excretes little pellets, while a cow turns out a flat patty, and a horse produces clumps of dried grass. Why do you suppose that is?"

The congressperson thought about it and said, "Hmmm, I have no idea."

To which the girl replied, "Do you really feel qualified to discuss nuclear power when you don't know shit?"

[Warren Stupidity]

14. merde de chien sur le feu!

[mopinko]

15. we need to do something like this for factory farm poop.

pig shit needs to be dealt with. it is ruining rivers.

someone posted an article here a while back about digesters in a park that turned dog shit into a methane torch that lit the park at night.