Why Flushing Isn't For Everyone
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- čas přidán 29. 11. 2023
- This video was made in partnership with Bill Gates. To learn more about how we can help improve the lives and health of people around the world, visit gatesnotes.com
Sewers are a great way to make pooping safe, but they’re not always the right solution because they require specific resources that many places just don’t have.
LEARN MORE
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To learn more about this topic, start your googling with these keywords:
- Sewage system: A network of pipes that conveys sewage from a point of origin to a treatment plant.
- Fecal pathogens: Bacteria, viruses, and parasites that can infect people through feces contamination.
- Utility decentralization: The process of bringing the production of utilities like energy closer to the place it is consumed instead of from a central location farther away.
- Reuse of human excreta: The safe or beneficial reuse of treated human poop for things like fuel or fertilizer.
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CREDITS
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David Goldenberg | Script Writer, Narrator and Director
Sarah Berman | Illustration, Video Editing and Animation
Nathaniel Schroeder | Music
MinuteEarth is produced by Neptune Studios LLC
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REFERENCES
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Kone, Doulaye (2023). Personal Communication. Deputy Director, Water, Sanitation, & Hygiene. Gates Foundation. Retrieved from: www.gatesfoundation.org/about...
Obradović, Dino, Marija Šperac, and Saša Marenjak. 2023. "Challenges in Sewer System Maintenance" Encyclopedia 3, no. 1: 122-142. Retrieved from: doi.org/10.3390/encyclopedia3...
Kruzman, D. (2022). “Cities are investing billions in new sewage systems. They’re already obsolete.” Grist. Retrieved from: grist.org/cities/cities-are-i...
Root, R. (2020). “When are sewers the best option for improved sanitation?” Devex. Retrieved from: www.devex.com/news/when-are-s...
Kone, D. (2021). “The future of sanitation: 10 years of reinventing the toilet.” Gates Foundation. Retrieved from: www.gatesfoundation.org/ideas...
Cisneros B. J. (2011). Safe Sanitation in Low Economic Development Areas. Treatise on Water Science, 147-200. Retrieved from: doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-444-53...
Fernholz, T. (2014). More people around the world have cell phones than ever had land-lines. Quartz. Retrieved from: qz.com/179897/more-people-aro...
Bovarnick, B. and Dach, E. (2014). Electricity without the Grid. Center for American Progress. Retrieved from: www.americanprogress.org/arti... - Věda a technologie
Will the future contain fewer sewers and more clever crappers? To learn more about reinventing the toilet, and how we can help improve the lives and health of people around the world in general, visit gatesnotes.com
But There is something we should fix first, videos art style
Wait, how do people use 100L/day for flushing poop? How many times are they pooping in one day?!
@@Monjipoura single flush is 5L. 20 flushes and there you go. All you need is a family living in a home and you could easily hit that a day.
@@Iteria but they said per person, not per household
Cue my astonishment
@@Monjipour Ah, yeah then that's weird. They must mean showers/baths/dishwashing/etc as well. It has to be all grey water to hit that a day
time to science the crap out of this
Nice one xD
Like this puppies that dont poop. They dont until they die with only a little more than a month of life
+
Heh
@@GreenPoint_onewhat is your damage?!
I know you can't give examples for every technology, but it does feel a little bit like "here's the sewerage-alternative startups Gates has invested in" rather than an independent assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of the options.
For one, why would a brand new sewer be built as a combined waste and rainwater system? That's a valid issue with existing old systems, but the setup of this video as about building-out into areas with no legacy infrastructure.
Others have of course also mentioned stuff like composting toilets, which don't even get a brief aside here. And I would normally expect a bit more of an analysis of the energy cost of some of these alternatives from you. Obviously in a solar-rich but water-poor area, boiling a bit makes sense - but there's also tons of areas which are marginal in both which these options might be too energy-intensive to be practical. At least on an individual ownership level, which would seem to be the implied default for this stuff.
short answer: Gates need money
The default solution is a pit latrine, has been for thousands of years, and continues to be around the world in places that are unsuitable for sewers or septic tanks. Old latrines were unsanitary because people didn't understand germs or water ecology very well, not because of any inherent flaw in the idea.
When making a video that lasts less than 3 minutes you can't really go into detail. I'm sure there are lengthy documentaries about how we can better waste management. That's just not what this channel does😊
they claim that they can "cook" the waste which then becomes usable fuel but I highly doubt any of those methods would create more fuel energy than what it requires to be cooked.
@@luuk_twister2068 of course MinuteEarth provides an overview, but they usually have a more pros and cons focused approach. This one OTOH felt like a listicle.
I have noticed this type of issue even on longer video channels, when Gates has sponsored the video.
I remember a diseases in Africa documentary that mentioned the implementation (even if they were in beta) of the solar toilet. It hand-crank "flushed" and it took about three days to make it viable as fertilizer. I was fascinated.
Yet, I'm still using normal toilets like you guys
possibly because you live in a relatively affluent area where such a solution is not required@@ursulaoases8592
All 54 countries have no sewer system? Seems odd for a place that Europeans constantly flock to for vacation 🤔
@@ihatelife486 I remember watching a chernobyl in europe documentary that mentions the chernobyl disaster. All 50 countries are radioactive and abandoned? Seems like an odd place that americans constantly flock to for vacation🤔
@@themanbehindthebananas
Chernobyl site itself isn't that radioactive currently ......also every one knows that Chernobyl is in Ukraine
I feel like saying "monsoons can overwhelm treatment plants" without further investigation implies that there isn't a solution to that problem, but there is: separate stormwater and sewage lines.
which would cost a lot of money
@@vanaik less than the medical costs associated with infected drinking water
also might as well add
if we exclude water problem, all of the problems mentioned in the vid are not about sewer's functionality but rather about whether or not they can afford it
@@thomaswalters7117 [citation needed]
Totally! Besides, it is not monsoons, it is just regular storms that can overwhelm a treatment plant.
Sometimes I think about how far removed we are as people from knowing about how our own existence works. 200 years ago, you knew where your poop went no matter what. Now I'm learning it through a CZcams video while pooping. Life is beautiful that way
Yeah technology has evolved much faster than people can keep up with. It’s pretty crazy what human ingenuity can do
You sure you didn't have that in school? We even went to a treatment plant for a school trip.
in my city in Canada we didn't! Had some other interesting trips but not sewage related
@@Ilamarea
It's similar to how abstraction and layers work in programming too.
You don't need to know how the service works because you don't have the time, you just need to know how to use the service to make something better, the only one who fully understands is the service provider.
Like how we don't need to know how sewage works, we just need to know how to use it and spend our time doing other things instead of studying its mechanics.
But it's always fun to have a peek at how they work behind the scenes. Just like us watching this video.
@@Ilamarea This guy doesn't speak for everybody. I can't even remember how long ago I knew about the sewage system but it was when I was still a CHILD.
Watching this on the toilet
I'm watching this while eating.
... am I supposed to combine both now?
Same
I live in Hawaii and i have a Composting Toilet. We dont have sewer or water lines in the remote areas of Hawaii. Also Septic tanks are expensive, and Soil is a valuable commodity on the Big Island. So being able to make poop into Soil is a good way to make soil for your yard to plant fruit trees and vegetables
What about pathogens in your poop? A composting toilet seems to encourage the growth of pathogens rather than inhibit it..
The system is certified and used throughout the world. Bacteria can be killed in the last stage of the treatment with chlorine@@InTimeTraveller
@@InTimeTraveller They work by creating an environment where decomposing microbes flourish, but where human infecting pathogens do not. The things that infect humans multiply in the human body, but won't do so in this prepared environment. With time, the pathogens end up dying. The biggest issue with composting toilets is the same issue all onsite sewage facilities- improper usage won't treat the pathogens. In an area with a large population, you're depending on everyone to follow the proper procedures. The simplicity of the composting toilet helps alleviate that problem too, because you're not reliant on some external company to empty a tank or service some waste burning contraption.
@@InTimeTraveller Yeah you should never use non sterilized human waste for fertilizer, can cause massive outbreaks of bacteria on vegetables. Food recalls due to contamination.
Best to just never use human waste as it is too dangerous and expensive to treat as an individual.
Natural process is the always best for natural selection to remove them the gene pool
What if some of those pathogens are resistant to extreme conditions though? @@koshi6505
I laughed at the discussion of monsoons overwhelming systems. In New Zealand this is a yearly, if not quarterly or monthly issue. Centralised complex infrastructure not built/maintained to handle existing weather events (let alone our changing climate), regularly overwhelmed and dumping untreated sewage into our coastal waters and waterways. This regularly makes entire city beach-scapes unswimmable and unsuitable for food harvest - yet we seem afraid of the hyper-localised effects a miss-managed household composting system or micro-grid could have.
+1 to being shocked that composting systems were not discussed. None of these feel like a sensible way forward in terms of technology, energy and materials.
The monsoon thing was even funnier to me, as my family lives in a city and we have a house that's like nearly 10km downstream from the river that goes through the city. The river goes slightly near the village, and it gets LESS brown and sh!tty when it rains. The additional rainwater the river collects along those 10 km manages to overcompete the slightly less treated sewage, making water cleaner
There is nothing wrong with septic tanks. If they are well build, they can last for decades with minimum maintenance.
Also, there is nothing wrong with using more water if it is green water, such as water from rain or rivers that does not need to be processed.
Water will not just disappear.
Unless the water well is very close to the septic tank, contamination happens very very rarely.
It is more of a concern in drought prone areas like the west coast of the USA. Green water competes for many interests like agriculture and fish preservation
Fun fact, vacuum toilets are a thing for years! Here in the Netherlands we like to install them on trains so they don’t need to carry loads of water which they dumped on the tracks while riding. Instead, vacuums here compress your poo and suck all the water out leaving a cleaner experience for everyone.
Is that also similar with airplane toilets?
Could be! As far as I read they do actually drop it since it is weight saved. But I could be wrong! @@Eldrich4291
Where the yucky water go?😂
@@theeraphatsunthornwit6266complementary Chocymilk
@@theeraphatsunthornwit6266
There is some sewage tank under neath train in India so Problem of bad train tracks is solved
The “turdally awesome” comment followed by a solid 3 seconds of awkward pause was the single best decision in editing history 😂
Made me crack up, for sure 😂😅
In the US; Septic Tanks are very common, per household.
Based on waste amount, I would need a septic tank pumped every 10-30 years. They are very economical, and my grandparents had one installed, and manually pumped it out every year, and used it as fertilizer for the surrounding areas.
Shouldn't the overwhelming sewers issue only apply if the rain drainage system and sewage system is connected? It's seems natural but nothing says they need to be handled by the same pipe. And even if you want to do that as a cost cutting measure, you can just divide the pipe into a top and bottom part so it can be separated at the treatment facility to cleanish street water and very bad sewage water.
You'd be surprised at how many sewer systems worldwide use a mixed system
Sadly, a lot of sewer systems were built a long time ago and are mixed systems. Replacing aging systems is expensive and disruptive. We have this problem every time we have extra heavy rains. Pacific North West, ya know, Seattle, the city known for rain? An hour and a half north of where I live. 😥 When I have my own home, I am going to see if it is possible to put in one of those new toilet systems that don't use water.
@@teresaellis7062Seattle resident as well. And while it is know for rain we get less than other major cities. Additionally, Seattle is spending a lot of money to increase the storage capacity to deal with the rain overwhelming the processing capability. Seattle is working to address the issue but to the videos point it is expensive and most places couldn't do it.
@@alex9621 still would hopefully not be a barrier to installing a new system, as is being discussed here...
A major part of processing is large open-air vats. See Wikipedia: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sewage_treatment
I always find this channel informative and entertaining, but presenting a primary barrier for sewer adoption as "cost" and then finishing with "this video was made in partnership with Bill Gates" really just makes it sound like you're ghoulishly defending a billionaire's investments over a very real, existing solution that could save millions of lives.
My cats screaming and running around my house since they pooped right as I started to play this. Zoomies have never been timed so well
Here is a alternate system.
In Indian cities we have apartments complex. What Americans call multi family housing. They may house 50 to 1000 families. These apartments complex are suppose to have internal sewage treatment plant. This treated water & used for flushing & gardening purpose. Rainwater is required to be harvested within apartments complex. Sewage or other water is not supposed to leave apartments complex.
I think this is a much superior to the centralized Sewage treatment. Since we are paying for upkeep & maintenance of system we do not have many issues like people flushing diapers & wipes.
Yeah right the country that doesn't have toilets has a superior sewage system 🤣
@@pakiking1993I am sorry for your ignorance. I will request you to read up.
Yes, treated water from sewage can be used for gardening, landscaping and reuse for toilet flushing. Its very common in a well designed huge chemical plant with their own STP.
I from a Mountain village in Himalayas. First Time my University friends came over to my Village (most of whom were from Big cities), they asked me about the sewer system in village. They could not imagine that we had to make a pit where all the poop was getting stored in a Septic tank.
What about composting toilets? Are they too expensive as well? Seems like they'd also be a viable alternative and the tech already exists and is ready for prime time.
I can't remember channel but there was one lady that had a composting toilet. I don't think she used the product on garden growing, but did for what would end up the chicken feed. It was quite a while ago and I think she was wary of the bacterial bloom? But ate the eggs the chickens laid so IDK
Its old technology, not some exciting new technology. I also remember listening to a Fresh Air program several years back about toilets in this vein. I remember thinking why not onsite composting and disposal (some were pickup for compost elsewhere) but then I realized they were talking about dense urban areas, not the rural area where I live where we can just use our compost around the fruit trees.
@@KestrelOwens Dense urban areas are usually the main issue with systems like these. Rural areas have a lot more options due to the far lower density of people so any system you use can work with less throughput.
But in highly dense areas systems need to be able to handle a ton of volume, and, due to how density statistics often work out, most people who live without sewage tend to live in very densely populated areas, so solutions that only work in rural areas while they are nice, arent a viable strategy to solve this issue for the majority of people who have it.
Check out information on the solids composting system employed in the town of Gunnison Colorado. Ive heard it is quite robust and effective.
In Brazil we usually use fosses, it takes years to get full. Once it gets full we call the city hall and the city hall sends a special sealed vehicle with a pump that empts the fosse. The content is later sent to proper treatment.
Only in small and medium sized towns and cities. In big cities not really
Also waste treatment access differs heavily between states
@@MarcoAntonio-hw7si In big cities in Brazil they would just poop on the street or pooping buckets and then throw the buckets into the street.
Returning to composting and “night soil” makes the most sense to me. It’s how massive ancient cities dealt with this. Gastropod did a great episode on it.
That last one, places with monsoon flooding out treatment facilities. That one feels like a stretch. It is possible to build sewage systems without taking in storm water as well.
1:45 In India, building septic tanks deep within the ground at the commencement of building your house is a common and very widely (above 95 %) used practice. Even in areas where your earlier given 3 conditions do not apply at all.
In fact, I was shocked and amazed to see that in the USA, all the toilets are directly connected to sewer lines and poop flushed directly into them. 😁😁
@cuddles1767I don't know what documentary you're talking about, but your neighborhood seems to be pooping on the streets, that's why you are assuming the rest of the world to be following the same too 🤣🤣🤣.
@cuddles1767Tell me your nationality and then i will show you the mirror. 😄😄
And tell me you naive foolish person, how does the idea of making septic tanks deep within the earth seems you inhuman and unhygienic? 🤣🤣🤣
@cuddles1767Go to your daddy and seek attention from him.
Don't pick useless fights over the internet just to gain attention, because your parents didn't gave that to you in your childhood 😆😆😆
@cuddles1767You are taking as if there is no problems in your country eh?
If you are from U.S of A , I think you need to solve homeless people problem before even taking about others .
You are taking as if the whole country shit, on where ever they find.
Are you homeless? No isn't it? Homeless Ness is it your culture? School shooting culture many more..
@cuddles1767 pooping on streets, are you even serious, I know india is not the most clean place on earth but,
Pooping on the streets??
Seriously
My recommendations when I’m not eating: 👍
My recommendations when I’m eating: 🚽 💩 💦 🧻
i think generally ok video but you missed one
there are spetic systems that have a 4 speration tanks. the first settlement tank has a gas off that fills a gas bag that then the gas is used for the gas cooker and the gas central heating, the second settlement tank (like in a standard system) also biodegrades the next lot of settlement, the third tank is filled with gravel and sand and filters the water with the water for the forth tank coming fromt he bottom of the third, and the fourth is a pit with rocks in it, all tanks create their own alga and bacterea and the water that comes back out is clean the final tanks drains in the soil around it and if you plant reeds and willow or similar plants the root system does the final clean but even after tank 3 the water is mostly safe to drink, plus you get cooking gas.
the solids from the first and second tank can be added to a standard compost heap and break down further.
Atleast on my region there are no sewers.
But some people used the small river as sewers and now the water is unsafe
What a rare topic you raised! Good job!
I thought you would end with composting toilets as an example of a solution available in most rural or remote places today.
Bill Gates doesn't make money on those
Many areas across Asia and Africa actually commonly use squat toilets rather than the western-style sitting toilets.
Apparently, squatting is also a more healthy position to use them in.
It's still a regular flush toilet though. Only the seat changes.
The UK went for somthing far more effective than monsoons when it comes to overwhelming sewage treatment: privitisation.
😠 Indeed, and the PRIVATE water companies have the gall to charge us yet more to do what we have already paid for, because dividends come before modernisation of an antiquated system. Unfortunately, there is NO hope of any change to public ownership after the next general election . . . 😡!
Sadly yest
Honestly, everyone making money on it should be arrested for a minimum of 20 years and have their assets given to the water works.
I was expecting more... Some startups in Africa created biodigestors for biomatter which produces natural gas for home use and rich fertilizer. Doesn't quite destroy pathogens reliably, but it works well with animal waste and food scraps. The three options mentioned in passing are all the worst possible options. Resource and energy intensive, not producing anything really valuable. Digestors are a far better idea.
@1.13 …or where the water companies are owned by pension funds and other countries where cutting costs, paying pollution fines and driving up bills is a profitable business model for shareholders.
Brought to you by the world's largest billionaire...
Them partnering with Bill Gates all the time made me think he's actually something...
I mean, nobody hears of the Mark Zuckerberg foundation...
Monsoon places can have sewers without issue - you just have to separate rain and waste sewers with former going past the treatment plant right into the river. inb4 it is already done so in multiple large cities.
the cost per user of the proposed solution would be much greater than the one of a sewage system.
Implementing that in an area with low gdp per capita is much less efficient, and much more profitable for the company that sells it.
What is it that the gates foundation is trying to achieve here?
I wonder if that cost per user holds true, globally, if counting in medical treatment and death (price of life / a person) where there are no good alternatives to sewers available... Also the sewer companies and cities tend to cover a lot of costs that come from water saving flushers, that are in their sum detrimental as waste doesn't get flushed the way it needs to, so they flush extra water down the pipes.
As usual, the biggest hurdle are costs of invention and getting people to accept the new invention - once the product reaches assembly line production, it might even cost less (in this case one uses focusing sunlight to take care of things) than all the water that gets flushed through the pipes and needs to get cleaned up after again and the maintenance of the existing (and depending where you live also risk/damage prone) network.
Things like that are about long term and overall cost and benefit for everyone, now and in the future.
In southern Vietnam, in families that raise livestock, we use pig excrement and human excrement in a composite plastic tank with decomposing bacteria. Then, it produces gas used for cooking called biogas.
I don't really see what the issue with septic tanks is. Pathogens need energy to survive. Once all the energy in the waste is depleted, the pathogens will be gone. We just have to wait for that to happen.
I agree that sewage isn't cheap to run, but I dare anyone to come at my home and measure my use of sewage water...spoiler alert, it's not 100 L/day per person, it's not 50...not even 20. Few years back I've ran an experiment at my home in my house for a whole month to count just toilet bowl flushes quantity alone. It averaged at 18,7 L/day per person without trying to be sensible using the flush in a different manner than usual during the experiment.
Mere fact that our total water consumption is somewhere between 2.1-3(max) cubic meters a month, shows that the numbers doesn't add anywhere closer to 100 L/day per person in the family for sewage ALONE. It's just me and my wife living at home, we shower every single day, we drink tap water, we wash the dishes manually, we do 3-4 laundries a month.
I strongly disagree with the claimed 100 L/day per person. It looks like someone pulled that number out of his poop hole(pun intended), and everyone is using that number like it's God's word. How about some more context...what do we understand by "sewage water", is it just toilet flushes (as it is the main subject in that video) or it includes all the water that goes down the drain (which makes more sense to be the case), by who it is measured, where it is measured, how it is measured? Or we're just repeating a certain sponsored narrative here?
What is your answer to that @MinuteEarth?
Yeah, 100 liters sounds insane, because I read somewhere that average amount of water using for daily activties such as cooking, cleaning, bathing and toilet too is totally just 150 litres in Asia ( varied by regions and countries). So if Western ppl went to toilet wayyy more often, water using would be higher, otherwise these figures are made - up or misunderstood
Thought that was a bad statistic as well. From what I found the average toilet uses 1.6 gallons or just over 6L. Who is flushing their toilet 16 times a day. Maybe the average household uses 100L a day but no way a person is person unless they’re sick or something.
To flush a toilet, 100l is absurd, but I don't think the single flushes take the crap to the treatment facility. I think there would be additional water added that could lead to the 100l figure.
Most of what goes into sewers is gray water (through showers, sinks etc). The thing to do is separate the gray water from actual sewage and filtrate for irrigation.
1:30 Im on my way to Transfer poops with electromagnetic waves as an Electronic and telecominication engineer student
Or...we try to continue the trend of the past decades, increasing general wealth and resource availablity to a point where basic utilities like sewers are continually available to more and more people.
Instead of handwaving it away by vaguely gesturing at some unproven prototypes.
Globalists want everyone to be equally miserable. They hate their idea of inequality within the masses to the point where they’d prefer everyone be poor rather than some people being poor and some being not poor.
Nice video, I love to see a more detailed long form!
When ever my company computer screens turns blue I say out loud “thanks Bill” too
What was forgotten is the fact that shit flows downhill. All sewer lines require a downhill grade. If the land is too flat you need sewage lift stations which require power for the pumps. If you need to move the crap up a slope because the only place to put the sewage treatment plant is on a hill then you need pumps to move the sewage. Any time you involve pumps you need to have power. All the systems that don't require sewer lines have issues that limit their usefulness anyway. Burning the crap, for example, has a smell issue.
You forgot one thing, electric incinerator toilets. They have the small draw back of power consumption, but it's less than you'd consume with a oven or gas range.
Watching this while pooping
Instructions unclear. Now I just don't poop.
The solar thing looked amazing. We could also try some wind powered stuff, sending poop all over the place and makeing it dissapearing into people`s lungs. Just saying... gotta use all 4 elements.
Thanks for reminding me that sewage system is something that many of us take for granted but in reality large portion of the word doesn't have it.
If the sponsor is BG, then you know they will be extremely expensive, maintenance intensive, require BG-trained technicians to install/repair and not shipped to anywhere outside the continental USA. Tough luck, Alaska and Hawaii, and anywhere else that gets cold!
There's this show called _Buying Alaska_ and one of the houses had a toilet that incinerated poop. The only problem they had with the toilet is that it gave off a horrible smell after burning the poop. The show started in 2012, so I'm wondering why the toilet is still in beta? How many toilets did you check out? What about compost toilets?
I feel like there is a lot of information missing from this video. Did you think nobody would care about toilets? Personally I think toilets shouldn't be taken for granted, they do so much for us.
Incinerating toilets are used occasionally also on small boats that do not have space for sewage treatment
😂😂 2:07 He says " poops" ALOT. even for a sewage video. Not feces excrement or waste. Def playing it for laughs... Especially the plural poops.
For septic tanks, in Croatia you get a dude with a tractor and a metal bottle saped container on wheels (don't know where the pump is, but it's probably present)
Pay up, he stops by, takes all that juicey goodness for himself and you probably share a "gemišt" for good measure
Cool system
You forgot to mention composting toilets, which already exist and are very effective
I've been thinking recently about how part of the issue with agriculture is the break in the cycle of food, namely, of human waste to fertilizer. Glad to see I'm not the only one.
We need more valuable videos like this and sewer crap.
My grandparents lived in Queens, NY. We would often go to Flushing, and I agree. It’s not for everyone.
Watching this on the crapper rn cuz CZcams recommended me this out of nowhere,
CZcams can watch you unknowingly so be careful
ooooh I just watched the documentary "holy shit" last week on that topic! If you get the chance, I really recommend it!
Fun fact of the day: Jakarta don't have a city-wide sewer system. As recent as 2022, the provincial government is planning to build one.
Nice informations, didn't knew that some places simply can't have classical sewer systems, due to these factors. Ty
Why is NOBODY talking about the absence of stick figures.....again?
Why would the vacuum toilet pressure cook the poop? Isn't that the opposite of what a vacuum would do?
The alternatives listed seem to be energy intensive one way or the other.
Looks to me like an idea with very short legs just on the energy requirements.
It is... since you can process human waste with pot ash and detritus material (crumpled leaves and/or sawdust). Basically turning it into compost, with the heat from the composting process eliminating most of the harmful bacteria. it's the most primitive kind of toilet you can make but it works and the end product is compost you can just toss safely outside.
Everyone deserves the dignity of having some place to poop and forget about it.
“john! we need your quality fertiliser again!”
You can't afford indoor plumbing so it's not 'right' for you (but it is for me.)
- Minute Earth
Made in partnership with Bill Gates!
What is the idea of having a place that uses bio-remediation without water? Like with a lot of sand and the right bacteria or just having non diseased insects at it or something
oooh - we're making a video about black soldier fly larva right now!
Big respect for those lads who work on the sewer. I hope they get paid deservingly well.
well, there's one challenge in implementing these non sewer alternatives. it's the corporation who is currently in charge of the sewers.
why? money.
always
When did society decide that grown adults call it poop instead of waste?
Incinolet toilets have been available for decades. Heavily used on commercial fishing vessels to save weight and water. They use electric or diesel fuel to burn the fecal matter.
I have a DEWATS in my home. A decentralised effluent and water treatment system. No moving parts. Everything goes back into my garden.
Watching this while on the toilet feels so good.
There are no phone services without phone lines
The tallest building in the world in one of the wealthiest cities in the world, the "Burj Khalifa in Dubai" doesn't even have a sewer system. It relies on sewer trucks to pump and haul away toilet waste every day.
What a weird random video to be recommended to me haha
I'm halfway tempted to go down that trail and find out more about how sewage systems work...but yeah, I don't think I really want to know!
Our village has multiple biogas chambers where human and animal poop are concentrated from different septic tanks and they get methane or biogas as a feul(not much but enough to cook food and run water pumps for irrigation).
This is What Bill Gates should be working on not the video but innovation in this area
"Places [...] where sewers don't actually make sense" and this includes places that just don't have the money for it? This video gives me the impression that some people would rather advance their shiny charitable project than just supporting the local authorities with money to build normal sewers.
Jokes on you, we mostly use permanent biodegradable septic tanks with water in homes(towns & villages) in our place, unless it's in cities where sewer or temporary septics are required.
Human manure has been around for a long time. It is perfectly fine around trees but I wouldn't use it directly on vegetable gardens.
I guess the biggest takeaway is that lots of differing environments, densities, financial capabilities and precipitation levels dictate a host of different solutions to waste disposal. I'm fortunate to live in a rural area with a well-designed septic tank that leaches away effluent cleanly with no impact on groundwater or surface water, uses only a few gallons per day, and only has to be cleaned every five years (in the most frequent case) or 10 years (more typical with low usage and no garbage disposal - I compost), producing sediment that is relatively harmless. Living in Manhattan or even Peoria would imply a vastly different necessity, and Bangladesh would face totally different issues. I hope that humans will come up with a LOT of creative solutions and thereby protect water sources and public hygiene. It's really vital to living well on this planet, and we're capable of it... but the funding sources and the powers-that-be have to give a crap about ordinary people's lives. ;) That's the really tough part. Bill Gates is on the right track paying attention to this mundane but important aspect of humans' lives.
I'm watching this on the toilet without sewage. I really didnt have to announce that, but I did.
A solar toilet? Science never ceases to amaze me!
It's when you flush the toilet and your poop gets fired off in little rocket into the sun.
@@Jrpyify does this make every restroom a potential space station?
I misheard _"fecal pathogens"_ as *"pickle packages"* while seeing faeces on the screen 💀
Tge fact that people shyt in clean water when a quarter of the world population has limited access to clean water always amazes me
Don't use human excrement for fertilizer. It contains so much stuff, like drug residu (legal or illegal)
I'll use whatever Mr gates is using, thank you very much. And I bet that's a normal sewer-dependent toilet.
The idea of a giant lens flying above a city, only to be diverted into millions of death ray, meant to litteraly burn shit, is hilrarious to me.
Indus valley civilisation had sewer system 4000 years ago when other kingdoms fought barbarically without an actual development🎉
Yes! Let’s invest in new ways to deal with waste!
"Fewer sewers"
Images the smell inside your house from an indoor toilet that bakes a fresh poop into charcoal dust every morning.
Fascinating!
Apparently a lot of people did a "wait what?" and replay the 3 non-sewer toilets, with the vacuum one attracting the most attention.
The kitchen cynic drains into the skeptic tank.
Always weird to me that the word crap is safe for use in 'family friendly' content in America.
The connotation has changed over time. In the US, at least, "crap" has evolved from purely a euphemism for "shit" into a more informal or humorous way of denoting fecal material or subpar objects.
Having had many roommates, I can confirm that indeed flushing is not for everyone, apparently
this video learns me that poop can be transformed into rocket and apple
The high pun count made this one particularly enjoyable.