Power to the Poopers!
Making electricity from poop at wastewater treatment plants
Today I took a tour of my local wastewater treatment facility. I recommend everyone does this. Wastewater treatment plants truly are marvels of modern engineering. And you really do need to know what happens to your poop after you flush. When I think about how far we’ve come since the 1800s — when we threw our poop out the window into the street, when our waste mixed with our drinking water, and when disease from unsanitary conditions was rampant — to now, it’s amazing how far we’ve come.
Even though no one wants to think about what happens to our human waste, it’s important to acknowledge all the people who make our sullied waters clean enough to be gurgled back into our rivers and lakes again. But wait! The engineers, technicians, and maintenance people working at wastewater treatment plants are doing more than just making sure our communities are healthy and our most precious natural resource is safely recycled. My local wastewater treatment plant is running almost entirely on the power of… poop! That’s right, they’re using the poop to power the plant! It turns out, our poop is a largely untapped resource.
My local wastewater treatment plant is running almost entirely on the power of… poop! It turns…
