Views from my tent: Making money from poo

No such thing as waste.

Yes, you read right - making money from poo. I am now going to introduce you to some Positive Poo Recycling methods you may or may not have already heard of. In Bushcraft when you head out into the wild blue yonder, civilised bushwhackers will dig a hole for their deposits - less civilised people don't. Mountaineers might even bag up their 'belongings' and carry them out. Not having a flush toilet available makes you infinitely more aware about what happens to your personal waste. In the big city which you could translate as the Big S----Y because our homes sit on top of tunnels of our poo - literally, which then disappear into the nearest river. Our poo was never meant to go into the water system. The spread of the diseases Giardia and Cryptosporidium preventing us from drinking directly from streams and other groundwater are the result of human and animal waste getting into streams.

Above are two revolutionary pictures - one is the dunny or traditional latrine dug by groups of travellers in wild or not so wild country - the other is the front page of 'Eco-cities to Living Machines' by Nancy and John Todd. There should be another of the compost toilet, but that'll have to wait. We currently pay a lot of money for our waste water, for drainage and we don't have to. A dunny is a pit dug to down a few feet to where the soil changes colour. This topsoil is the place where waste can break down the most quickly. When you use a dunny you cover your little offering with soil when you've finished. It's the same concept as a compost toilet. To let the waste break down naturally below/above ground - covering it with soil/saw dust/ grass whatever to keep the place nose friendly.

Now how, you are thinking, can you make money with this? Well you can't right away but it doesn't cost you a penny to dispose of your waste in this healthy and safe way and if you plant trees over these pits when they're full, your trees will have lots of lovely nutrients to feed on. Mature trees and fruit trees make thousands In six months to a years time you can reuse the same area if you have to because it will be just like earth anywhere else.