Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. Hey there, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the
Speaker 1: podcast that looks at the future and says, I work
Speaker 1: in the sewer. It's a very hard job. You know.
Speaker 1: They don't hire just any old slob. I'm Jonathan Strickland,
Speaker 1: and I'm Joe McCormick, and you know, guys, recently, I
Speaker 1: have been going back and watching The X Files. Okay,
Speaker 1: I think it's pretty good thing to watch. It's on
Speaker 1: Netflix right now. But some of my favorite episodes of
Speaker 1: The X Files are the ones where Molder and Scully
Speaker 1: end up descending into a sewer. Oh Man, Lukeman, one
Speaker 1: of my favorite episodes of all time. That's maybe my
Speaker 1: favorite monster design I can think of I've seen yet.
Speaker 1: He looks he looks kind of like a like an
Speaker 1: amphibian mummy. It's my second favorite monster design and X Files.
Speaker 1: But I don't know if you've gotten to my favorite.
Speaker 1: And we'll talk about that some other times. Okay. Well,
Speaker 1: and he was played as a guest star by Darren Morgan,
Speaker 1: the amazing writer. Oh yeah, he wrote all my favorite episodes.
Speaker 1: What what's the title of that episode? The host Anyway,
Speaker 1: it got me thinking about sewers, though that's not the
Speaker 1: reason we're doing this episode today. We're going to talk
Speaker 1: about sewers. I was thinking about sewers because I recently
Speaker 1: saw you another production of Le Miserabla, but just two
Speaker 1: different pathways to the same test. Wait, no, hold on,
Speaker 1: I thought you were making a slight against the lamb
Speaker 1: is as a production, But no, you're talking about the
Speaker 1: scenes in the sewers. Thenardier has the song dog eats
Speaker 1: Dog in the sewer while he's rating bodies in the sewers. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a very part warming love song. You know, there
Speaker 1: are a lot of things people don't like to think about,
Speaker 1: yet are absolutely crucial to our quality of life, but
Speaker 1: also to the teenage mutan ninja turtles. Yes, yes, so,
Speaker 1: like where your meat comes from or where your sewage
Speaker 1: goes when you flush it, And it matters. But it
Speaker 1: matters precisely because you don't don't want to have to
Speaker 1: think about it or deal with it yourself. You want
Speaker 1: to be able to get on with your life without
Speaker 1: worrying about what's going to happen to human waste. Right,
Speaker 1: you don't want to think about the possibility of having
Speaker 1: to take a job as a night man. Those would
Speaker 1: be the the people who were hired in uh in
Speaker 1: pre plumbing days to go and muck out cesspits with
Speaker 1: buckets and then take them away from cities. Yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: If if you've ever seen anything kind of like that
Speaker 1: odd on micro's dirty jobs, then then then that that
Speaker 1: is a by far more pleasant experience than what used
Speaker 1: to go on before modern sewage. Right. Well, the first
Speaker 1: point about this is that you should be thankful and
Speaker 1: appreciative of your local sewage and water treatment workers. Yes,
Speaker 1: thank you. But the second main point is that the
Speaker 1: history of how we deal with sewage is remarkably interesting. Yeah. Fast,
Speaker 1: in nineteenth century London, I want to tell you this story.
Speaker 1: In nineteenth century London, after the adoption of water closets
Speaker 1: around the city, sewers that were originally designed to allow
Speaker 1: rain runoff to drain into the Thames, the river that
Speaker 1: runs through the center of London, suddenly started filling up
Speaker 1: with human waste. And for for that, in various reasons,
Speaker 1: all of this human waste was suddenly running into the
Speaker 1: river in the center of town. And major river they
Speaker 1: the the heart of London. Parliament is built right along
Speaker 1: the town exactly right. So in the summer of eighteen
Speaker 1: fifty eight, the stink of the river got so bad
Speaker 1: that the members of Parliament could not put up with it.
Speaker 1: They had to. They had to soak the curtains of
Speaker 1: the windows of Parliament with calcium hypochloride the stuff you
Speaker 1: put in a swimming pool, and chlorine powder to try
Speaker 1: to protect their delicate little nostrils from the poop smell.
Speaker 1: But within a couple of weeks Elament was turning out
Speaker 1: legislation to modernize the sewage system of London. So then
Speaker 1: this event was known as the Great Sting. If there's
Speaker 1: a lesson to be learned from this podcast, y'all, it's
Speaker 1: if you want something done Philip politician's room with poop, poop. No,
Speaker 1: it doesn't have to be poop. I'm just you know
Speaker 1: the Okay, The broader takeaway is, if you want something
Speaker 1: done in a society, make it personally unpleasant to the politician,
Speaker 1: right anyway. Uh, the so, how do you revolutionize a
Speaker 1: sewage system in a big city like London. Well, it
Speaker 1: was an impressive engineering project and it was taken on
Speaker 1: by a guy named Joseph Basil Getty. I think I'm
Speaker 1: not sure quite how you pronounce his name, but it's
Speaker 1: b A z A l g E T t E.
Speaker 1: I can I can guarantee you the way that the
Speaker 1: Brits pronounced it is totally different from wherever that native
Speaker 1: wherever wherever that that name is native to. And he
Speaker 1: was the head engineer of London's Metropolitan Board of Works.
Speaker 1: So Basil Getty oversaw the construction of drink edge systems
Speaker 1: that interlocked throughout the city and they would divert waste
Speaker 1: away from London and into a downstream estuary, so all
Speaker 1: of the human waste is draining away from the city
Speaker 1: instead of into the centera directly. Yeah, so that was
Speaker 1: especially bad by the way when they were draining into
Speaker 1: the river, because they were also getting their drinking water
Speaker 1: from the river, and this was the time of Cholerado.
Speaker 1: There was actually a in the article you site, there
Speaker 1: was an illustration that an artist made at the time
Speaker 1: of the Thames showing London it's children and it's children
Speaker 1: were three diseases, one of which was cholera. Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1: And actually that article I want to site because where
Speaker 1: I read about this was in a slate Atlas Obscura
Speaker 1: article that was mainly highlighting actually how beautiful some of
Speaker 1: the pumping stations constructed during this sewage renovation were. And
Speaker 1: looking at these pictures, there are some truly gorgeous places
Speaker 1: in London that were created to funnel human feces. Yeah,
Speaker 1: in fact, I'm not kidding, they're beautiful. I've seen them.
Speaker 1: They do look really amazing. You can actually tour some
Speaker 1: of them. In fact, one of them is rentable. You
Speaker 1: can rent it for parties or for and I'm quoting
Speaker 1: the article, I don't know if this is actually on
Speaker 1: the website for the the the pumping station for viral videos.
Speaker 1: So one of the other funny things is that the
Speaker 1: equipment at some of these pump stations, well they ran
Speaker 1: on steam. This is Victorian era, so it was all
Speaker 1: steam pumps and at one location, Cross Nest, the pumps
Speaker 1: were named after the royal family, so each of the
Speaker 1: the Queen Victoria pump and the Prince Consort pump because
Speaker 1: royals are used to push and crap around. I guess yeah,
Speaker 1: I thought it was funny too, But now that the
Speaker 1: pumps themselves are enormous, which not a big surprise when
Speaker 1: you consider what job they have to do. And also
Speaker 1: steam technology a little bit more clunky. Yeah, And the
Speaker 1: design of the actual stations has kind of this Moorish
Speaker 1: patterns worked into the Byzantine and beautifully painted. It's it's
Speaker 1: remarkable that something that you would think most people would
Speaker 1: never ever see is still so ornate Victoria. That's the
Speaker 1: way that Victorians did things, y'all. Well, I do think
Speaker 1: it's very impressive and it gets one thinking about how
Speaker 1: monumental this task is of removing all of the waste
Speaker 1: that we produce and don't want to see and don't
Speaker 1: want to smell, and don't want to think about, and
Speaker 1: still have to get rid of in some way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And so taking all that away in a way that's efficient, effective,
Speaker 1: doesn't break down, doesn't stink up the place, and doesn't
Speaker 1: cause disease and unsanitary conditions. Sure, and so that kind
Speaker 1: of brings us up to well, so how do we
Speaker 1: do that now? Like what's our current state of affairs
Speaker 1: with with sewer systems? And it really depends um. Actually,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of sewer systems out there, especially
Speaker 1: with older cities where the sewer systems haven't really been
Speaker 1: updated that much since they were first built. Um, in fact,
Speaker 1: to our city, Atlanta, it's not that old of a city,
Speaker 1: especially if you consider that it was it was burned
Speaker 1: down at once. But the sewer system still is in
Speaker 1: some places and badly need of repair, maintenance, upgrading, that
Speaker 1: kind of thing. Um in fact, so much so that
Speaker 1: there have been some really well publicized criticisms of the
Speaker 1: sewer system here in Atlanta and how badly needs to improve.
Speaker 1: There was a deadline for the city to finish mandatory upgrades,
Speaker 1: which was a federal mandate because of the water quality
Speaker 1: in the Chattahoochee UH and UH other rivers around it
Speaker 1: the Atlanta area as well. The mandate said that by
Speaker 1: July first, two thousand and fourteen, this big list of
Speaker 1: upgrades had to happen. It was not gonna happen by
Speaker 1: July first, two thousand and fourteen, and so the city
Speaker 1: applied for an extension, and after some a the judge
Speaker 1: granted it, and now the deadline is two thousand, twenty
Speaker 1: seven to get those mandatory updates upgrades in place. And
Speaker 1: according to the city, the real reason and extension was
Speaker 1: needed in the first place, the reason why the upgrades
Speaker 1: had not happened was due to financial constraints. They just
Speaker 1: didn't have the money in the budget to dedicate to
Speaker 1: sewage system upgrades. UM. This was despite the fact that
Speaker 1: the sewage rates in Atlanta increased significantly over the last
Speaker 1: several years. I think it originally was somewhere around sixty
Speaker 1: dollars a month and went up to like a hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty a month for some places. And there's a
Speaker 1: fear that after two thousand and sixteen they're going to
Speaker 1: go up again in order to try and make these
Speaker 1: mandatory upgrades happen on schedule, even as far out as
Speaker 1: two thousand twenty seven. So this is a monumental task.
Speaker 1: These are enormous infrastructure pieces that are not there. They're
Speaker 1: hard to access, right they're underground, so that doesn't make
Speaker 1: it any easier, and they're everywhere, so it's tough. Um
Speaker 1: And in fact that Atlanta still has some combined sewer lines,
Speaker 1: which are not a good idea. You want to have
Speaker 1: separate sewer lines. Combined sewer lines essentially means that the
Speaker 1: sewer lines you have for your wastewater, your human waste,
Speaker 1: and the sewer lines you would have to deal with
Speaker 1: runoff like rainwater or if a water main were to
Speaker 1: break or something. That they're combined into one system, and
Speaker 1: that means if it's a really heavy rain, that system
Speaker 1: can overflow, which means untreated waste can seep into the
Speaker 1: water table. That makes me wonder if that has anything
Speaker 1: to do with If you're out taking a walk after
Speaker 1: a very heavy rain in Atlanta and you sometimes smell
Speaker 1: sewage e smell, that would likely be the problem. That
Speaker 1: these are pipes that have overflowed flowed, and they are
Speaker 1: this combined sewage type. Not all neighborhoods in Atlanta still
Speaker 1: have these. A lot of them have been upgraded, but
Speaker 1: there's still some historic neighborhoods that have not yet been upgraded.
Speaker 1: And by the way, I know I'm talking a lot
Speaker 1: about Atlanta, this is not unique to Atlanta. This is
Speaker 1: just an example of a problem that lots of cities have. Uh.
Speaker 1: There there are a lot of cities that after a
Speaker 1: hard reign you might be familiar with certain stinky kind
Speaker 1: of sewage e smells And it's probably because they too
Speaker 1: have some combined sewer lines and they have this overflow issue. Uh. Now,
Speaker 1: they're basic structure of a sanitary sewer also sometimes called
Speaker 1: a foul sewer, which is funny because those seem like
Speaker 1: contradictions sanitary and foul. Um. It's a series of underground
Speaker 1: tunnels and passageways that serve as a transportation system for sewage,
Speaker 1: for wastewater, and human waste. You can think of sewers
Speaker 1: kind of like a tree, So the pipes that go
Speaker 1: from your home are like the twigs that meet up
Speaker 1: with larger pipes in the neighborhood. Those would be the branches.
Speaker 1: Those eventually empty out into the main sewer lines also
Speaker 1: called the trunk mains, so that's the main the largest ones,
Speaker 1: usually several feet in diameter um those lead to water
Speaker 1: treatment plants, and will get more on those in a second.
Speaker 1: But this isn't all just moving due to gravity, No, No,
Speaker 1: Mostly you try to design a sewer system so that
Speaker 1: gravity does as much of the work as possible. So
Speaker 1: you would normally put whatever whatever treatment facility is at
Speaker 1: the lowest end of an elevation and let gravity do
Speaker 1: a lot of the work for you. But that's not
Speaker 1: always possible, and it's you know, it's not always convenient.
Speaker 1: Atlanta is a city that has lots of hills in it.
Speaker 1: It's not always easy for you to direct waste to
Speaker 1: go specifically where you want it to go. Sometimes you
Speaker 1: have to give it a little help. And so there
Speaker 1: are pumps or there are lifting stations that will continue
Speaker 1: to move waste, water and waste along to get to
Speaker 1: the destination. Um So, depending upon the geographic nature of
Speaker 1: the city and also the ground underneath it. Right, if
Speaker 1: you hit like really rocky ground and that that presents
Speaker 1: a problem, um you you may have to have pumps
Speaker 1: to facilitate this. Now the sewers are covered. That means
Speaker 1: that the components are almost all underground, with the exception
Speaker 1: of the wastewater treatment plants, and those are in sealed pathways.
Speaker 1: And that's to limit any interaction between the sewage and
Speaker 1: the environment, because that is a bad thing. You don't
Speaker 1: want that to happen. Um. And that's very different from
Speaker 1: the open sewers that preceded these kind of systems, which
Speaker 1: were obviously uh breeding grounds for disease and could cause
Speaker 1: lots of issues, not just quality of life, but I
Speaker 1: mean could be a significant health risk factor in a city.
Speaker 1: So the sewage ends up heading toward some sort of
Speaker 1: wastewater treatment facility. Yes, yeah, in in developed countries, you
Speaker 1: usually have like some sort of wastewater facility that is
Speaker 1: working on um some scale of sophistication. They're generally speaking,
Speaker 1: three different processes you can go through in order to
Speaker 1: to remove waste from water and eat it. And depending
Speaker 1: upon the sophistication of the plant, it may do one
Speaker 1: or two or all three of those, and they are
Speaker 1: in a specific order, so uh, they actually have names
Speaker 1: of primary, secondary, and tertiary. UM. And you want this
Speaker 1: because if you don't treat the wastewater, it doesn't just
Speaker 1: smell bad like we said, it causes disease. There are
Speaker 1: a lot of types of bacteria that can be found
Speaker 1: in human waste, including stuff like E. Coli. Even if
Speaker 1: you yourself aren't sick, you can have bacteria in your
Speaker 1: in the waste you produce that could make people sick.
Speaker 1: Um and organic material in wastewater would end up being
Speaker 1: like a big old buffet feast for all sorts of bacteria.
Speaker 1: And that bacteria in turn consumes oxygen while it's eating
Speaker 1: the organic matter. Now, if that organic matter happens to
Speaker 1: be in water, that means the oxygen supply of that
Speaker 1: water gets depleted, which means anything living in that water,
Speaker 1: like fish, have less oxygen available to them, so they
Speaker 1: could actually suffocate in their own environment. Um. Also, wastewater
Speaker 1: has nitrogen and phosphates in it that can end up
Speaker 1: promoting the growth of algae which can block sunlight. It
Speaker 1: can also foul waterways, so that's an issue. And uh, this,
Speaker 1: this can become a catastrophe. Right, this can end up
Speaker 1: causing enormous issues all along the way, not just for people,
Speaker 1: but for the general Uh yeah, ecosystem around the city. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So these wastewater plants, like I said, have these three
Speaker 1: main methods of treating the stuff that comes out through
Speaker 1: the sewers. Yeah, so I'm going to guess the first
Speaker 1: method has something to do with those big pools we
Speaker 1: see around the water treatment plants. You would be correct. So, uh, now,
Speaker 1: have you ever lived in a place that had a
Speaker 1: septic tank? Yeah? I have? I I have you, Joe
Speaker 1: or def you always lived in a place that had
Speaker 1: sewer systems. We always had sewer systems. You're lucky. Uh,
Speaker 1: septic tanks no fun. But the way a septic tank
Speaker 1: works is in general the same way that the primary
Speaker 1: means of of removing waste from wastewater works in that
Speaker 1: it allows solid waste to settle at the bottom. Anything
Speaker 1: that is lighter than water floats on the top in
Speaker 1: what is called scum for obvious reasons, and then the
Speaker 1: water in the middle is relatively free of waste. I
Speaker 1: say relatively because there's still bacteria. There's still other things
Speaker 1: like phosphates and nitrates in there um, and so you
Speaker 1: can treat that water, usually with something like chlorine, and
Speaker 1: kill off a lot of that and allow the water
Speaker 1: to pass through the system. So septic tanks, a lot
Speaker 1: of them are designed to drain, but they retain the
Speaker 1: solid wastes and the scum. It's just the water that
Speaker 1: they allowed to go through. If they in fact, they
Speaker 1: can be treated and then eventually you have to have
Speaker 1: someone come in and pump out all the solid waste
Speaker 1: that accumulates, because it will eventually get to a level
Speaker 1: that you have to have that happen. Uh. Similar to
Speaker 1: that is this primary treatment approach, where these large pools
Speaker 1: are where it allows organic matter to sink to the bottom,
Speaker 1: scum floats to the top, and then the water will
Speaker 1: flow into a secondary holding pool and this process is
Speaker 1: repeated as it goes from pool to pool each stage,
Speaker 1: removing more and more of this particulate matter the pooh
Speaker 1: in other words, and it gets rid of quite a
Speaker 1: lot of it, really, yeah, quite a lot of it,
Speaker 1: although not as much as you might want before discharging
Speaker 1: it into your local water supply, because it can be
Speaker 1: around half total of all the solids, organic material and
Speaker 1: bacteria from wastewater. So now keep in mind that there
Speaker 1: are a lot of wastewater plants that this is their
Speaker 1: only real means of treating the wastewater. There are more
Speaker 1: sophisticated plants that then have a secondary approach which involves
Speaker 1: removing more organic materials and nutrients by introducing bacteria to
Speaker 1: the water on purpose. So this is still with then
Speaker 1: the water treatment plan. It's not released out into the
Speaker 1: wild yet. They use aerated tanks because again the bacteria
Speaker 1: need oxygen as well, and they allow the bacteria to
Speaker 1: just chop down on all that organic matter that's inside there,
Speaker 1: and then they move that water to settling tanks to
Speaker 1: separate the bacteria from the water because you don't want
Speaker 1: to release the bacteria into the wild. And that approach
Speaker 1: can remove up to the solids and organic materials and wastewater,
Speaker 1: which again you have to treat with like chlorine or something,
Speaker 1: and then you release it out the third stages the
Speaker 1: tertiary treatment. Uh Yeah, very easily easy to remember because
Speaker 1: you know, if they have all three, it's primary, secondary,
Speaker 1: in tertiary, tertiary. There are actually a couple of different
Speaker 1: approaches to it, but in general, it's using more chemicals
Speaker 1: to remove stuff like nitrogen and phosphorus from the water
Speaker 1: and also could include filtration systems to clean the water
Speaker 1: as much as possible before again discharging it. So uh,
Speaker 1: in developed nations, you usually see ones that have at
Speaker 1: least two, if not all three of these. Some of
Speaker 1: them may only have one, but they're all used to
Speaker 1: remove as much waste as possible. Now here's the thing.
Speaker 1: You remove all that solid waste, you allow it to
Speaker 1: settle at the bottom. You still got to do something
Speaker 1: with it. You know, it can't just sit there forever.
Speaker 1: Plasma waste converters, That's what I said. Yeah, plasma stolen
Speaker 1: your thunder. No, No, it's perfect. That would that would
Speaker 1: be ideal if you could, if you could create a
Speaker 1: plasma waste converter facility. Now granted, ideally you would have
Speaker 1: a plasma waste converter facility that was adjacent both to
Speaker 1: a wastewater treatment plant and a landfill, which otherwise would
Speaker 1: be the worst neighborhood in town. But but this would
Speaker 1: allow you to do things like take that organic waste,
Speaker 1: put it into a plasma waste converter, which would then
Speaker 1: plasma ify the material. It would gasify it because it's
Speaker 1: it's carbon base, it's organic. Uh. That gas could be
Speaker 1: used to create sin gas, which is a fuel that
Speaker 1: you could use to generate electricity, possibly even enough electricity
Speaker 1: to keep running the plasma ice converter if you had
Speaker 1: enough material to put into the furnace. You probably wouldn't
Speaker 1: with a waste management facility because you wouldn't be removing
Speaker 1: the solid waste that frequently. I would imagine you would
Speaker 1: allow it to accumulate a little bit. But with a
Speaker 1: handy dandy landfill, Yeah, with the landfill next door, then
Speaker 1: you could just start mining the landfill for fuel. This
Speaker 1: is not how we deal with solid waste right now,
Speaker 1: by the way, We mostly just dump the solid waste
Speaker 1: in a landfill or we incinerate it. Both of those
Speaker 1: obviously have environmental impact, yes, less environmental impact than just
Speaker 1: letting it hang out in the water. Yeah, but still
Speaker 1: and and different from that too, but still yeah, yeah, still,
Speaker 1: I agreed. It is not the same at all as
Speaker 1: just letting the waste flow into the rivers of the world. Right,
Speaker 1: So this is all what's going on right now in
Speaker 1: developed countries. But what about in developing nations? Yeah, so
Speaker 1: for billions of people, this is a real current issue,
Speaker 1: of serious problem there. They're more than two billion people
Speaker 1: who do not have access to sanitary waste treatment infrastructure
Speaker 1: at all. Um. A lot of developing countries lack any
Speaker 1: sort of organized sewer system, or they might have open sewers,
Speaker 1: and as we've established, those are ongoing health hazards. Uh.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of charities that are dedicated to
Speaker 1: trying well, not just charities, but foundations and organizations that
Speaker 1: are dedicated to trying to make a difference in this
Speaker 1: and to create ways for various nations to create to
Speaker 1: to build these infrastructures, these sewer infrastructures and treatment facilities.
Speaker 1: So there's the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. You probably
Speaker 1: have heard of Bill Gates, one of the creators of
Speaker 1: Microsoft UM and you know he is. He and his
Speaker 1: wife have famously dedicated billions of their dollars to various causes,
Speaker 1: and the Bill and Gates, the Bill and Melinda Gates
Speaker 1: Foundation rather has spent a lot of this time and
Speaker 1: money on trying to bring clean sewer infrastructure to developing nations.
Speaker 1: Their web page points out and that these are are
Speaker 1: facts that come from the United Nations that there are
Speaker 1: about two and a half billion people in the world
Speaker 1: who practice open defecation or lack adequate sanitation facilities. So
Speaker 1: two and a half billion people, it's hard to imagine
Speaker 1: living where we live and having access to that all
Speaker 1: our lives. It is it's hard to imagine that. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's a staggering number. So another two billion rely on
Speaker 1: septic tanks that aren't safely maintained, or they're using other
Speaker 1: systems that dispose of raw sewage by essentially draining it
Speaker 1: into like open systems like fields or rivers or whatever.
Speaker 1: So they're in a condition that is similar to the
Speaker 1: one that you were talking about with London back in
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century. So the United Nations has a division
Speaker 1: called U n Water dedicated to bringing solutions to fresh
Speaker 1: water issues, including sanitation. It's not solely focused on that,
Speaker 1: but that's under its purview, and their purpose is to
Speaker 1: help developing nations implement systems and solutions to improve sanitation
Speaker 1: and access to freshwater. So they're trying to help nations
Speaker 1: implement the stuff too that it's not like, you know,
Speaker 1: just jumping in and doing it themselves. They're they're trying
Speaker 1: to facilitate. There are also some other ones. There's charity Water,
Speaker 1: which is dedicated to bringing clean drinking water to developing
Speaker 1: countries and includes some strategies for water treatment. Its main
Speaker 1: focus is really creating ways to make clean drinkable water,
Speaker 1: but it does have a few of those projects that
Speaker 1: related more to water sanitation UM. And then there's water
Speaker 1: dot org, which is a charity that focuses on clean
Speaker 1: water and sanitation and developing countries that was co founded
Speaker 1: by Matt Damon. UM. I was going to do the
Speaker 1: the Team America version of Matt Damon, but I'm kind
Speaker 1: in this case, in this in this instance, I'm going
Speaker 1: to do. I give him his do. Actually I give
Speaker 1: him his do anyway. He's a he's a great Yeah, Like,
Speaker 1: how could I even make fun of someone who is
Speaker 1: already going well out of his way to promote these
Speaker 1: sort of things. Water dot Org also founded a division
Speaker 1: called water Credit, which uses micro loans as a way
Speaker 1: to help fund clean water infrastructure and developing countries. And
Speaker 1: I thought that was really cool. And of course there
Speaker 1: are a ton of other organizations, whether their charities or
Speaker 1: foundations or political organizations, that are dedicated to bringing modern
Speaker 1: infrastructure to developing countries with a water sanitation, which obviously
Speaker 1: that's a huge, huge deal. Of course. So that's the
Speaker 1: past and the and the present of sewage. But what
Speaker 1: my fellows, I ask you, is the future of sewage.
Speaker 1: So many ponds. But I'm going to hold no no, yeah,
Speaker 1: see I same same here. I'm going to ask you, Lauren,
Speaker 1: because I have a feeling that you can tell us
Speaker 1: what the future of sewage may. In fact, b I can,
Speaker 1: in the grand tradition of our hosts here asking questions
Speaker 1: that only we can answer because our notes are about
Speaker 1: that subject. I have a bunch of things to tell you,
Speaker 1: guys about the future of sewage. Uh. First of all, okay,
Speaker 1: so when you think about it, sewage is our very
Speaker 1: grossest biosign. It contains traces of all kinds of data
Speaker 1: about our lives and our health through our sewage. You
Speaker 1: can find out like what nasty viruses and bacteria were
Speaker 1: infected with, what good bacteria we have in our guts,
Speaker 1: whether we're on antibiotics, what other prescription and illicit drugs
Speaker 1: we might be taking, especially if we're trying to smuggle
Speaker 1: them in our rectum. Especially then this reminds me of
Speaker 1: the Scrubs musical episode where they have a song that
Speaker 1: actually says everything comes down to pooh, it does? It does?
Speaker 1: We can even tell whether our bodies are stressed out.
Speaker 1: And that last one is a little bit more complicated.
Speaker 1: But in the past few years there's been all this
Speaker 1: research into bio markers like isoprostanes, which are products of
Speaker 1: oxidative stress in our selves and are therefore correlated with
Speaker 1: our overall well being. That is crazy. Yeah, So we're
Speaker 1: letting this wealth of data go to waste flush. So
Speaker 1: that was a way weaker pun than it was necessitated.
Speaker 1: Voice um but uh, but there are teams that are
Speaker 1: looking to tap into this datas. Specifically, there is a
Speaker 1: research group out of m I T that has that
Speaker 1: has really big plans for our humble sewage starting in Cambridge.
Speaker 1: Would you call it a data dump? Yes, Also, I'm
Speaker 1: sure that's the first time I've heard that. I'm sorry, guys,
Speaker 1: I'm twelve. So so this this team is testing out
Speaker 1: how they can collect and use our sewage to keep
Speaker 1: an eye on the on the health of the population
Speaker 1: and to predict and possibly therefore help prevent the spread
Speaker 1: of disease. So yeah, while I make these little jokes,
Speaker 1: I think that this is fascinating, the idea that we
Speaker 1: could use this kind of information to potentially save thousands
Speaker 1: of lives. Oh yeah, okay, So so it's called the
Speaker 1: Underworld's Project, right, Uh No, no vampires or a werewolves
Speaker 1: that I'm personally aware of. Still, I'm still okay with that.
Speaker 1: But it does involve collaboration among architects and designers and
Speaker 1: engineers and microbiologists and geneticists and computational biologists, so multidisciplinary. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: These are researchers from five different m I T Research labs,
Speaker 1: plus Quwate University and the Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research,
Speaker 1: and they've they've got a two year planned that's already
Speaker 1: in its beginning stages. Um. First, first they need to
Speaker 1: figure out the prime time or times to collect sewage. Well,
Speaker 1: because because you want a maximum of human waste in
Speaker 1: the water and a minimum of like household appliant way
Speaker 1: like getting human waste, not what's being washed off of
Speaker 1: the dishes and the dishwasher and the and the washing machine. Yeah,
Speaker 1: especially because that kind of stuff probably contains like detergents
Speaker 1: and cleansers that are going to start erasing your microbial data. Okay,
Speaker 1: So like commercial breaks for the super Bowl would be
Speaker 1: you know, prime time or if you're in my house,
Speaker 1: the super Bowl between the commercials would be the prime
Speaker 1: time to grab it. So o, K, Joe, I'm just
Speaker 1: imagining a lot of pooping. You know, let's not delve
Speaker 1: too deeply into my my personal history with the super Bowl.
Speaker 1: It is called the super Bowl. You are an endless
Speaker 1: font of I did an episode of tech Stuff about
Speaker 1: toilets with Josh Clark. I could go see. Okay, so
Speaker 1: you've got to figure out this this perfect time where
Speaker 1: you're or as close to perfect as possible, where you're
Speaker 1: going to not have a diluted or or contaminated source
Speaker 1: that you can actually get valid information. Right, you want
Speaker 1: a pure, pure, it's as close to pure as possible
Speaker 1: human waste. Yes. Uh So, so next they're they're going
Speaker 1: to work on building software that's capable of of blending.
Speaker 1: And I really wish I had a better verb for this,
Speaker 1: because it sounds so gross when you put it like that,
Speaker 1: of blending the data that they've pull out from the
Speaker 1: sewers with the demographics of the neighborhoods that it comes
Speaker 1: from in order to build a comprehensive map of Cambridge's
Speaker 1: sewers and its population. And that's that's capable of keeping
Speaker 1: itself updated in real time. Alright, So not not just
Speaker 1: knowing like what information is contained within the waste, but
Speaker 1: where that waste came from. So that way, if there
Speaker 1: is a problem, you know how to address it. You can't.
Speaker 1: It's not just oh, somewhere in the city there's an
Speaker 1: outbreak of a serious disease. You would have a better
Speaker 1: idea than that. This is how to attach metadata to
Speaker 1: your poop. Yeah yeah, yeah yeah. And okay, next, robots,
Speaker 1: all right, because you knew that there had to be
Speaker 1: robots in this episode. Somewhere it has been severely lacking robots. Well,
Speaker 1: that's probably because in Cambridge, the the need for night
Speaker 1: men has drastically dropped. No longer need to have someone
Speaker 1: muck out cesspools every night. Well, well right now they're
Speaker 1: they're out there actually collecting samples from the sewers by hand.
Speaker 1: Oh so I guess there are nights, so they're kind
Speaker 1: of our night men right now, our night students rather.
Speaker 1: But but yeah, they're they're building a set of sewage
Speaker 1: collecting robots that will be able to automatically, uh draw
Speaker 1: in process and analyze sewage from key sites at key times,
Speaker 1: and then upload the data directly into this software map.
Speaker 1: So I'm I'm pretty sure I haven't read like extremely
Speaker 1: specific descriptions of these robots, but the idea that I
Speaker 1: get is that, yes, they are planning on sending robots
Speaker 1: that have mass spectrometers and DNA sequencers down into sewers. Uh.
Speaker 1: I'm almost certain a horror movie has got to come
Speaker 1: out of this particular scenario. I'm just not sure if
Speaker 1: it's Chud the Terminator or some common Yeah, it could
Speaker 1: be Googlies. The Googlies, though I think that the cover
Speaker 1: of that movie overplayed the toilet. I agree. I agree
Speaker 1: very unfortunately that Flukeman. I will say, however, that's the
Speaker 1: only drawback the movie Googlies has. It's the misleading cover
Speaker 1: of the VHS tape. Other drawbacks that I could imagine
Speaker 1: people potentially objecting to surrounding the system is I mean, okay,
Speaker 1: I'm sure that a few of you y'all out there
Speaker 1: are some of our crossover audience that also listens to
Speaker 1: stuff they don't want you to know, or is just
Speaker 1: generally concerned about their privacy. Um, and after all, shouldn't
Speaker 1: the contents of your privy remain private? Nice? Maybe if
Speaker 1: you're on the privy council, you can know the King
Speaker 1: had a whole bunch of people on the privy Council.
Speaker 1: So but don't worry, don't worry the team. The team
Speaker 1: says that the system will absolutely not be able to
Speaker 1: tell what specific buildings the waste came from, only from
Speaker 1: like a larger network. It's it's going to be more
Speaker 1: on the trunk side, the trunk side, so so essentially
Speaker 1: you're talking about the the larger pathways that many different
Speaker 1: businesses and households empty into before it goes on to
Speaker 1: the wastewater treatment facility. Share. So during this initial run
Speaker 1: they're going to be focusing on viruses and bacteria that
Speaker 1: cause common diseases in the United States, like the flu,
Speaker 1: but it's really a pilot run for larger systems to
Speaker 1: be built in other places, starting with Kuwait City hypothetically
Speaker 1: in if all goes well. The project, by the way,
Speaker 1: is funded by a grant, like a four million dollar
Speaker 1: grant from um the joint Kuwait M I T Center
Speaker 1: for Natural Resources and the Environment, which I did not
Speaker 1: know existed until like yesterday. And I think it's pretty rad.
Speaker 1: It's really interesting. Um And and in the future, you
Speaker 1: know that this isn't just for for the flu, you know,
Speaker 1: like I was saying earlier, it could be used to
Speaker 1: monitor like the effects of public policy, like changes in
Speaker 1: patterns of disease when vaccines become available, or when new
Speaker 1: regulations like the one where trans fats were banned in
Speaker 1: a lot of foods, whether people get healthier as a
Speaker 1: result of that. Or it could even study the way
Speaker 1: that relatively unpredictable viruses like stars or a bola moved
Speaker 1: through a community and and hopefully use that kind of
Speaker 1: data to to help stop people from getting sick in
Speaker 1: the first place. Um Oh, and it can give officials
Speaker 1: a way of watching businesses and making sure they're not
Speaker 1: actually putting housards waist down into the environment. Excellent. But hey,
Speaker 1: I know what you're thinking. I don't think you do.
Speaker 1: What if you do want to monitor your own waste?
Speaker 1: What if you want someone following up with you about that?
Speaker 1: I still corrected you were thinking what I was thinking.
Speaker 1: I was thinking that what you're getting at is those
Speaker 1: Japanese poop analyzing toilets that I've heard about for years. Now, Okay,
Speaker 1: they're not poop analyzing yet. Okay, but there is a
Speaker 1: Japanese toilet company called Toto that has a line of
Speaker 1: smart toilets UM that have your an analysis units that
Speaker 1: will record your glucose levels UM and they've got sensors
Speaker 1: that will record like your your body weight and your
Speaker 1: blood pressure and stuff like that. And they can now,
Speaker 1: in this age of smartphones, automatically send that to to
Speaker 1: you or to your doctor or whatever you want. I
Speaker 1: just don't ever want them to be like Twitter functionality,
Speaker 1: where it's just tweeting to all you know, you know
Speaker 1: what's happening, you know is happening right now. I certainly listeners.
Speaker 1: I promise I will never activate that feature. Now checked
Speaker 1: in toilet, the Super bowls on, and then suddenly you
Speaker 1: see him tweeting a lot and actually, okay, well not
Speaker 1: the Twitter thing, but the poop thing. UM experts at
Speaker 1: m I T S Sensible City Lab that's s E
Speaker 1: N s E an Sensible Stee Lab, which is part
Speaker 1: of the team that's working on Underworld, thinks that in
Speaker 1: the relatively near future there will be enough demand for
Speaker 1: for this kind of service that manufacturers will begin supplying,
Speaker 1: if not toilets, to consumers that are capable of automatically
Speaker 1: doing this and at the very least little things that
Speaker 1: you could kind of drop in the bowl micro sense.
Speaker 1: Actually this doesn't surprise me at all, just based upon
Speaker 1: the the trend we've seen of people wanting to get
Speaker 1: more data, more feedback about their daily lives, everything from
Speaker 1: how much movement they do, to the stuff that they're eating,
Speaker 1: to how much sleep they're getting. Uh, this is something
Speaker 1: that I think is completely rational in that approach, because
Speaker 1: we have this this need to quantify things in our
Speaker 1: life that previously we thought were unquantifiable. Yeah, we're like,
Speaker 1: oh well we can so yeah. Well also, there's so
Speaker 1: much research into um the microbiome and how important that
Speaker 1: is to our overall health, not not only our gas
Speaker 1: or intestinal health. But our mental health and everything else.
Speaker 1: I think that's a good point. But one thing that
Speaker 1: I would see in the future of waste is not
Speaker 1: just what information we can get out of waste, but
Speaker 1: smart things we can figure out to actually do with
Speaker 1: the stuff of waste, as opposed to just burning it
Speaker 1: or throwing it in a landfill. Right. We already mentioned
Speaker 1: a waste conversion, which is just a fun thing to
Speaker 1: apply any waste product too. But is there anything else
Speaker 1: people have proposed doing with human waste that would be
Speaker 1: relatively clean and safe and useful to do. I mean,
Speaker 1: I know there is. They were like composting toilets and
Speaker 1: things like that, But I mean, if you're interested in that,
Speaker 1: that technology is around today, but on a larger scale. Yes,
Speaker 1: there is a company out there that's processing sewage in
Speaker 1: order to create clean cellulose, which can then be used
Speaker 1: to make recycled paper. Definitely, and maybe with a little
Speaker 1: bit more materials research stuff like road pavement or home installation.
Speaker 1: So could you use this recycled sewage into paper to
Speaker 1: make it into toilet paper keep the cycle going? Interesting? Sure? Can.
Speaker 1: The company is called Applied Clean Tech, and and it's
Speaker 1: a truly global business. It's run by Israeli entrepreneurs out
Speaker 1: of San Diego and has facilities in Canada and Holland
Speaker 1: and Mexico and Israel. And they they what's the word like,
Speaker 1: franchise out their technology to waste treatment plants to let
Speaker 1: basically anyone who wants to and can pay for it
Speaker 1: take it on. And they're currently producing six tons of
Speaker 1: cellulose per day in the process. They claim that they're
Speaker 1: reducing um the sledge formation in water treatment plants, which
Speaker 1: is stuff that kind of clogs the infrastructure. It's all
Speaker 1: the all the food matter that you didn't digest and
Speaker 1: and toilet paper waste stuff like that. Uh, They're they're
Speaker 1: claiming they're reducing that by about That's fantastic. I mean,
Speaker 1: like that is one of the things that I'm interested
Speaker 1: in is finding these these responsible ways to uh to
Speaker 1: dispose of waste or recycle it in some way so
Speaker 1: that we don't just create another environmental issue that will
Speaker 1: have to deal with further down the line. And uh,
Speaker 1: while well you know, we did mention plasma waste converters,
Speaker 1: and that is one of those things I just love
Speaker 1: to talk about because I had such a fascinating conversation
Speaker 1: with the guy at Georgia Tech who was one of
Speaker 1: the minds behind the idea. It's admittedly a difficult thing
Speaker 1: to sell to anyone because it's it's an incredibly expensive
Speaker 1: proposition on the front end, uh, in order to get
Speaker 1: a facility like that up and running. And if you
Speaker 1: could do that, and you could prove that it was
Speaker 1: sustainable in the long run, then I'm sure you would
Speaker 1: see a lot more widespread adoption. But that initial barrier
Speaker 1: to entry is so high that it remains one of
Speaker 1: those um difficult technologies to really push. So this is
Speaker 1: really cool. I think it's really interesting. And you know,
Speaker 1: I know that, uh, this is an incredibly important we
Speaker 1: We've stressed it many times. It's an incredibly important uh
Speaker 1: um uh topic and uh and one that that lends
Speaker 1: itself to endless number of puns. So we've had both
Speaker 1: some fun with this and and really wanted to make
Speaker 1: sure we end saying this is a really big deal.
Speaker 1: If you are interested in helping various efforts that are
Speaker 1: trying to bring sanitation to developing countries, I highly recommend
Speaker 1: you do some research. Find an organization that you're comfortable with.
Speaker 1: Always do research on any charitable organization. Just make sure
Speaker 1: that they're being run, uh, you know, responsibly, and they're
Speaker 1: being held accountable, and definitely do help because this is
Speaker 1: something that makes a real difference in lives and uh,
Speaker 1: it was a really fun topic to look into, honestly. So, guys,
Speaker 1: if you have any suggestions for future topics that we
Speaker 1: can look at here on the show, email us. The
Speaker 1: address is f W Thinking at how Stuff Works dot com,
Speaker 1: or you can drop us a line on Twitter, Google
Speaker 1: Plus or Facebook. At Twitter and Google Plus, we are
Speaker 1: f W Thinking on Facebook. Just search f W thinking
Speaker 1: in the search bar will pop right up. You can
Speaker 1: leave us a message there and we will talk to
Speaker 1: you again really soon. Problem For more on this topic
Speaker 1: and the future of technology, visit forward thinking dot com.