-
Whenever I get to travel for work,
-
I try to find out where my
drinking water comes from,
-
and where my poop and pee go.
-
(Laughter)
-
This has earned me the nickname
"The Poo Princess" in my family,
-
and it's ruined many family vacations,
because this is not normal.
-
But thinking about where it all goes
is the first step in activating
-
what are actually superpowers
in our poop and pee.
-
(Laughter)
-
Yeah.
-
And if we use them well,
-
we can live healthier
and more beautifully.
-
Check out this landscape
in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
-
Just notice what kinds of words
and feelings come to mind.
-
This landscape was watered
with treated sewage water.
-
Does that change anything for you?
-
I imagine it might.
-
And that's OK.
-
How we feel about this
-
is going to determine exactly
how innovative we can be.
-
And I want to explain how it works,
-
but what words do I use?
-
I mean, I can use profane words
like "shit" and "piss,"
-
and then my grandma won't watch the video.
-
Or I can use childish words
like "poo" and "pee." Eh.
-
Or I can use scientific words
like "excrement" and "feces." Humph.
-
I'll use a mix.
-
(Laughter)
-
It's all I got. (Laughs)
-
So, in this suburb,
-
the poo and the pee and the wash water
are going to this treatment plant
-
right in the middle of the community.
-
It looks more like a park
than a treatment plant.
-
The poo at the very bottom
of all those layers of gravel --
-
not touching anyone --
-
is providing solid food
for those marsh plants.
-
And the clean, clear water
that comes out the other end
-
is traveling underground
to water each person's yard.
-
So even though they're in a desert,
-
they get their own personal oasis.
-
This approach is called
Integrated Water Management,
-
or holistic or closed-loop.
-
Whatever you want to call it,
-
it's in conflict with the status quo
of how we think about sanitation,
-
which is contain, treat, push it away.
-
But in this approach,
we're doing one step better.
-
We're designing for reuse
from the very beginning,
-
because everything does get reused,
-
only now we're planning for it.
-
And often, that makes for
really beautiful spaces.
-
But the most important thing
about this system
-
isn't the technicals of how it works.
-
It's how you feel about it.
-
Do you want this in your yard?
-
Why not?
-
I got really curious about this question.
-
Why don't we see more
innovation in sanitation?
-
Why isn't that kind of thing
the new normal?
-
And I care so much about this question,
-
that I work for a nonprofit called Recode.
-
We want to accelerate adoption
-
of sustainable building
and development practices.
-
We want more innovation.
-
But a lot of times,
whole categories of innovation --
-
ones that can help us
live more beautifully --
-
turn out to be illegal.
-
Today's regulations and codes
were written under the assumption
-
that best practices
would remain best practices,
-
with incremental updates forever and ever.
-
But innovation isn't always incremental.
-
It turns out, how we feel
about any particular new technique
-
gets into everything we do:
-
how we talk about it,
-
how we encourage people to study,
-
our jokes, our codes ...
-
And it ultimately determines
how innovative we can be.
-
So, that's the first reason
we don't innovate in sanitation.
-
We're kind of uncomfortable
talking about sanitation,
-
that's why I've gotten called
"The Poo Princess" so much.
-
The second reason is:
-
we think the problem is solved
here in the US.
-
But not so.
-
Here in the US we still get sick
from drinking shit in out sewage water.
-
Seven million people get sick every year,
-
900 die annually.
-
and we're not taking a holistic
approach to making it better.
-
So we're not solving it.
-
Where I live in Portland, Oregon,
-
I can't take Echo for a swim
during the rainy season,
-
because we dump raw sewage
sometimes into our river.
-
Our rainwater and our sewage
go to the same treatment plant.
-
Too much rain overflows into the river.
-
And Portland is not alone here.
-
Forty percent of municipalities self-report
-
dumping raw or partially treated
sewage into our waterways.
-
The other bummer going on here
with our status quo
-
is that half of all of your poop and pee
is going to fertilize farmland.
-
The other half is being incinerated
-
or land-filled.
-
And that's a bummer to me,
-
because there are amazing nutrients
in your daily doody.
-
It is comparable to pig manure;
-
we're omnivores, they're omnivores.
-
Think of your poo and pee
as a health smoothie for a tree.
-
(Laughter)
-
The other bummer going on here
-
is that we're quickly moving
all the drugs we take into our waterways.
-
The average wastewater treatment plant
can remove maybe half of the drugs
-
that come in.
-
The other half goes
right out the other side.
-
Consider what a cocktail
of pharmaceuticals --
-
hormones, steroids, Vicodin --
-
does to a fish,
-
to a dog,
-
to a child.
-
But this isn't just some problem
that we need to contain.
-
If we flip this around,
we can create a resource
-
that can solve so many
of our other problems.
-
And I want to get you
comfortable with this idea,
-
so imagine the things I'm going
to show you, these technologies,
-
and this attitude that says,
-
"We're going to reuse this.
-
Let's design to make it beautiful" --
-
as advanced potty training.
-
(Laughter)
-
I think you're ready for it.
-
I think we as a culture are ready
for advanced potty training.
-
And there are three great
reasons to enroll today.
-
Number one:
-
we can fertilize our food.
-
Each one of us is pooping
and peeing something
-
that could fertilize half
or maybe all of our food,
-
depending on our diet.
-
That dark brown poo in the toilet
is dark brown because of what?
-
Dead stuff, bacteria.
-
That's carbon.
-
And carbon, if we're getting
that into the soil,
-
is going to bind to the other minerals
and nutrients in there.
-
Boom! Healthier food.
-
Voilà! Healthier people.
-
Chemical fertilizers by definition
don't have carbon in them.
-
Imagine if we could move our animal manure
and our human manure to our soil,
-
we might not need to rely
on fossil fuel-based fertilizers,
-
mine minerals from far away.
-
Imagine how much energy we could save.
-
Now, some of us are concerned
-
about industrial pollutants
contaminating this reuse cycle.
-
That can be addressed.
-
But we need to separate our discomfort
about talking about poo and pee
-
so we can calmly talk
about how we want to reuse it
-
and what things we don't want to reuse.
-
And get this:
-
if we change our approach to sanitation,
-
we can start to slow down climate change.
-
Remember that carbon in the poop?
-
If we can get that into our soil bank,
-
it's going to start to absorb
carbon dioxide that we put into the air.
-
And that could help
slow down global warming.
-
I want to show you some brave souls
-
who've had the courage to embrace
this advanced potty training approach.
-
So those folks in New Mexico --
-
why did they do it?
-
'Cause they're in a desert?
'Cause they save money? Yeah.
-
But more importantly,
they felt comfortable
-
seeing what was going
down the toilet as a resource.
-
Here's an average house
in Portland, Oregon.
-
This house is special
because they have a composting toilet
-
turning all their poo and pee,
over time, into a soil amendment.
-
Their wash water, their shower water,
is going underground
-
to a series of mulch basins,
-
and then watering that orchard downhill.
-
When they went to get this permitted,
-
it wasn't allowed in Oregon.
-
But it was allowed
in five other states nearby.
-
That was Recode's -- my organization's --
first code-change campaign.
-
Here's a great example where
the Integrated Water Management approach
-
was the cheapest.
-
This is three high-rise residential
buildings in downtown Portland,
-
and they're not flushing
to the sewer system.
-
How?
-
Well, their wash water
is getting reused to flush toilets,
-
cool mechanical systems,
-
water the landscape.
-
And then once the building
has thoroughly used everything --
-
aka, shat in it --
-
it's treated to highest standard
right on-site by plants and bacteria,
-
and then infiltrated
into the groundwater right below.
-
And all that was cheaper
-
than updating the surrounding
sewer infrastructure.
-
So that's the last reason
we should get really excited
-
about doing things differently:
-
we can save a lot of money.
-
This was the first permit
of its kind in Oregon.
-
Brave and open-minded people
sat down and felt comfortable saying,
-
"Yeah, that shit makes sense."
-
(Laughter)
-
"Let's do it."
-
(Applause)
-
You know?
-
I keep showing examples
-
where everyone's reusing
everything on-site.
-
Why?
-
Well, when we look at our aging
infrastructure -- and it is old --
-
and we look at the cost of updating it,
-
three-quarters of that cost is just
the pipes snaking through our city.
-
So as we build anew, as we renovate,
-
it might make more sense
to treat and reuse everything on-site.
-
San Francisco realized that it made sense
-
to invest in rebates for every household
-
to reuse their wash water
and their rainwater
-
to water the backyard,
-
because the amount of water they would
save as a community would be so big.
-
But why were all
these projects so innovative?
-
The money piece, yeah.
-
But more importantly,
-
they felt comfortable with this idea
of advanced potty training.
-
Imagine if we embraced
innovation for sanitation
-
the way we have for, say, solar power.
-
Think about it -- solar power used
to be uncommon and unaffordable.
-
Now it's more a part
of our web of power than ever before.
-
And it's creating resiliency.
-
We now have sources of power like the sun
-
that don't vary with our earthly dramas.
-
What's driving all that innovation?
-
It's us.
-
We're talking about energy.
-
It's cool to talk about energy.
-
Some folks are even talking
about the problems
-
with the limited resources
where our current energy is coming from.
-
We encourage our best and brightest
to work on this issue --
-
better solar panels,
better batteries, everything.
-
So let's talk about where
our drinking water is coming from,
-
where our poo and pee are actually going.
-
If we can get over this discomfort
with this entire topic,
-
we could create something
that creates our future goldmine.
-
Every time you flush the toilet,
-
I want you to think,
-
"Where is my poop and pee going?
-
Will they be gainfully employed?"
-
(Laughter)
-
"Or are they going to be wreaking
havoc in some waterway?"
-
If you don't know, find out.
-
And if you don't like the answer,
-
figure out how you can communicate
to those who can drive this change
-
that you have advanced potty training,
that you are ready for reuse.
-
How all of you feel
-
is going to determine exactly
how innovative we can be.
-
Thank you so much.
-
(Applause)
Brian Greene
The headline for this talk was updated on September 12, 2016.
The new headline is: "The taboo secret to better health"