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Sarah Palin's image already appears on the newer nickels.

calendar   Thursday - May 24, 2012

Every Day, The World Gets Better And Better

Part 1


The Flying Toilets of Nairobi


In Kenya, everybody gives a crap. It usually comes wrapped in a plastic bag.

In the slums of the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, visiting the bathroom usually means one of two things; a trip to the local pit latrine or the ‘flying toilet’.

The former entails letting nature take its course in a rickety outhouse perched atop a hole in the ground—a facility also used by hundreds of other people in the neighborhood.

The latter meanwhile consists of relieving oneself in a plastic bag before throwing the offending item away in the street.

A 2011 report by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation found that these arrangements led to environmental contamination and the spread of diseases such as typhoid and tuberculosis.

But within this primitive sewage system recent MIT graduate, David Auerbach, has spied an opportunity he believes could one day be worth millions of dollars.

Alongside a group of fellow MIT alumni and local Kenyan partners, Auerbach has helped found Sanergy—a start-up that aims to make a business out of cleaning up Nairobi’s sanitary mess.

So the plan is to install several porta-potties around the city (tens of thousands of them I hope!) and then charge the locals a nickel to have a clean and warm place to take a poop. Franchises get sold for $500/yr, and the human waste gets turned into organic fertilizer that gets put on their crops. How can a plan like this lose? It has to be the ultimate grassroots recycling effort, and I’m not taking the piss [note to Americans: that’s an English phrase that means “pulling your leg” or making fun of something].

“Currently we have 25 facilities up and running… we’re collecting about three metric tons of waste per week which can all be converted into fertilizer,” says Auerbach.

“By the end of this year we want to have 250 franchises. We think by the end of the following year we can safely be at 1,000 toilets,” he adds.

Creating employment opportunities for local residents can also be a benefit of the project and important to its greater success.

By the end of 2013 Auerbach says Sanergy plans to collect enough waste to power a bio-generator that can sell electricity back into the Kenyan national grid.

“The waste of 100,000 people generates about 1 gigawatt of power. So right now when we have 1,200 users every day we’re not at a point where we can produce sufficient amounts of electricity,” says Auerbach.

“This is something we’ll be looking to do later this year or next year,” he adds. “But we’re not quite there yet.”

So I deduce that one $500 franchise gets you one outhouse, and all the shit you can schlep, which right now averages 48 users a day per Johnny ... which is probably about 10 gallons worth. 265lb worth per week. Which earns the owner/operator/door guardian/night soil carter $2.88. Assuming nobody vandalizes the loo, that’s a net profit of $551.20 per year once the franchise fee is deducted (and further assumes the “collection facility” cost the franchise owner nothing, and that it’s supplies - toilet paper, fresh water, sanitizer, cleaning solution and tools - also cost nothing), which works out to $1.51 per day if the business is open 365 days a year. Which is far below even the “$2 a day” number that the UN and all the World Aid folks always talk about as the lowest living wage in even the worst corners of the world. In other words, it’s a shit job right now. That fertilizer/compost/bio-generator end of the scheme had better pay off pretty well, and soon. Otherwise the monkeys will go back to flinging pooh the locals will have no choice but to revert to using plastic bags and giving them the toss.

One wonders if there is a better way to solve this problem, or to avoid it entirely ...


image



Part 2


LA Bans Plastic Bags

There ya go! Problem? Solution!

Los Angeles became the largest city in the nation Wednesday to approve a ban on plastic bags at supermarket checkout lines, handing a major victory to clean-water advocates who sought to reduce the amount of trash clogging landfills, the region’s waterways and the ocean.

Egged on by actress Julia Louis-Dreyfus and an array of environmental groups, the City Council voted 13 to 1 to phase out plastic bags over the next 12 months at an estimated 7,500 stores. Councilman Bernard Parks cast the lone no vote. 

“Let’s get the message to Sacramento that it’s time to go statewide,” said Councilman Ed Reyes, who has focused on efforts to revitalize the Los Angeles River.

Council members quietly backed away from a more controversial plan to also ban use of paper grocery bags, which was first proposed by appointees of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.

Wednesday’s vote kicks off a four-month environmental review of the bag ban, followed by passage of an ordinance putting it into effect. Larger stores would then have six months to phase out plastic bags and smaller markets a 12-month phase-out period. For paper bags, retailers would be required to charge 10 cents per bag starting one year after the plastic bag is enacted.

Councilman Paul Koretz, who pushed for the ban, said city officials would conduct a study in two years to determine whether the prohibition should be expanded to include paper. “My hope is that so few paper bags will be used as a result of this measure that the formal ban … on paper bags may not even be necessary,” he said.

The plan drew strong praise from environmental activists, who had long argued that L.A. needed to follow in the footsteps of San Jose, San Francisco and Long Beach and dozens of other municipalities.


image

caption A: now here’s a guy who really gives a shit about the environment

caption B: Bert never understood why he got the Worst Costume Ever award at the Nairobi Halloween Parade




PS - the power generation idea is nice, but it will only ever be a minor adjunct to the power grid at best. If a typical Kenyan home uses only 1/2 the power of a typical American home(14.4K Wh), that theoretical gigawatt could power about 138,000 homes, which implies that the typical daily waste of two humans can be converted to fully supply the electricity to power an American home. If that is the case, why isn’t there a power generator over every sewage treatment plant in the country? I think these guys are dreaming. Unless they actually meant 1 gW per year, in which case we’re talking about power for a mere 190 American homes ... which is the top 1/5 of the top 1% of those 100,000 “users” ... which implies that the urban poor in Kenya would be squeezed even for their bodily wastes to support the rich elites ... who would literally be at the top of the heap. Occupy Outhouses Now!! Stop The Madness!!!


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Posted by Drew458   United States  on 05/24/2012 at 08:32 AM   
Filed Under: • AfricaDemocrats-Liberals-Moonbat Leftists •  
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