Nudes in the news

[jbeegoode]

My experience of India has been only Chenai and a seven hour drive up the coast and then lost across in about a 90 mile radius. Quite a variety, remote, to small town, to citified.

The small country towns are densely populated, then outside of that it is extremely sparse and a dump anywhere will do. I don't know what sanitation is in these small towns. It seems serene and smells like India and not sewage, so, I guess I'd lean toward Bob's sentiments there. In the mornings people act happy and positive starting their days. They stand in their animal pens around their huts, brushing teeth and greeting their neighbors, kids in nice clean uniforms head off to school.

The big town and the evidence of every other of these huge population centers is crowded, trashed and unregulated. I've been to recommended hotels and 5 star.  The five star are good. The toilets in the two other hotels were having difficulties and an unpleasant experience. Folks sht on the street among the garbage, so do the brahma bulls. There is extreme squaller and people living in unfinished stacks of block buildings are a step up from boxes on the side of the road. There are many apparent instances of obviously unhealthy. The government needs to step in, but it won't or can't. Everyone seems to be okay with the status quo, unless they are desperate.

My friends statement probably is referring to flush plumbing. He had been living/working there isolated/coddled in American Standards. He referred to a statistic that he had picked up, coming from an American point of view. Maybe, we just don't understand and the facts sound outrageous to us, when they are acceptable reality, or okay in what might as well be another planet.

Where I spent most of my time, we had clean dorm toilets and water. Except for those big florescent frogs that I had to search for before I sat down and the monkeys in the hallway that might be occupying the stall. The need to put paper in the trash bin instead of flushing it down, it was all good. Several times, I had to find another toilet down the hall.

The other campus was made up of huts. The common toilets had a note to check for the extremely poisonous snakes when entering. No one got bit. That may make toilets seem less practical and inviting to people in India.
Jbee

[BlueTrain]

My experience is necessarily limited. I haven't been to India or Africa. My travels have been only to Germany, France, the U.K., Canada and a few Islands here and there, plus other parts of the U.S. I have been to Oklahoma.

The differences are more in the nature of expectations rather than in necessities. That is true whether one has high expectations or none. Although people did what they could to improve their living conditions and keep up with the latest modern conveniences, I don't recall anyone complaining about their state in life. The way things were, were usually thought to be pretty good, but all were open to improvements where possible and affordable. Some I know still don't have air conditioning, which is thought by some to be as necessary as heating, especially in the South. All of those people lived through the depression in the 1930s, though, so their benchmark had been set rather low and none had been born well-off. Mind you, this recollection is that of a grade school boy in the 1950s in a small town, which is now even smaller.

[Greenbare Woods]

The small country towns are densely populated, then outside of that it is extremely sparse and a dump anywhere will do. I don't know what sanitation is in these small towns. It seems serene and smells like India and not sewage, so, I guess I'd lean toward Bob's sentiments there. In the mornings people act happy and positive starting their days. They stand in their animal pens around their huts, brushing teeth and greeting their neighbors, kids in nice clean uniforms head off to school.
Jbee

In traditional Hindu culture they had the "Untouchable" caste people who's place in life included cleanup and disposal of human waste.   Sometime around a century ago colonial rulers prohibited the Caste System, but didn't effectively replace their function with western waste disposal methods.   

[ric]

if we were starting today with a clean sheet of paper would the flush toilet see the light of day?,  it basically takes  a small amount of organic fertiliser, adds 2 gallons of drinking water to form a waste product that needs an extensive sewerage transport and treatment system.

the world is supposed to be short of both drinking water and fertiliser and were spending money to throw vast quantities of both away.

maybe theres no practical alternative in densely populated cities but thats no reason to impose the wasteful system on subsistence level rural communities whove been recycling their waste for millennia

my veg patch gets added fertility from composted lawn mowings, im seriously considering a composting toilet,both to add fertility and reduce the mains water bill

[BlueTrain]

The grass grows greener over the septic tank, it's said. In fact, relatives of ours have a septic tank and field and that's in a D.C. suburb. Apparently The Authorities haven't imposed anything on them. A municipal sewage system is not so much wasteful as it is costly but that's relative. When there is a water shortage, and there often is in some places, even here now and then, official limits are placed on water consumption. But using water efficiently in Virginia does nothing for the water problems in California.

I don't know what happens to the solid matter (the sludge) in sewage but the water part generally goes back into the same place it came from. Ultimately, it would anyway, no matter what system there is, if any. So, it really isn't "thrown away." One might say that water is recycled like nothing else. Some of the water around here, depending on exactly where one lives, comes from the Potomac River. It has been used already before the water in the river gets this far.

Other kinds of waste (rubbish/trash) generates bigger problems, however. Compared with some other countries, we aren't that great about recycling but we have made progress. But Americans resent impositions on their freedoms when asked to recycle anything. We haven't learned to live together yet. It might take another 400 years.

[jbeegoode]

Reduce recycle reuse? I do. I compost my veggies using the Bokashi method. I eat very little processed food so there are very few containers in my trash. I reuse the grocery sacks a few times. Occasionally, I'll use reusable cloth sack for groceries, that I keep in the truck. 

When I had trash service, I figured that it cost me $8 per two gallon kitchen bag to dispose. I'd fill one up once every couple of weeks. This was by sharing the service with two other parties. The recyclables we're less of a pile. How people fill up a big can so quickly amazes me.

An average family uses like 350 gallons of water a day. I use that every week or so and that's with nice long showers. Some people use that to just wash their cars.

I burn my straws and only use them in a daily smoothie to keep it out of my mustache. DF bought me straws that can be cleaned, but It is too much trouble and I question how sanitary that I can keep it and what crap would get in there and grow, Using scraped plastic and chemical cleaners seems like a solution risk to my body..

The City of Tucson charges about $10,000 to hook up water and sewer, I'm told. They require water and sewer.

We use composting toilets for the sweat, but I wouldn't use that on my veggies, just trees and bushes.

You must lie and jump through hoops to set up a commercially made composting toilet, the last time that I looked. There are finally provisions for grey water systems in the building codes.

DF doesn't use a clothes dryer. I minimize but like to use mine on certain things. I like a clothes line freshness,too.

I don't wear clothes. Air-conditioner, washing machine, dryer, are minimized. I chose clothing that I really like that will stay in style for long periods. I have some very old clothes that pass just fine, I even out dress many people fashion-wise. I do indulge the heater in colder months, but I have a strawbale house that is so efficient that it is off of the charts to calculate for a heat pump size. DF rents a very inefficient house. She us less snooty that me about throwing on a robe. I have the house and vegetation rigged to the sun and south roof eve extends perfectly. Few south and west windows

I create a trip to town making multiple stops to save gas and travel time. I use too much gas because of my location in a nice clean more natural environment.

I use drip system on my veggie patch. The rest is a natural garden, alive. It requires a trim every six month to a year for paths and fire hazard.

I have trouble burning my clippings. They don't compost well, because it is dry here and that uses too much water. I fill up my trailer and visit the dump once a year. I get charged $20 bucks to dump a load.

I have just a few rugs, no carpet, no drapes. Shoes come off when entering the house. The dust is kept down very considerably. Its better for my body to be barefoot.

We sleep with Earthing equipment.

DF is crazier about environment and more frugal than me. Her car gets twice my mileage, but she flies a couple of times a year.

I have a friend that has been using a simple composting system that is called a Rainbow Shitter for about 30 years. We pee anywhere around the 40 acres and squat over the holes in the ground with boxes over them open air.The authorities wouldn't let her occupy her house if they knew. I'd use a commercial peat composting toilet and grey water if I could. Both are less problematic that leaching fields, boxes, tanks, pipes etc. I use biodegrade toilet paper and wash after with a rag. If I'm putting the grey water into my trees to shade my southside and west, I'm not even using water as far as I'm concerned.
 
I'm such a good boy. The Earth loves me. My karma is so klean!;D

[Peter S]

A while back a heard an environmentalist on the radio raging about how we (the UK but presumably he included the West generally) wasted good, clean drinking water on flushing the toilet when we should be reusing “grey” water and thinking about those parts of the world living in drought. While I sympathised I had to reflect on his impractical though process.

We have good, clean drinkable water for all purposes coming out of our taps because in the past we didn’t and we (well, our forebears) invested heavily in infrastructure to enable that. We have plentiful water supplies (we can’t help being geographically blessed). And our housing stock has been built without the need to capture used bath water to flush.

Having put all this in place in the past, it would take a monumental and costly effort to alter it, and if we had that sort of money available it would probably be more effectively spent on direct water aid to those parts of the world that need it. Idealism and practicality are all too often uncomfortable bedfellows.

As regards our sewage use, it has been the case for years that the treated sludge from the sewage works is sold to farmers for fertiliser. So what goes around comes around, as it were.

[BlueTrain]

What is an ideal solution in one place may not be so workable somewhere else. Not that many people have 40 acres to play around with. It wouldn't work very well with ¼ acre in the city or suburbs and it's not like everyone can have their own 40 acres. Then there are all those people living in apartments, a life style that only goes back two or three thousand years. Well-planned cities even then had sewage and water systems.

That an average family uses 350 gallons of water a day is a dubious claim, though I suppose it wouldn't be difficult if there were four or five living in one household and they washed their car more than we wash ours (once a year, maybe). I know for a fact that if you had to haul all the water from the spring, you wouldn't use that much water. I know that because I lived in such a place. But that was over 50 years ago. Since then, they now have city water and fire hydrants way out in the country. I was told that they thought it was worth it. Where does all that water come from, you ask? Well, it rains there and what isn't used just goes on down the river, which for good measure, floods now and then. Same where I live now.

The charge to hook up to water and sewage systems may be rather high. Check your facts. But local governments in some places have a way of increasing costs of new constructions with all sorts of fees, including that one. It is a sort of hidden tax, because nobody wants to pay any tax in this country, which is one reason it looks so shabby everywhere except where the rich people live. We spend too much money on "defense." When I was little, I remember the street in front of the house being paved with asphalt for the first time. Before, it was plain rock. Each homeowner had a special assessment they had to pay (how much, I don't know). It was fair, I suppose, but it could be a real burden on those without much extra cash lying around. Originally, of course, highways during the colonial period were often toll roads and that is an idea that has come again. Commercially operated, too. Is that progress?

[nudewalker]

I did a budget once I retired figuring out the overall cost of nude living and the savings where it pertained to water and energy in particular. So I went back and found an average water usage for the last four months. That way it is not just the two of us but also my sister in law's visit and also our daughter and her family. That figure came to 111 gallons per day which will drop even more as we begin our summer travel.

As for the costs of construction; I'm waiting for that plea to come from our local authorities as the infrastructure is ageing as evidenced by the number of water line breaks each winter.

[Greenbare Woods]

if we were starting today with a clean sheet of paper would the flush toilet see the light of day?,  it basically takes  a small amount of organic fertiliser, adds 2 gallons of drinking water to form a waste product that needs an extensive sewerage transport and treatment system.

the world is supposed to be short of both drinking water and fertiliser and were spending money to throw vast quantities of both away.

Our "civilized" waste water stream has many good things in it besides our brown body waste.   In some places they have experimented with separating drains into "black" water and "gray" water.    Laundry water, including pounds of high nitrogen detergent, sink and dish washer water, bath and shower water, and wash hands bowl water all goes to gray water drain.  Even urinal water can go to drain water if you manage to collect it separate from black water.   The next question is, what do you do with your grey water?

Some installations have tried to use gray water on their lawns, but it becomes a maintenance problem.  Hair, grease, lint, and particulates from sinks and showers clogs up water sprinklers.  So gray water is usable for gardens and places where you can have flow irrigation rather than spray irrigation.  Even then you have sump pumps and catch basins that need cleaning sometimes. 

The other problem that gray water separation causes is the black water disposal.  Transporting of human solid waste takes a quantity of water to keep it moving all the way from our homes to the city disposal facility.   Some cities complain that their sewers get clogged with solids if they don't run sufficient water.   Even the "low flow" toilets installed in the US a few years ago added to the city's drain problem.

Its all necessary in cities where cholera and other diseases spread easily but in suburbs it would be suitable for most people to pee on their lawns and gardens.   

maybe theres no practical alternative in densely populated cities but thats no reason to impose the wasteful system on subsistence level rural communities whove been recycling their waste for millennia

my veg patch gets added fertility from composted lawn mowings, im seriously considering a composting toilet,both to add fertility and reduce the mains water bill

Going naked would greatly reduce laundry, but nudists tend to take more showers.   We could eliminate half of water use in cities like Los Angeles and Phoenix if people learned to go naked and to pee on their gardens or fields.  Probably won't happen any time soon. 

I live in a rural area.  The grass does grow green over the drain field.   

 

[BlueTrain]

Sanitation is really only a serious concern, because of health issues, in places where there are a lot of people living with no facilities. Mostly, that includes refugee camps and such like. But otherwise, adequate arrangements ("just adequate" in some places) have already been worked out by now. I think it's really water that's the problem, though only in places and not just in places with lots of people. A lot of water is used for irrigation in the West. I don't know that there's much done at the national level, especially these days, to address any of those problems. I suppose if the problem becomes serious enough, things will change but not before then. The climate will likely change faster.

[nuduke]

Although animal manure is probably superior to chemical fertilizer from an all-round standpoint, there probably isn't enough of it these days for use in large scale farming.

  In the UK pig and chicken manure from factory farms is ploughed into the land as fertiliser in order to dispose of it usefully.  However it is an example of large scale use of animal manure in agriculture.  In some places it occasionally leaches into the ground water and thence into the water supply.  Not so good that.
John

[BlueTrain]

Anyone who drinks water deserves whatever happens to them.

[Peter S]

Anyone who drinks water deserves whatever happens to them.

You put a worm in water and it lives. You put a worm in whiskey and it dies. You drink enough whiskey, you ain’t never gonna git worms.

[BlueTrain]

Well, now, that's one I hadn't heard before. Good one, too. I wonder if W.C. Fields ever heard it.