Our excrement is a natural, renewable and sustainable resource – if only we can overcome our visceral disgust of it

 In our quest to rid ourselves from our dangerous dark matter, we’ve broken the essential rules and laws of Mother Nature. By taking our poo out of the equation, we altered not only our agriculture, but the entire planet’s ecology.

Because we don’t ship our shit back to where the food comes from, we keep perpetuating the redistribution of nutrients on the planet. Soils grow barren, so we use synthetic fertiliser, which isn’t anywhere near as good as the real shit, and also is very polluting to produce. Scientists call this phenomenon the metabolic rift. 

If you think where our food comes from, particularly in colder climates, you’ll realise it’s grown someplace else. As our bananas, apples, lettuce, corn and rice grow, they extract nutrients from the land. That food is then trucked, shipped and flown to where we live – and where we eat it and excrete it. Yet, we don’t return that organic matter bac... See more