R.E.S.O.U.R.C.E. (a master's thesis on composting human excreta)

R.E.S.O.U.R.C.E.

Reclaiming Everyone’s Soil:
Opportunity to Understand Relational Cycles
of Ecology

by Laura Kathryn Dvorak

See attached file (or click here) to download full document (PDF).

Foreword (Forward!)

In the Humanure Handbook, author Joseph Jenkins suggests that learning to
recycle human excreta may in fact be the key to our spiritual salvation. It’s perfectly
natural to laugh at this prospect, but after you’ve had a good chuckle, please read on.
We are more than halfway through the year 2007, and most people whom I know
would find it hard to say that they are especially hopeful about the future of humanity in
the years to come. War rages on, our waters are polluted, our soils are depleted, and the
post-colonial globalized free-market system has wreaked havoc on indigenous
communities and the earth’s flora and fauna in a seemingly endless tirade of development
and exploitation. Depression and obesity in the United States are at an all-time high,
small farmers everywhere are being displaced, and First Nations are struggling to treat
widespread alcoholism and prevent teenage suicide. Considering this sorry state of
affairs, who in their right mind would suggest that human feces might be a solution to
some of these problems?

The answer is, in fact, a large number of people, and that figure grows each and
every day. As Margaret Mead has noted, we are for the first time at a point in human
history where we are able to explain what is happening while it is happening, a
phenomenon known as meta-reflection (Laszlo 2000). We are able to learn from the
failures and successes of the countercultural movements of the 1960s and 70s as their
composted forms experience resurgence today. More and more people each day are
waking up to a new ecological imperative which emphasizes the importance of recycling,
conserving resources, eating well, breathing clean air, drinking clean water, and
exercising. Community food movements and organic gardening are thriving in many
rural and urban areas alike. The intentional community and ecovillage movements are
regaining popularity as well. While dogmatic religious practices still exist, many people
are choosing instead to embark on profound spiritual journeys, often simultaneously
introspective and expansive. Although confronted with seemingly perpetual racial
segregation and class division, people have still found ways to initiate dialogue across
socioeconomic boundaries and open up to cultural pluralism. Entire communities are
identifying with bioregions and finding ways to relocalize their material resources. While
the locus of the localization issue has mostly been around food, in time it will no doubt
turn to the other end of the nutrient cycle: human ‘waste.’

The human being’s disconnect from the earth and from one another has no doubt
been a root cause of the ecological and spiritual crises mentioned above. I recently had a
friend tell me that just a few years ago, he was so disgusted with people and what we had
done to each other and to the earth, that he simply didn’t want to be a part of it any
longer. He didn’t see it getting any better. To this day, he still has the physical scars as
evidence of the drastic action he took to make that feeling disappear. Fortunately, this
wonderful person survived his ordeal, and has since learned to sublimate his angst into
creative expression and healthy relation with other people. My point is that our
conversation made me think, though, about the shame it is to be human, especially
without purpose or connection, a condition imposed upon us by the powers that be. This
report offers much evidence of ways in which to mend these disconnects.

When we flush our excreta “away,” we are also flushing away personal
responsibility and true understanding of what our bodies have created. In the United
States as well as in all industrialized nations, excreta are disposed of into our drinking
water, extending from our bodies into a linear stream of treatment and pollution. In
contrast, throughout much of China and Japan, excreta is collected and immediately used
for agricultural purposes, maintaining a closed loop system which renders transparent the
nutrient cycle. By flushing our nutrients away, by not even realizing that our excreta are
resources, we generate unconscious feelings of shame and self-loathing. Our collective
unconscious is also scarred by the shame of involuntary participation in an exploitative,
destructive society. This shame manifests in many ways. When we face it head on, and
with the appropriate support and resources, it can bring about deep transformation. When
we bottle it up and shove it aside, however, we are in for an eventual implosion.

Fortunately for us unsuspecting humans, there are pioneers of reintegration who
have devoted their lives and careers to addressing this process. Naturalist Jon Young has
worked on creating a model of cultural mentoring in which we can confront, and
eventually heal, our historical psychic wounds. It is known as the 8 Shields Mentoring
Program, and was developed to bring humans back to their place in nature, valuing the
Peacemaker’s path and recognizing commonalities which exist across all heritages
(Young 2007).

Spiritual ecologist Morgan Brent (2007) also sheds profound light on the human
condition. He suggests that, in relation to other life on the planet, the human species is
relatively young. Bacteria and plants are our elders, as they have been around far longer.
The earth is our mother, who has given us life through the sacred elements. Brent
proposes that we are in the adolescent stage of our collective human lifespan, the stage in
which separation from and acting out against one’s mother is a typical phenomenon. We
all know teenagers who have selfishly turned away from their parents and elders in order
to cultivate a sense of self and independence. Later in life these adults might realize that
in order to attain happiness and spiritual harmony, a large part of their adulthood might
need to be spent healing those disconnects. This is especially true of Western, Anglo
cultures who value individuality and competition.

If we compare the experience of the typical Anglo adult to the collective
experience of humanity, then we are witness to the maturing and flowering stage. We
must work to heal our wounds, and apologize to our mother for past grievances. It may
sound silly, but if we look around we can see that most of humanity is still engaged in
rebellion of some form against the earth. Yet slowly, we are trickling back, asking for
forgiveness as only a good hearted child can do. Only after we have cultivated this kind
of humility and awareness, are we truly able to move forward (Brent 2007).

One of the basic principles in Permaculture Design, a system for creating
sustainable human environments, is ‘mistakes are tools for learning’ (Mollison 1988).
Let us consider a few mistakes we have made that are relevant to this story: continuing to
use the flush toilet system; perceiving human excreta as a waste product we should fear;
encouraging other cultures to adopt our ways; and preventing access to alternatives such
as site built composting toilets by making them illegal. These mistakes are perhaps yet
additional sources of collective shame, but with a major attitude adjustment, we can
overcome and learn from them. In this project, I have chosen to focus on the incredible
opportunity we have before us as children of the earth. Rather than misuse valuable
energy laying blame and deepening existing wounds, I will instead focus on the proactive
leaders who are challenging the status quo. I will explore alternatives and initiatives that
inspire others and instill hope in even the darkest of hours. In a recent article in Lost
Valley’s Talking Leaves publication, Pramod Parajuli shared a favorite remark by
Manfred Steger and Perle Besserman (2001), from Grassroots Zen: "We don't have to
create waves when the ocean is flat.... Finding ourselves in the middle of a big wave itself
presents us with an opportunity. All we have to do is dive right in."

Every day I watch this fair city of Portland move and shake
without ever stopping, evidence that our human systems of commerce,
law, education, politics, and civic engagement are in a state of constant
flux. We eat and drink and plan and meet and watch and schedule and
text and dial and type and speak and sing and sleep and drive and walk
and ride and write and read and talk and talk and talk. Yet how often
do we listen? How often do we pay reverence to our bodies and to the
sacred earth which sustains us? What if we paid as much attention to
the clouds moving swiftly overhead, or the world telling us to be
quiet, as we did to our grocery lists or to neighborhood gossip?

If we submitted to silence, we could hear the thunder rumble
in the distant mountains. We could taste the rain instead of rushing
away from it. We could smell the salt of the sea as though it coursed
through our very veins. We could be truer to ourselves perhaps. I
know that I would not make a very effective educator or leader if I did
not take the time to silence, and get to know myself. For this I am
thankful. That for every moment in the process of creating this
document in which I wanted to drown out the noise of my own
thoughts, to erase my nagging voice from the pages, I had the
songbirds and the night crickets to help me do so. That for every
moment I have forgotten that I am alive, I have had the sun to warm
my face and the moon to lift my spirit. That for every moment I have
not remembered how much I am loved, I have had my heart, to beat
gently, tenderly, through its cradled cage of skin and bones and
remind me of its purpose. For this I am thankful.