[ProxCoques]

> "It's a shame where we live in a world with nutrient-limited degraded ecosystems and also nutrient-rich waste streams. We'd like to see those things come together a little bit,"

Saw a talk about circular economies once. One of the things that stuck in my mind was, "If mankind has any chance of a permanent occupation of earth, the current meaning of the word 'waste' will have to fade away."

[bluGill]

The hard part is you cannot ship sewage from cities to farms on the same trucks you used to bring the food in from the farms as sewage contains harmful things you don't want in contact with food.

[svnt]

Situations like this are exactly why trucks carry containers. You don’t want to reuse the containers for those two things but you can absolutely reuse the trucks.

The trucks cost on the order of six figures, the containers an order of magnitude less.

[bluGill]

Sae problem the truck is still moveing both ways just sometimes with empty containers

[mlavrent]

But it can often do so more efficiently than just carrying one container at a time when they're empty - see this company that's solving the "return container" problem by folding up to 4 containers into the space of one for the return trip.

https://4foldcontainers.com/proposition/

[chiefalchemist]

Perhaps but we could be smarter about human liquid waste. Human urine is nutrient-rich and is effectively nitrogen-rich liquid fertilizer.

Wanna help your garden soil in the off-season? Pee in a bottle and dump it in the garden.

You're welcome.

[lukas099]

Municipal facilities turn human waste into fertilizer used on farms

[chiefalchemist]

Solid waste, yes?

[lukas099]

I’m not an expert but I’d be surprised if they didn’t capture and utilize nitrogen from urine.

[NathanKP]

You can compost sewage and ship dirt back in dump trucks though

[bluGill]

all options work out to more trucks (more co2)

[hoosieree]

"Septic Tanks Pumped. Swimming Pools Filled. Not Same Truck."

[hoosieree]

The only entities unable to grasp the inherent contradiction between infinite exponential growth in a finite environment are bacteria and venture capitalists.

[ETH_start]

There doesn't need to be infinite growth potential for there to be potential for massive expansion of civilization.

The energy that is being wasted every single second from the sun emitting its rays out into empty space is many orders of magnitude greater than what humanity collectively uses, and all of that energy could be harvested and even saved if civilization expands to colonize the entire solar system. Until it does that, the vast majority of the energy outputted by the sun is going to waste. So slowing growth is generally extremely wasteful.

[MarkusQ]

And yet they and their ilk dominate (and thus drive most of the progress in) their respective areas. It's almost like not pre-deciding you're doomed and instead just getting on with it is the secret to getting anywhere.