💩 The Toilet Is the New Oil Well.
How Your Morning Dump Might Be the Key to Saving the Planet
Let’s cut the crap. No, actually — let’s talk about the crap.
Because while the world argues over oil prices, launches billionaires into space, and melts polar bears in slow motion…
We’re literally sitting on a power source so abundant, so consistent, and so wildly underappreciated that it gets flushed away every morning before the coffee kicks in. Yep. Poop energy. It stinks. It steams. It’s awkward to discuss in polite company. But it might just be the renewable energy from sewage we’ve been ignoring.
🚨 1. The Gas That Passes… Is Power
Let’s be honest — a crowded latrine on a hot afternoon is less a bathroom and more of a biological pressure cooker. That heat? That funky vibe in the air? That’s methane from human waste, baby.
Nature’s way of saying:
“If y’all stop being so sensitive, I could literally cook your lunch.”
And in many places, it already does. In parts of Uganda and Kenya, schools and prisons are using biogas digesters to turn toilet time into cooking time.
• 💩 In → 🔥 Out.
• It’s full-circle cuisine.
• “Revenge of the Beans.”
🗿 2. Turning Crap Into Crude (No, Really)
Now imagine this: Scientists figured out how to mimic the Earth’s oil-making process, which normally takes millions of years, and speed it up to just a few hours.
They call it hydrothermal liquefaction poop technology, but we’ll call it Nature’s Fast-Forward Button. And what do they feed this process?
Not dinosaurs. Not ancient trees. Human sewage sludge. That’s right — the leftovers from your digestive ambition. The result? A thick, black, smelly substance that burns like oil. Basically… revenge crude.
🚮 3. Why Aren’t We Doing This Everywhere?
Oh, let’s see:
• Because people still pretend their bodies don’t produce anything offensive.
• Because “flush-powered fuel plants” don’t exactly wow investors.
• Because you can’t stick “toilet tech” in a TED Talk and keep a straight face.
We’d rather explore Mars than explore what’s literally under our butts. But guess what? The poop isn’t going anywhere. And neither is the potential for biogas from human waste.
📊 Just How Much Power Are We Flushing?
Let’s do some quick (and slightly disturbing) math:
• 🌍 With over 8.1 billion humans on Earth
• 💭 Each producing about 130g of poop a day
• 💛 That adds up to 1.05 billion kilograms of human waste — daily.
• If processed through basic biogas digesters, it could generate over 31.6 million cubic meters of biogas from sewage every single day.
That’s enough fuel to provide:
📅 Daily cooking gas for over 18 million homes worldwide
Let that simmer like a pot of matoke on poop-powered flame.
🌿 So Why Aren’t We Doing This?
Because let’s be real — collecting 1 billion kilos of anything daily is no small task.
Especially in places:
• With no sewage systems
• Where toilets don’t “connect” to anything
• Or where people still flinch at the word “latrine”
But that doesn’t mean it’s impossible. It means we need to think small to scale big.
Imagine mini biogas plants dotting the outskirts of every major city, quietly turning human leftovers into heat, light, and low-cost energy — reducing deforestation, cutting fuel imports, and giving new purpose to the phrase “renewable source.” Is it a dream? Maybe. But dreams powered by data and 1.05 billion kilos of commitment are worth chasing.
We said we’re going green. So why not start with something brown? And whether you call it a carbon footprint or a bum print — the point is: ‘We’ve been sitting on the solution the whole time.’
Dreaming of a future where “Going Green” means visiting the bathroom.
