If humans collectively poop over 73,000 metric tons every hour… where the hell does it all go? Like, seriously, is the Earth just turning into a giant underground shit storage?
If humans collectively poop over 73,000 metric tons every hour… where the hell does it all go? Like, seriously, is the Earth just turning into a giant underground shit storage?
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Septic tank -> whoever the hell cleans those tanks, then honestly? I don’t know what they do with it
Shit does breakdown faster than most rubbish. Billions of animals have been shitting all over earth for billions of years, what do you think has happened to all that shit?
Waste water is sent to a treatment plant where bacteria and chemicals transform it into dirt and clean water. Look up the nitrogen cycle for a refresher on decomposition.
Decomposer organisms decompose it faster than it can pile up. Did you skip Biology class or something (jokes aside, google decomposer class lifeforms and their role in the ecosystem)
It rots away.
Fairly quickly too, since it’s full of bacteria, and contains nutrients that plants & fungi can easily use.
Well, you’ve heard of the circle of life?
There is the circle of shite too, which is very similar ♻️ 💩
Ashes to ashes, waste dispersed, accumulated and consumed
First of all, poop usually is processed in some way or other pretty quickly.
Secondly, Planet Earth is enormous. 73,000 tons may sound like a lot, but it’s actually utterly tiny and insignificant. It’s a tiny, tiny speck compared to the planet.
it’s all goes to dubai
What do you think dirt is
In Tacoma it’s made into fertilizer called Tagro
We have the giant storage. It’s called Russia
What do you think soil is?
Into my mouth, mostly
Shit post
TIL it’s all just shit …shit all the way down
Wastewater treatment plants screen it, press it causing de-watering where it dries and then farmers use it on fields.
The water is treated by chemical and UV lighting and at the discharge back into your community waterways, it’s much purer than the city water to drink. On tours, good operators will drink it straight from the vat to prove this point.
Call your local municipality and request a tour. Your tax dollars are paying for it.
The earth is just casually storing that poop underground like some kind of cosmic compost. Eventually future generations will be digging up fossilized poop and thinking its some ancient treasure….
Mostly it’s bacteria. Water treatment plants have a system that circulates “synthetic” (more like purposely set up) lake bottom sludge. This is what naturally breaks down organic material in lakes. It consists of a certain set of bacteria and microscopic animals that feed on it and “mineralize” it. Mineralization converts nitrogen and phosphorus bound up in organic material into inorganic, mineral form: ammonium, nitrate, and phosphate. Organic carbon becomes carbon dioxide.
Sewage plants are basically 50 miles of river super condensed into a perfect atmosphere for bacteria that is naturally found in water that breaks down and converts our waste can multiply can grow and do what they do best. Urine converts to ammonia and bacteria converts it into nitrite, then others into nitrate. Still over bacteria use those oxygen molecules in the NO3 to breathe and seperate the Nitrogen from the oxygen creating nitrogen gas. It is released and rises into our atmosphere. Phosphorous is broken down by other bacteria and while most of the heavy solids are screened and removed by settling and wasting. Those heavy solids, depending on the plant are pressed or go through a centerfuge to extract the water and the left over “cake” is either baked into pellets to he sold as fertilizer, or dumped into a truck to be hauled to a special landfill designed for solid waste. The water from a wastewater plant is then discharged either into retaining ponds for plant life to further filter out the ammonia and phosphorous, or sent through and nether specialized secondary treatment then dumped into a creek or river.
Source: Worked as a wastewater operator for several years and held a state license as a wastewater operator
I’m surprised honestly that nobody spotted your name yet.
You need to go try and walk ten miles it will make sense after about an hour or two
The load is distributed
It really depends where in the world you are asking. More developed countries treatment plants and some make it into fertilizer. Third world countries like India or Pakistan look in your nearest river or ditch.
Goes into a toilet, into a sewer system, to a sewage treatment plant where the biosolids are removed and sold for fertilizer and the remaining water is processed into recycled water (non potable) for use in irrigation.
Feces is incredibly biodegradable. Nature recycles it.
Buddy what do you think dirt is?
It manifests into MAGA
Do you know how a leech field in a septic system works? It breaks down the waste with microbes, they are very good at that. After about a week or two depending on the soil type and depth of the water level, the (mostly) purified water returns to all the other water underground and then in most cases is safe to drink again just like that. So if you ever see a building with a big mound behind it, usually with some pipes sticking up, that is its purpose.
What do you think dirt is?
Have you never heard of sewage treatment plants? We’ve gotten very efficient at breaking down waste to base components that aren’t hazardous to health.
The process of sewage treatment is primary and secondary treatment and sometimes tertiary treatment. It generally starts with a screen, taking out large debris such as rocks, rubbish, hair and anything else that makes its way through storm water drains and canals. Not all treatment plants treat stormwater so it can vary as to what initially is screened out.
Next process is degriting and sedimentation. This removes fine particles such as sand but also helps settle the sludge and helps separate fats, oils and greases that come from restaurants or factories. The sludge (poo) settles to the bottom and grease, oils, fats (scum) float to the top and scraped away and pumped either back to the beginning or processed chemically.
After the settling period it is pumped to digesters where bacteria breaks it down further. From digesters we get high amounts of methane gas usually harvested for power and gas mixing of digesters. Once it is broken down it is pumped to centrifuges to seperate water and dosed with a polymer binding agent and deposited into trucks which can send it away to landfill or reused as fertiliser for farming.
Tertiary treatment deals with the water separated at that last stage before being discharged into the ocean or river. This is usually done by either UV or ozone disinfection.
There are many ways sewage is treated based on budget, population/catchment size and environmental regulations and licensing. Some treat PFAS some capture more gas and harvest it to reuse as energy for site or back to grid and some recycle the water for human consumption, as such the process and equipment vary.
The earth is much bigger than you are giving it credit for lol
73,000 tonnes isn’t a lot on this scale, like it’s a large hill, but it’s digested in days. How many large hills are there over the world, you barely noticed them because they’re so frequent
Do you even science bro?