so the AI stuff causes too much CO2, instead of fixing their own hardware, the best they could do is to offset that CO2 amount by burying shit?
“To reach the golden temple you and your companions must first pass through the vast Caverns of Corruption.”
Meanwhile I’m out here pooping for free like a chump!
How many turds can you buy for a billion dollars. . ?
Greenwashing is a fraud.
Can’t make this shit up.
Fight shit with shit.
Apart from the questionable practice of buying CO2 credits (or whatever the practice is called), pumping shit underground does not seem like the best way to save the ecosphere. It could’ve produced energy and/or useful products in various ways but oh no, that would have been too expensive.
This prevents it from being dumped at a waste disposal site, where it would eventually decompose and release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
This is the only reason this practice is deemed carbon-emission-friendly. Color me skeptical.
My first thought was…how is this a good thing, we get a lot of our water from ground water…and now we’re pumping toxic shit into the ground. The fuck
Devil’s advocate says: 5000 ft is probably below groundwater level. But tbh idk. Hell, they could even use spent oil reservoirs.
But that’s fertilizer! WTF?
MicroShit
I’ve been calling them that for years 🤣🤣🤣
We truly are in the metaverse era.
They found a way to convert physical shit into virtual shit.
So this is what they plan to do with all the game studios they bought over the years.
What about the nutrients in the waste? Why not compost it, capture the methane offgassing, and store that?
using human waste as fertilizer isn’t a good idea.
human waste contains everything that a person has consumes. this includes disease causing pathogens and parasites.
if it were to be used as a fertilizer it would need to go through multiple stages of expensive processing and testing to ensure safety. it’s far more cost effective and safer to use food by-product like fish cuttings to create fertilizers.
Engineer here. We arent talking about directly tossing it on fields. We are talking about having it be anaerobically fermented at high temperatures for about 30 days, with the biogas captured and used for energy.
the new thing to do then is burn the remains and recover the phosphate from the ashes, where certainly no biological threat remains
These type of plants are currently built on many larger wastewater treatment plants in Europe
I’m curious how much phosphate we would be able to capture with this method?
I know it is a critical resource we are flushing away daily and -SHOULD- be doing this. Just like peak oil there is a concept of peak phosphorous.
In the EU recovering phosphor from wastewater could cover about one third of the EU countries total phosphor demands.
This is why the EU made tge strategic decision to have such recovery systems developed and built.
Treated waste water sludge is very commonly used here in Sweden albeit using anaerobic digestion rather than regular composting. High temperature composting would kill any pathogens so you can absolutely get permission to use a composting waste system in small scales. For larger scale waste treatment it is with anaerobic digestion, as mentioned.
The captured methane is typically used for fuel, e.g., in public transport.
As far as I know the sludge used for fertilizer needs to be certified under something called REVAQ. Some controversy does exist surrounding safe levels of the various harmful substances and perhaps PFAS in particular.
Just gotta lie on the questioner:
Has any PFOAS filled American pooped on this toilet in the past process cycle?
That’s a trap question, we’re all PFOAS filled.
Pathogens are less of a problem, they die off before they cannot infect a plant. But chemicals from medication and contraceptives, as well as heavy metals, are.
less about infection and more environmental. some people don’t wash their produce and get sick because of it.
Not to forget: It contains a ton of medicine as well. If you want to have antibiotics in your salad, use human waste as fertilizers.
Probably mucroplastics too?
you’re absolutely right, I forgot about those and it’s probably worse than the parasites.
to offset AI carbon emissions
Does it actually do that?
No. Carbon offsetting is a scam and does not do shit for the environment.
It’s usually nonsense. I remember some carbon offsets being a guy owning a forest and essentially selling his inaction as a carbon offset. Give me a million dollars so I don’t chop all those trees down which I totally would’ve done otherwise. It’s just pushing numbers around on a spreadsheet.
In this case I can imagine their calculations being wildly off. How much CO2/methane does a ton of poop actually release? How much CO2 is released to transport that ton and build the facilities that hold it?
There’s even worse stuff: Planting trees is sold as carbon offset. But where do you plant trees? Certainly not on valuable farmland. Instead they drain bogs to plant trees instead.
The issue is that bogs can store about 10x as much CO² as a forest can, and by draining the bog, that CO² is released.
And bog land isn’t exactly well-suited for growing trees, and also the carbon offset only pays for planting the trees, not for keeping them alive. So the trees die almost instantly, thus releasing their stored CO². But the upside to it is that on the now re-deforested land, more trees can be planted.
It’s complete greenwashing with at best no effect and at worst terrible effects.
The main issue with planting trees to remove CO² is that a forest doesn’t consume CO² but instead just stores it. Once a forest is fully-grown, no more CO² is sunk in there. A hectare of forest stores ~400t CO2. Germany creates about 650 million tons CO² per year. So to offset that, Germany would need to plant 1.6 million hectars of forest a year, which is about 4.5% of the surface area of Germany. 32% of Germany is already forest, so that leaves a theoretical maximum of 14.5 years of CO² emissions that Germany could offset by planting trees.
But Germany has been creating CO² for much longer.
Yeah i was expecting the externalized cost route with this one.
In the eyes of the board of directors, sure . Plantings a billion worth of trees would probably have been too green
Technically it’s more common to pay investment firms with forest land to not cut down the trees they weren’t going to cut down to begin with.
Depends on how the wastewater would have been treated before.
Wastewater treatment does release CO2, however the sludge can be fermented to biogas. So in relative terms not that much. Also the sludge contains phosphate that could be recovered for fertilizing or chemical industry purposes.
It would probably be far more effective to build renewables with that money than to bury things for which a treatment process already exists.
Some poop releases methane, a much worse greenhouse gas than Co2.
Fun fact, when striking oil, you often encounter methane pockets as well, the gas is commonly just burned in a giant flare, this is mainly done for safety, to prevent gas from accumulating on the ground and risking an explosion, but also far reduce the greenhouse effect of the gas.
The thing is that these carbon credits make it so that things which would otherwise reduce CO2 in the atmosphere don’t happen unless some money changes hands. Most of the time credits effectively do nothing.
Yeap, CCs are mostly BS.
Microsoft buys back all the crap they sold us for years.
Microsoft burying the steaming pile of poop that is teams will be enough to “offset” all their data centers.
