South Korean professor Cho Jae-weon invents toilet that turns poop into energy and pays people in digital currency. A person defecates~ 500g/day converted into 50 liters of methane gas which generates 0.5 kWh. Toilet users earn Ggool.
>> Students can use the currency to buy goods on campus, from freshly brewed coffee to instant cup noodles, fruits and books. The students can pick up the products they want at a shop and scan a QR code to pay with Ggool.
I'm not sure if energy is where this material is best spent. For sure, it seems like we treat human excrement as, well, waste now, and that's an absurd & farcical shame, given how much energy and/or nutrients are in. Given the limited supply of things like phosphates (and other core nutrients) the world is facing, I feel like nutrients is where we need to explore/invest.
I picked up a biography a bit back on some westerner who'd been bumbling about in Japan a long time ago, & the westerners who eventually found them. I'm sorry, I just was browsing in a library; there's a photo of the book I have somewhere but I'm not sure what it was right now & can't remember specifics. But there were some really interesting materials. Landlords had rights to the human waste & would sell it as a major source of income. You got charged less rent if you had more people they could collect manure from. Energy is all fine & good, but recouping the bio-potential seems capital.
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 11.5 ms ] threadCitation from https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/south-korean-toil...
>> Students can use the currency to buy goods on campus, from freshly brewed coffee to instant cup noodles, fruits and books. The students can pick up the products they want at a shop and scan a QR code to pay with Ggool.
I picked up a biography a bit back on some westerner who'd been bumbling about in Japan a long time ago, & the westerners who eventually found them. I'm sorry, I just was browsing in a library; there's a photo of the book I have somewhere but I'm not sure what it was right now & can't remember specifics. But there were some really interesting materials. Landlords had rights to the human waste & would sell it as a major source of income. You got charged less rent if you had more people they could collect manure from. Energy is all fine & good, but recouping the bio-potential seems capital.