What We Find in the Sewers

Summary

This article concludes Issue 07. See you next month for the launch of Issue 08!The sewer is the conscience of the city. Everything there converges and confronts everything else.— Victor Hugo, Les MisérablesIn his book What is Life? Schrödinger called humans “entropy machines.” Extracting order from our environment to compensate for our disorder, he said, is what defines us as living beings. The same claim could be made of defecation. We strip the world of the nutrients and substrates we need, leaving only waste behind. Yet even though shitting is one of the few universal human experiences, the topic as a whole suffers from euphemism. What happens in the loo, restroom, garderobe, privy, house of office, necessarium, Gongfermor’s domain, Jakes, close stool, Spanish house, necessary house, water closet, temple of convenience, or house of harkening is seldom discussed, let alone what happens to the material deposited therein. We in the developed world rarely pause to consider the vast and complicated system designed to make the removal of waste a swift and clean experience.Historically, however, this has not been the case. Nor is human effluent the only component of the vast stream of waste produced by any large collection of people. Our ancestors had to live alongside animal dung and dirt, household rubbish, and the surface runoff from washing, cleaning, or agriculture. This experience has been so unpleasant that the constant need to dispose of, use, treat, or simply avoid the accumulation of waste has been a major driver of innovation. Indeed, rules to limit and control waste disposal have often been cited as the first forms of urban regulation, a rallying point for centralizers and organizers. At first glance, then, the course of sewage history would seem the triumph of waste removal and sequestration. As cities grow larger, however, the need for innovation and greater resource efficiency has made sewage worthy of further consideration. Scientists and governments hav...