Sustainability Now! | Nicholas Kawa | Humanure | August 2, 2021

It’s all about poop this week on Sustainability Now!, as your host, Justin Mog, brings you a talk by Dr. Nicholas Kawa, entitled "The Other Side of Our Food System: The Use of Human Waste as an Agricultural Resource.” Dr. Kawa is an anthropologist from Ohio State University, and his 2020 talk was hosted by UofL's Department of Anthropology.

Prior to industrialization, human excrement was commonly employed as a resource for agricultural fertilization. Following the advent of the hydraulic sanitation system, however, it became increasingly channeled into waterways rather than reincorporated into terrestrial agro-ecosystems. To counter this trend, more and more cities in the US are looking to treated sanitation waste, or “biosolids,” as a sustainable source of agricultural fertilizer.

This presentation reports on a collaboration between Ohio State faculty and students in anthropology, architecture, and landscape architecture to design and implement a demonstration garden that makes legible the hidden processes by which human waste is transformed into an agricultural resource in the American Midwest. Ultimately, this presentation considers both the limits and possibilities of challenging social taboos surrounding human waste and the implications it has for our food system. Dr. Kawa’s talk was hosted at the University of Louisville by the Anthropology Department on February 26th, 2020.
As always, our feature is followed by your community action calendar for the week, so get your calendars out and get ready to take action for sustainability NOW!

Sustainability Now! airs on Forward Radio, 106.5fm, WFMP-LP Louisville, every Monday at 6pm and repeats Tuesdays at 12am and 10am. Find us at http://forwardradio.org

The music in this podcast is courtesy of the local band Appalatin and is used by permission. Explore their delightful music at http://appalatin.com