Garbage In, Garbage Out & Biosolids
Rethinking What We Feed Ourselves, Our Soil, and Our Systems
We are what we eat.
It sounds like a cliché, a well-worn phrase from nutrition pamphlets and primary school posters. But in today’s world, it stands as a stark and urgent truth—not just of individual health, but of ecological collapse and societal unraveling.
Our bodies are built—cell by cell—out of what we consume. But what if what we eat is, quite literally, garbage? What if the meat we consume comes from animals fed on industrial byproducts and that meat is packaged in layers of plastic, the plants from soils laced with synthetic fertilizers and biocides, the processed meals filled with preservatives, emulsifiers, and artificial flavorings? And what if, after digestion, all of it returns to the Earth—not in a sacred loop of nourishment, but as toxic sludge known as biosolids?
The Modern Loop: From Field to Fork to Filth
Food systems today have become conveyor belts of artificiality. Livestock are fattened on cheap grains, laced with growth hormones and antibiotics. Processed foods are engineered for shelf life and taste manipulation, not nutrition. We’ve traded biodiversity and soil richness for monocultures and yield-per-acre.
Once consumed, this substandard fuel runs through our bodies, often causing harm along the way—gut inflammation, chronic disease, microbial imbalances. Then, it is excreted, treated with chemicals, and transformed into what municipalities call "biosolids"—a euphemism for sewage sludge. And where does this sludge go?
There is a specific situation in our own city, we have a “Water Treatment” plant adjacent to the wonderful river that runs through our city. That facility has many deciduous trees (trees which lose their leaves in Winter). We live in a well hydrated region and it is very typical for deciduous trees here to be decorated with lichen, a very wonderful life-force, in Winter. None of the deciduous trees around this water treatment plant gets lichen in Winter and lichen is known for absolutely thriving, at any scale, only in clean air.
Back to the fields.
The Portal That Doesn’t Exist
Modern society operates on a dangerous illusion: that we can make things disappear. Flush it, toss it, spray it, bury it, burn it—problem solved. But there is no portal. No cosmic wastegate. Matter only moves. And if it’s toxic when it leaves your hand or your mouth, it’s still toxic when it reaches a landfill, a river, or a root system.
Cleaning products marketed as hygienic often contain more harmful compounds than the dirt they claim to destroy. Chemical-laced sludge rebranded as fertilizer can carry PFAS, pharmaceuticals, and microplastics right into our food system. Here is a specific example of such harmful ingredients.
Example: Triclosan in Antibacterial Products
Claimed benefit:
Kills bacteria.
Promotes hygiene and cleanliness.
Marketed as safer than traditional soap and water.
Triclosan is a persistent organic pollutant—it does not easily break down in the environment.
It has been linked to:
Endocrine disruption in humans and animals.
Bioaccumulation in aquatic organisms.
Contributing to antibiotic resistance.
It was found in 75% of Americans tested in a CDC study from 2008.
Banned by the FDA in 2016 from over-the-counter antiseptic washes due to lack of evidence it’s more effective than plain soap—and due to safety concerns.
A Conundrum of Concentration
Our ancestors lived in loops. Waste—human and animal—was returned to the land, closing the nutrient cycle. But that was possible only in small-scale, low-density communities. With the rise of towns and cities, and the concentration of people, the system broke.
If everyone in a city like Eugene, Oregon (population ~180,000) suddenly began composting their own waste, the result could be a public health crisis—cholera, typhoid, other waterborne diseases. Not because composting is wrong, but because urban infrastructure isn’t built to decentralize healthily. We centralized humans, but not their cycles.
And so, we outsource. Waste becomes a line item. Something to manage, not integrate.
In addition, after flooding in cities and towns, sewage often rises with the floodwaters, so when we flush our toilets (WC’s) what passes out to be replaced by clean water, does not disappear, this is a key point here.
Resistance to Change: The Food Identity Crisis
Suggest that someone change their diet—cut out processed food, limit factory-farmed meat, cook more whole foods—and you’re likely to meet resistance. Not always because of ignorance, but because food is identity. Culture. Comfort. Economy.
To critique modern food is to risk triggering a deep-seated fear: that the life we’re leading might be harming us. And in fact, it absolutely is. This is an interesting purview on this situation.
So What Do We Do with the Biosolid Sludge?
As fields and farmers reject biosolids, we’re left with the consequence of a broken loop:
Incinerate it? Release toxins into the air.
Bury it? Risk groundwater contamination.
Process it chemically? Still need to dispose of the residue.
Or, we could stop creating toxic waste in the first place.
We redesign the front end:
Decentralized composting.
Source separation of urine and feces. Urine and feces serve very different functions biologically and ecologically. Urine is rich in nitrogen and phosphorus—key nutrients for plants—while feces contain more pathogens and require composting before being safe to use. By separating them at the source, we can safely recover nutrients from urine without risking contamination, and compost feces under controlled conditions. This makes localized, regenerative sanitation systems more feasible and safe, even in urban settings. It’s not just about disposal—it’s about honoring each stream for what it is, and managing it accordingly.
The future doesn’t lie in better disposal. It lies in better design.
Why the pathogens? Feces are biologically designed to carry a high load of microbial material out of the body. This includes bacteria, viruses, protozoa, and helminths (parasitic worms), many of which can cause disease in humans. The human digestive tract is host to trillions of microorganisms, and while many are beneficial or neutral in the gut, their presence in the environment can pose serious health risks—especially through water contamination or improper handling. In contrast, urine is typically sterile when excreted and carries far fewer pathogens, making it safer to manage and reuse.
Are there ways we can reduce such pathogens through what we eat? Yes. A diet rich in fiber, fresh vegetables, fermented foods, and limited in ultra-processed products can help cultivate a healthier gut microbiome—reducing the load of pathogenic microbes. Similarly, diets that avoid excessive antibiotics, hormone-laced meats, and artificial sweeteners tend to promote better microbial balance. Healthier digestion means healthier waste—lower pathogen loads, better composting outcomes, and less environmental risk when these materials are cycled back to the land. Once more, garbage in - garbage out.
By separating them at the source, we can safely recover nutrients from urine without risking contamination, and compost feces under controlled conditions. This makes localized, regenerative sanitation systems more feasible and safe, even in urban settings. It’s not just about disposal—it’s about honoring each stream for what it is, and managing it accordingly.
The future doesn’t lie in better disposal. It lies in better design.
Eliminating PFAS and toxic household products.
Replacing the flush toilet with systems that regenerate.
The future doesn’t lie in better disposal. It lies in better design.
The Real Clean is a Closed Loop
Clean isn’t sterility. It isn’t the absence of visible mess. Real cleanliness is a system that functions without poisoning itself. A compost pile, done right, is cleaner than any hospital corridor—because it doesn’t pretend to erase. It transforms.
We don’t need to return to medieval squalor. We need to move forward into something wiser. Something cyclical. Something that recognizes:
Nothing disappears. Everything returns.
Let what returns be something worthy of becoming soil again and let’s get more seeds into those precious soils.
Closing Reflection
We are what we eat. And what we eat, we become—not just in body, but in consequence. The land becomes what we spread upon it. The future becomes what we tolerate today.
Garbage in, garbage out is not just a computing term. It’s a prophecy. One we still have time to rewrite.
Will we? That depends on whether we’re willing to eat—and live—differently.
Thank you as always for reading this.