This is not the kind of book I would normally buy or typically read, but I do believe The Waste Water Gardener was worth the two hours I spent on it. I received the book for free through a Goodreads giveaway which I entered on a whim. (My tactic is to enter every Goodreads giveaway which looks remotely interesting with the hope that I'm increasing the odds of my actually winning a book of any kind). I was slightly concerned, when the book arrived in the mail, that the content of The Waste Water Garden was going to be as ridiculous as the cover. Thankfully, it is not.
Mark Nelson begins his book describing his time spent on a ranch in the 1960s. In order to reclaim dry, overused land, he helped to plant trees which would re-create a sustainable ecosystem. Horse manure as well as human manure was used in the compost. Nelson goes on to describe two years he spent inside a sustainable man-made ecosystem called Biosphere 2 in the 1980s and, for the bulk of the book, his role in inventing and implementing Waste Water Gardens.
Waste Water Gardens are literally pond-type structures which filter water using mainly plant-life. The plants absorb most of the nutrients from human waste, leaving the water clean and usable again. In essence, it is a water recycling system which treats water without the use of chemicals and large, unsustainable treatment plants. The details of how the system works, I do not really understand.
Nelson's key argument, however, is that our current water-treatment and disposal systems are unsustainable. We do not have enough fresh water available for all seven billion inhabitants of the earth to all use flushable toilets and sewage systems. Nelson advocates for compost toilets, the use of human waste as compost (once properly rid of harmful bacteria and preferably only for non-edible plants), the implementation of waste water gardens and the creation of a water treatment system which looks to recycle rather than dispose.
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