The Other dark matter : the science and business of turning waste into wealth and health / Lina Zeldovich

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Part 1: The History of Human Waste -- Chapter 1: How I Learned to Love the Excrement -- Chapter 2: The Early History of Human Excreta -- Chapter 3: Treasure Night Soil as if It Were Gold! -- Chapter 4: The Water Closet Dilemma and the Sewage Farm Paradigm -- Chapter 5: Germs, Fertilizer, and the Poop Police -- Part 2: The Present: A Sludge Revolution in Progress -- Chapter 6: The Great Sewage Time Bomb and the Redistribution of Nutrients on the Planet -- Chapter 7: Loowatt, a Loo That Turns Waste into Watts -- Chapter 8: The Crap That Cooks Your Dinner and Container-Based Sanitation -- Chapter 9: HomeBiogas: Your Personal Digester in a Box -- Chapter 10: Made in New York -- Chapter 11: Lystek, the Home of Sewage Smoothies -- Chapter 12: How DC Water Makes Biosolids BLOOM -- Chapter 13: From Biosolids to Biofuels -- Part 3: The Future of Medicine and Other Things -- Chapter 14: Poop: The Best (and Cheapest) Medicine -- Chapter 15: Looking where the Sun Doesn't Shine -- Chapter 16: From the Kindness of One's Gut: An Insider Look into Stool BanksAfterword: Breathing Poetry into Poop -- Notes -- Index

In the world today, we face considerable challenges, and while new ones pile on, the old standbys of fossil fuel overuse, greenhouse gas emissions, resource scarcity, food security, and weather and water extremes like droughts and floods remain. Fortunately, scientists are studying myriad ways human waste can help. Science journalist Lina Zeldovich argues in The Other Dark Matter that human excrement is a resource, cheap and widely available, that can be converted into a sustainable energy source, act as an organic fertilizer, provide effective medicinal therapy for resistant bacterial infection, and much more.