After the Flush : Rethinking the Future of Human Waste

Looking beyond current sanitation models in the US to develop new ways of managing human waste as a resource. What happens when you flush the toilet? Where does the waste go?In this engagingly written ethnographic study, Nick Kawa follows the trail of human bodily excrement as it travels through multiple sites in the American Midwest. In addition to documenting the treatment and transformation of sanitation waste, this book chronicles the growing movement to promote sewage sludge, or “biosolids,” for fertilizing industrial farm fields, urban gardens, city parks, and ecological restoration sites—a complex endeavor that has fueled debates about potential harms to human and environmental health. After the Flush presents the modern sanitation system through the eyes of insider experts, sharing insights from wastewater treatment operators and environmental scientists but also activists who advocate for alternative models to the industrial system. These include low-cost forms of ecological sanitation, illustrated through the author's own experiments with a compost toilet. Reframing human bodily waste as simply part of the human biome, this book offers radical possibilities for managing the human relationship to self, body, community, and ecology.