Pooponomics: The Economy of Human Waste

mint pooponomicS by @shanesnow We rarely think about it after flushing the toilet in the morning, but processing and getting rid of human waste is big business in America – and it affects your financial bottom line more than you think. The U.S. water and sewer, or wastewater, industries are a $100 billion business Equipment & Chemicals $23.6 billion Water Utilities $33.8 billion Waste Utilities Engineering & $32.6 billion Construction $10 billion The U.S. makes up 1/4 of the worldwide water/sewer market A typical U.S. household spends an average of: $200/year to have its own septic system pumped and inspected. to sewer $400+/year to send its waste to the city sewers. $523 total on water/sewer per year %24 (that's considerably less than the $707 spent on soft drinks) (According to the EPA and WOSSA.) $1,600 Babies need around 6,000 diapers changed in the first 2 years. At an average of $0.25 per diaper, disposables cost about $1,600 by the time a baby is potty trained. $150 A set of cloth diapers costs about $300 and can last through 2 kids. If the roughly 9 million U.S. babies using disposables switched to cloth, we'd save $6 billion a year.* *That doesn't include the cost of hot water and electricity to wash cloth diapers. (According to RealDiaperAssociation, an organization that promotes cloth diapers.) Charmin data says you use 20,000 sheets of TP a year. At 500 sheets per roll, that's 40 rolls and an average of $18.56 per person, per year. (According to a study by Toilet Paper World) 108 million Ibs of solid waste goes into U.S. sewers each day. (28% of America doesn't contribute to public sewers) That weighs as much as 123 747 airplanes. 39 billion Ibs of solid waste goes into sewers each year. That's 3 trillion Ibs in our collective lifetimes or enough to fill 7 Empire State Buildings with poop. (103 floors tall, 37 million cubic feet in volume each) Speaking of which... In 2008, New York City reported that it will cost $36.2 billion to repair and update its sewers. That's just slightly more than Facebook was worth as of Aug. 2010. ה ד facebook. $36.2 billion $33.6 billion (According to NYC and EPA data and Facebook's recent valuation) There are around 300 million toilets in the U.S. A brand new toilet costs $200 and up. Urinals 8-9 million Residential 190 million Commercial 100 million Switching from a 3.5 gallon per flush toilet to a low flow 1.6 gallons cuts the average person's annual water use from 36,500 gallons to 19,000 gallons. Holy crap! At water prices of $1.25 per 1,000 gallons, that would save a family of four $88 a year. (According to Sloan Flushmate and conservative EPA estimates for water prices in California). Emint Sources: by @shanesnow Sloan FlushMate (flushmate.com) Environmental Protection Agency (epa.gov) Empire State Building NYC (esbnyc.com) Charmin Toilet Paper (charmin.com) via ToiletPaperWorld.com NYC.gov RealDiaperAssociaion.org The Washington Onsite Sewage Association (WOSSA) Various calculations made using EPA data for mint.com