This is Some Good S**t: 7 Practical Uses for Feces

Shit, like Jimmy Fallon, is mostly water. The rest, probably also like Fallon, is dead bacteria, fiber, fat, and ass mucus. It’s pretty simple (this Fallon metaphor keeps going, doesn’t it?), pretty awful and people have found far too many ways to make it do something for them.

Mmm, nutty

Booze – The origin of the term shit faced may have more literal meanings than any of us ever guessed. A few thousand years ago, our desperately thirsty ancestors on the Orkney Islands decided to make beer. Technology being what it was at the time, it wasn’t really an option to go pick up a 6-pack of Pabst, so they made their own kiln. And they made it out of shit. Probably other stuff too, but when you get down to it, if you’re making drinks in something made of shit, that’s the stand out ingredient.

In 2001, some researchers discovered what they called an ancient brewery and made some of the beer themselves. In a fun German shizer video twist, they said the beer was absolutely fantastic. We’re not suggesting you go sculpt a poop kiln and brew your own just to see if it’s true, but we’re not not suggesting it.

The neighbors never come for dinner anymore

Housing – Building things out of shit leaves no end of hilarious jokes you can make when you’re done. “What a shitty house” or “Something smells like shit in here” or “This wall tastes funny” are probably favorites in India and various other places around Asia and Africa where people build homes out of dung. When it’s caught fresh from the turd cutter (and who would want old poop, that’s disgusting), it can be worked into a stone-like plaster that’s pretty decent at holding a building together. So decent, in fact, that during apocalyptic earthquakes the crap houses shift around a little bit but don’t fall down. And while standing up to earthquakes is pretty awesome, we suspect that some sort on monsoon would really make for a terrible turn of events as your poo house melts around you while the fury of nature flings tangy bits of seeds and nut matter into your eyes until you’re swallowed whole by the quicksandy mass that was once your living room wall.

Drink from thine ass and be saved!

Water Purification – Our good friends in Bolivia have some issues with their water supply. The local water, polluted with waste from nearby mines, is unsafe to drink as it is. What’s a boy to do? Strain it through llama poop. Filters made from llama dung are able to strain out bacteria and contaminants. The same sort of technology is used elsewhere with cow dung and, presumably if you’re in a pinch when you’re camping by the lake, you could crap in a bucket and work up something on your own if you knew all the ins and outs. The process is more complicated than simply shitting in a glass of water, of course, and involves microbes in the dung removing the dissolved metals and neutralizing the acids. Water is filtered through large pools of the droppings until all the contaminants are cleaned out and the locals are left with clean, slightly assish water to drink.

You know Babe? Yeah, I fucked him.

Biogas – The big news in shit is that it could change the world. Fossil fuel is all fine and good for causing us all to waste money, pollution and angering the ghosts of a bajillion dinosaurs who will one day come to claim their rich, oily remains. But the real deal for the next generation is your ass. Your ass, cow ass, goat ass, all kinds of ass.

In India, Gober gas generators which run on cow dung are keeping more than 2 million homes lit up at the cost of homeowners’ eyes constantly watering and not being invited out to many parties. Pig shit runs street lights in some parts of China. Similar projects are under way in a number of Asian countries and smaller versions are also going in the US and Europe.

Also in Europe there are plans underway to make a car that runs on biogas. Clearly if the project works, it’s only a matter of time before it comes fully equipped with its own on-board “fuel receptacle” which the rest of us will recognize as a shitter in the backseat. This in turn will lead to the elimination of the scourge of highway rest stops and the befoulment of our nation’s corn fields.

Poop: fighting gingivitis since 1877

Toothpaste – In many parts of India, the cow is a sacred animal. For some reason, this sanctity extends to the cow’s colon and what passes on through, at least for some people. Since cows are sacred and can’t be slaughtered, whatever drops off a cow is generally considered fair game and good times. Dung is a surprisingly large industry with people using it to make detergents, obesity cures, lotions, skin whiteners and pills that claim to cure cancer, diabetes and various other illness that we don’t even need to Google to know they aren’t cured by cow shit. It’s debatable which is more bizarre, a cancer cure made from poo or toothpaste, but the toothpaste really seems a lot more like a lame prank from a National Lampoon movie. There’s no word online anywhere about how people like it but one wonders if the local alternatives to breath freshening include eating garbage or choking on your own vomit.

If you try to make this from your own poo you will be sadly disappointed.

Paper – Paper made from elephant dung has inexplicably become popular lately, perhaps in tree hugging circles where things made from crap are probably awesome. According to www.elephantdungpaper.com, which is a real website, an elephant will eat up to 250kg of food per day and then crap out 50kg of that. From that, 115 sheets of paper can be made because elephants do a piss poor job of digesting fiber.

The man who came up with the idea actually took some crap home one day, put it in the food processor to make pulp and attempted to make paper, which apparently annoyed his wife but goes to show a truly batshit crazy idea has a lot of strange and unpredictable facets. In any event, his idea worked out and now the Thai Elephant Conservation Centre sells elephant dung paper while other places around the world produce paper from the poop of horses, llamas, sheep and pretty much anything that craps a lot of fiber, which could include grandma.

Ha, you got shot with shit.

Gun Powder – If you plan on shooting someone and really making it sting, figuratively and literally, you need crap. Gun powder is made from charcoal, sulfur and saltpeter and saltpeter traditionally comes from the asses of horses and chickens and such. Back in the day, shit collectors were pretty important people and were organized under nobles on direct authority from the Crown. It’s entirely likely that there was also a black market run by turd burglars as well. In any event, the poo had to go through a complex refining process that involved a big shithole in order to extract the potassium nitrate, which was saltpeter. From there you need the right amounts of charcoal and sulfur, mix them up with a little love and murderous desire and then you’re on your way to blowing things up or shooting your enemies with your fecally musket.

As the process of making gunpowder became more reliable, other sources of crap became more important to various war efforts. During the Civil War, the South scraped as many bat caves they could find dry of guano to get the saltpeter so they could continue shooting at the Yankees and losing the war.