Turds may LOOK like little lumps of charcoal, but, in one of nature’s cruelest tragedies, you can’t really roast a hot dog over them. OR CAN YOU?!
University of Colorado environmental engineering professor Karl Linden thinks you can, and not because he’s been legally smoking doobies. He’s working on a solar-powered toilet that turns waste into biochar, which can be used as fuel. This takes lighting your farts to a whole new level:
Thanks to a couple of mirrors and fiber-optic cables, Linden is turning feces and urine into biochar, a small black chunk of material that can be used like a charcoal briquette.
“It can be used for cooking,” he told ABC News. “Or you can put it in the soil so that it better retains nutrients. There’s a lot of agricultural benefits.”
Linden wasn’t just trying to excite those of us with the maturity level of Justin Bieber. His goal is rather noble: to make a toilet for developing countries without robust water access. By reflecting light off of eight mirrors, passing it through fiber-optic cables, and frying the germs outta poop, an outhouse’s waste pit could get a bit more sanitary (and the byproducts could get a bit more useful). Although we understand if you still don’t want to eat out of the toilet.
