The 19th-Century Night Soil Men Who Carted Away America’s Waste

atlasobscura.com

20 points·jelliclesfarm··9 comments

>>Before municipal sewer systems, excreta piled up in the privies of people’s homes—essentially a deep hole in the ground... When the privies were eventually filled, that’s when the night soil men were called in.

This period in U.S/U.K history is repeating itself in the developing world as the urban population explodes.

Africa's booming cities face a severe toilet crisis https://apnews.com/article/c225ff70420846489892ea206ecca6d1

One innovation from Uganda: https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/feces-poop-fuel-uga...

Surprisingly first-word Japan still has about 30% of it's population unconnected to a sewer. For those folks human waste collection (with vacuum trucks) is still a thing. http://www.jsanic.org/inasia/japanhistoryx.html

In Japan, johkasou system is now requirement if sewer isn't available. The system cleans most waste so it need to be vacuumed only per year.

If they just threw some sawdust on it...

We have been and continue to be so stupid.

(The thing that gets me is that refrigerators open like cabinets rather than chests of drawers.)

There are some drawer refrigerators but they tend to be limited to high end remodels due to the high cost. See for example https://www.remodelista.com/posts/10-easy-pieces-best-under-...

Those strike me as over-engineered and still pretty wasteful.

Compare to e.g. ice cream freezers https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=ice+cream+freezer&atb=v60-1...

But the point isn't that these things don't exist, it's that they aren't the norm. We do a lot of really obviously stupid things, even when better options are right in front of us.

I have drawer refrigerators and freezers in my house.

Not just America. UK cities had Night Soil Men too.

Good old times.

Simpler times.

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