Alternative Systems for Human Waste Management

Principal Investigators

Martha Merson, Nickolay Hristov, Betsy Towns

Project Staff
Elise Levin-Güracar

Participating Researchers
Jolie Gutentag, Shawn Shafner

Summary

This project lays the groundwork for community conversations about the design and deployment of strategies for alternative solutions to human waste.
Functional flush toilets in the US are the norm, but intense storms can create problems with sewage and waste treatment, taking systems offline and leaving residents to improvise interim solutions.
In this research planning phase, an interdisciplinary team of artists, designers, public servants, and STEM educators will open discussions of alternative solutions for managing waste and mitigating flooding impacts. Alternatives may become intriguing, palatable, and even desirable to our neighbors. Our goal is to pilot a survey and facilitated conversations that engage participants in designing approaches to manage humanure, an intensely intimate, stigmatized, “ick” part of life. The team will recruit recreational enthusiasts as well as others. During facilitated conversations of mixed audiences, project leaders will:
  • Consult with and engage NC residents to identify priorities, values, areas of curiosity, and preferences.
  • Lay the groundwork for a market segmentation study that solicits responses from a wide range of folks clarifying opportunities and challenges to adoption of alternative solutions.

Impact

When new solutions become available, pushback can derail adoption. Without significant efforts on the front end to design deployment strategies, innovative, cost-saving, alternative solutions might face resistance and fail to be widely adopted. Findings will be relevant to municipal planners who need public buy-in to manage change.

Funded by the NSF Responsible Design, Development, and Deployment of Technologies (ReDDDoT) program

The NSF ReDDDoT program is a collaboration with philanthropic partners and crosses all disciplines of science and engineering. The program seeks to ensure ethical, legal, community, and societal considerations are embedded in the lifecycle of technology’s creation and use. The program supports research, implementation and education projects involving multi-sector teams that focus on the responsible design, development or deployment of technologies.