Of Oxycodone and Compost

Waste not, want not.

A simple saying, but one that has led to the existence of, among other things, my very own compost heap (my frothy pile of joy!). Now, by the simple and naturally-occurring process of decay, I can return to the soil the abundance of nutrients and products I have enjoyed. My contributed nitrogen and carbon sources so far have taken the form of pits from juicy summer peaches and rich avocados, napkins that have cushioned many tea bags and wiped thirsty mouths, and some less savory things, like vacuum dust-bin whirls, shredded secret documents, wine turned to vinegar among other expired fridge remnants, and yard waste. This time of year, that means leaves.

By the way - I got my 3ft tall/3ft diam bin for free, and the compost it generates (after some 6+ weeks) works to fertilize and enrich the soil better than pricey chemical fertilizers. Just thought I'd put that out there.

Most recently, I got to wondering what really is the most environmentally appropriate way to dispose of something that most houses have an abundance of -- used pharmaceuticals. You can't fall off your bike without getting prescribed a passel of pills, and who's to say you'll need (or want) to take them all?

So, as with most curiosities, I asked the intarwebs if I could possibly compost my leftover happy pills. Note however, that this isn't just some hair-brained idea; while plowing through Compost This Book!, I was struck by the clever solution to an explosive situation in which the government inadvertently created a huge underground reservoir of TNT as a result of a munitions recycling program. Composting the enriched land with a carefully-designed recipe helped avoid explosions, and the resulting small organics were probably pretty nice for nearby plants, too. Those clean-up methods logically extend to pharmaceuticals. Most active ingredients have natural sources (remember the campaigns for saving the rain forests and their 'miracle cures'?), so the majority of them might be suited to decomposition the way that mother earth elegantly intended.
[Other medicinal additives (eg. binding agents, etc.) are likely biodegradable in some capacity; most are already water-soluble, depending on pH - you didn't think Pharma cleans their tanks with canola oil, did you?]

What I found was a surprising lack of instruction or publicly-available information about what to do with all those leftover synthetic substances lying around. That's dangerous - Big Pharma pumps out billions of pills per year, and much of it ends up in our environment through excretion and ways that water and biosolids are reused at industrial water sanitation facilities [see tox research @ USGS]. I did, however, find a nice Swedish course on environmental awareness with some cautionary words..

Excess prescription drugs also provide easy access for recreational abusers, because there isn't an easy, obvious way for Joe Consumer to clean out the medicine cabinet. E.g.: Conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh's pain medication abuse has been in the news recently. Most government websites DO advise people to stop throwing most of their pills into the wastewater stream via toilets or sinks, but the only alternative suggested is the trash. Well, that's just not good enough - landfills are full, and concoctions of some vile stuff leach out anyway. We can't very well convert all the land left into landfills to put our stuff in; this country needs all the green space we can get to absorb CO2, and farming is already lagging behind in producing enough food for the millions (import/export imbalance --> national debt).

The EPA's plan for the next few years doesn't seem nearly as ambitious enough to me; action needs to be taken now. It IS encouraging, though, that they're showing an active interest in the behavioral factors contributing toward decision making that is envronmentally destructive. I believe their findings may come into conflict with industry, but what results from any such conflict remains to be seen.


Listening to CSPAN radio last night wasn't particularly encouraging for my own faith in the government's ability to make decisions for its citizens on a basis that is independent of market-driven factors. The Nuclear Research Commission badly wants a burgeoning "nuclear renaissance," and no mentions were even made of international political damage done by nuclear proliferation. But, alas.. that topic rests for another day.

Fall Trips, Foiled!

I've been out of commission lately after an impetuous tussle with a bike trail got a little too heated and resulted in 12 stitches in my knee, among other gashes. That was the second of two really excellent fall trips I had planned.

The first was a jaunt up to Pittsburgh for a memorial service for a professor of mine who died this summer. Even though the leaves weren't turning yet, I had a lovely drive out. It was kind of strange to be back at CMU whilst not enrolled as a student, but I welcome relations with my former professors that are on a more "real person" kind of level. Look Ma, I'm a real person now! I stayed for free [in exchange for manual labor and a list of favorite dinner suggestions] and checked out a Feist concert while in PA, too. Good times.

After that, I headed out on a 4-day biking and camping trip with a friend. We planned to bike along the C&O Canal from Washington in the direction of the Cumberland Gap (where a different trail picks up those on their way to Pittsburgh), where our only real goal was to reach Harpers Ferry. As fate would have it, we wouldn't even reach that modest distance! Although that probably had something to do with our road bikes' relative sensitivity to dusty, gravelly trails; the bikes with us and all our stuff strapped to them were just too unstable. Rubbernecking was the fatal step that sentenced me to a day in the hospital and at least a week of hobbling. I can't be thankful enough for the plentiful, gracious runners that shuttled us to the hospital and helped us take care of our bikes. Now, I'm pretty sure the best way to show my appreciation is to pass on the good karma.

Injuries aside, the trail is a really beautiful place to ride, walk, or hike! If only it were paved. The canal locks make some mini waterfalls every so often, and the terrain is almost completely level (except the gravelly hills at each lock) so it's not difficult. I can't wait to get back and try again - and maybe this time get some camping in.

NPR Story on Biofuel

Earlier this year, I got word of a new company that has the first plans to build a cellulosic ethanol plant in Georgia in 2008. Range Fuels plans to use waste products from corn production (and hopefully, waste products from other proliferative agricultural processes too) to make ethanol. More and more companies are seeing this time of environmental need as an opportunity to be innovative, and the news media is all over those kinds of stories, too.

Just today, I ran across an NPR Story from a March '07 Talk of the Nation (Science Friday) show about the viability of biofuels in which a Range Fuels CEO serves on a panel that addresses this particular method of weaning the US off its "fossil fuel addiction," including US enthusiasm over Brazilian ethanol. From my perspective, the reason this story is so great is that they go into the issue not only from a ChemE perspective but from a sustainability point of view.

One particularly keen question that came up is, how can we support corn-based fuels when they are one of the largest users of petroleum-based fertilizer in this country? That's one more very large reason for spreading the use of composting!