Dog Poo Powers a Streetlight In Massachusetts Park - Polidicks

[QUOTE]Good dog parents might think they’re doing their part by using biodegradable baggies to pick up after their pooches. But after Fido’s feces go in the trash can and to a landfill, they release methane gas, a significant contributor to the greenhouse effect. A dog park in Cambridge, Mass., has a solution: Add in a methane digester, and let your dog waste power the streetlights, tea cart and popcorn machine. The Park Spark methane digester, unveiled this week, only powers a streetlight for now — no poop-powered popcorn yet. But it’s a neat concept: Replace trash cans with a public methane digester, and you demonstrate how simple it can be to turn waste into fuel. “As long as people own pets in the city and throw away dog waste, the production of energy will be continuous and unlimited,” the project’s Web site says. The project involves three basic steps: Throw your dog’s waste into the digester, where anaerobic bacteria are ready to break it down. Stir the mixture to help methane rise to the top, and burn the methane to generate light or electricity. After picking up their dogs' waste in biodegradable bags, visitors to the Park Spark digester can feed the waste through an above-ground tube, and stir it with a hand crank. The bacteria container is buried underground and the methane is piped through the ground to the streetlamp, which burns with an eternal flame. Eventually, the project leaders want to use dog-generated methane to power vendor carts selling human food. Conceptual artist Matthew Mazzotta came up with the idea, which is partially funded by MIT. [img]http://www.popsci.com/files/imagecache/article_image_large/articles/parkspark.jpg[/img][/QUOTE] Source: [url]http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2010-09/fidos-poo-powers-streetlight-massachusetts-dog-park[/url]

what a shitty good idea

i wonder how it smells

I wonder how shitty the power is. :v:

What a good pooprosal to engage in this green activity

I wonder how long say one poo baggie powers the light. And what happens during the day? Does the "power" get stored until it's night time? Or is it more of a manual thing in which as soon as the poo is "digested", the power is used?

what the shit?

It's our doody to look after our planet so this is a great idea.

It's nice to see that they're shedding some light on the whole dog poop situation.

[img]http://www.popsci.com/files/imagecache/article_image_large/articles/parkspark.jpg[/img] Think about how much energy went into extracting the minerals and building these drums.

And here I was thinking they were just burning dry dog shit on top of a pole.

When I saw it was going to power tea carts and popcorn machines I couldn't help but think that it is going to smell like absoulute shit.

It needs both those drums to power a single streetlight? And who is going to want to "crank" their dog shit around in a bin? [editline]11:47AM[/editline] And just the very idea that both those drums are filled with dog shit, and I'm standing right next to them, would disgust me.

Isn't this wierd as [i]shit?[/i] Yeah it was bad.

Facepunch never fails to impress with churning out news puns, shitty or not.

Those lights are the shit.

These puns are crap

Gross but you have to stir it too? Can't the stirring mechanism be automatic?

goddamn hippies

Well at least it does something with dog shit. Pretty good idea.

[QUOTE=Carbon Knight;24755609][img_thumb]http://www.popsci.com/files/imagecache/article_image_large/articles/parkspark.jpg[/img_thumb] Think about how much energy went into extracting the minerals and building these drums.[/QUOTE] It's a proof of concept

It'd be interesting if we had these, but there would always be the dumb shits who would put their plastic drink cups in there with it.

Couldn't we, in theory, power our houses when we flush our toilets?

Great now all we need is huge vats of shit everywhere in the city and there'll be no need for power plants.

That's quite a lot of machinery to power one light.

Wouldn't it make more sense to convert all the heat and methane generated by the rivers of poo in the sewers? Vats of poo doesn't seem like a sustainable green system.

Now we just need a shitload.

I read it as Dog Poo Powers a Streetlight Manifesto and I was expecting some shitty Ska

I live pretty close, this makes me wanna check it out. Maybe i'll poop in it :wink:

[QUOTE=Octave;24765413]I live pretty close, this makes me wanna check it out. Maybe i'll poop in it :wink:[/QUOTE] do this