It wants to bury poop deep underground to counter all the pollution that its data centers generate.
  • rycee@lemmy.worldEnglish
    372·
    5 months ago

    What about the nutrients in the waste? Why not compost it, capture the methane offgassing, and store that?

    • GreenKnight23@lemmy.worldEnglish
      406·
      5 months ago

      using human waste as fertilizer isn’t a good idea.

      human waste contains everything that a person has consumes. this includes disease causing pathogens and parasites.

      if it were to be used as a fertilizer it would need to go through multiple stages of expensive processing and testing to ensure safety. it’s far more cost effective and safer to use food by-product like fish cuttings to create fertilizers.

      • rycee@lemmy.worldEnglish
        14·
        5 months ago

        Treated waste water sludge is very commonly used here in Sweden albeit using anaerobic digestion rather than regular composting. High temperature composting would kill any pathogens so you can absolutely get permission to use a composting waste system in small scales. For larger scale waste treatment it is with anaerobic digestion, as mentioned.

        The captured methane is typically used for fuel, e.g., in public transport.

        As far as I know the sludge used for fertilizer needs to be certified under something called REVAQ. Some controversy does exist surrounding safe levels of the various harmful substances and perhaps PFAS in particular.

      • squaresinger@lemmy.worldEnglish
        16·
        5 months ago

        Not to forget: It contains a ton of medicine as well. If you want to have antibiotics in your salad, use human waste as fertilizers.

      • MonkderVierte@lemmy.zipEnglish
        12·
        5 months ago

        Pathogens are less of a problem, they die off before they cannot infect a plant. But chemicals from medication and contraceptives, as well as heavy metals, are.

        • GreenKnight23@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          5 months ago

          less about infection and more environmental. some people don’t wash their produce and get sick because of it.

    • interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.mlEnglish
      1·
      5 months ago

      But what do you do with the methane, can’t story it and if you burn it, you release the CO² which was the point of burying fertilizer while it’s CO² carbon credit value is less than the price of the fertilizer itself.

  • mazzilius_marsti@lemmy.worldEnglish
    46·
    5 months ago

    so the AI stuff causes too much CO2, instead of fixing their own hardware, the best they could do is to offset that CO2 amount by burying shit?

    • Jhex@lemmy.worldEnglish
      71·
      5 months ago

      It’s poetic… MS AI slings out massive amounts of shit and now the company gets to bury some of it to compensate

    • interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.mlEnglish
      24·
      5 months ago

      Yes, burying fertilizer traps biomass CO2 and then they can use that as carbon credit equivalent to claim CO² neutrality.
      Of course, there’s a reason why fertilizer is an inexpensive source of fixated carbon biomass and this means all fertilizer will increase in price by the amount value of it’s CO2 carbon credit equivalent

      Then maybe the buried fertilizer will become so valuable that it can be dug out and sold as fertilizer again.

      I don’t see any problems with this plan !

      • Jhex@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        5 months ago

        Then maybe the buried fertilizer will become so valuable that it can be dug out and sold as fertilizer again.

        I don’t see any problems with this plan !

        except the part the planet may be uninhabitable for humans by then due to the massive CO2 we are spewing to get slop from AI…

        other than that, no problem at all

        • interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.mlEnglish
          11·
          5 months ago

          Sure, sure but !

          “Yes, the planet got destroyed. But for a beautiful moment in time we created a lot of value for shareholders.”

      • dejected_warp_core@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        5 months ago

        Then maybe the buried fertilizer will become so valuable that it can be dug out and sold as fertilizer again.

        Between the methane that generates and easily obtained phosphorous trapped down there, that’s strictly a matter of time, unfortunately.

  • bitjunkie@lemmy.worldEnglish
    31·
    5 months ago

    I thought the billion dollars of excrement they bought was OpenAI

    self-five 🙏 ohhhhhh

  • zod000@lemmy.mlEnglish
    20·
    5 months ago

    I’m surprised they had to outsource that as they have been producing so much shit for decades.

    • willington@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      3·
      5 months ago

      Tecnowashing is also fraud.

      Take a failed concept like the gold standard, technowash it, and you get crypto scamcoins.

      Greenwashing, sportswashing (saudi arabia), sanewashing (presenting insane ideas as debatable ideas, like debating human rights with someone who is against human rights ends up sanewashing the anti-rights position), small business washing (using ostensibly a pro small business argument to push a fortune 100 agenda), worker washing (treat workers like shit in private but make pro worker noises in public), gender washing (the politician with an anti-woman agenda is a woman so it’s OK), minority washing (a fascist pundit is a minority that fascism often targets, so fascism is OK now). Now we can add tecnowashing to the list.

      Another example of technowashing is when a real estate company presents itself as a tech startup to inflate its valuation.

      All this washing has exploded in recent years.