#44 Talking Sh#t With Joe Jenkins Author of the Humanure Handbook

No one can say that Joe doesn’t know his shit because this guy literally wrote the book on it. And, for as much as we thought we knew about composting and composting toilets, as it turns out; we don’t know crap about it. Joe originally had only 600 copies printed of his first edition, and they sold out faster than his pile out back could compost his beloved pet. Poop or pee, urine or feces, he doesn’t care what you call it; just don’t call your “dry toilet” a composting one. Yes, composting humanure is perfectly legal. No, you can’t just pile it in the corner of your garden and HOPE it decomposes. And, yes, you’ll learn more about this very uncomfortable subject listening to this one conversation than you’ll ever want to know. We promise.

Joe literally knows more about shit than almost anybody else on the planet. He didn’t set out to be the authority on all things poop related, but now that he’s sold almost 60,000 copies of his book, we’re thinking that maybe now he’ll reluctantly accept the title of The King Of Crap. This guy’s been using composting as sanitation for over 37 years in the same location. His pile includes everything from humanure to dead animals, layered carefully with organic materials. These efforts then create the perfect cooking temperature which transforms his potentially smelly mess into valuable fertilizer. Surprisingly, he does not separate urine from solid wastes and made us question everything we know about this scientifically heady subject. We were tempted to drop way more poop euphemisms into this show than we did, but rest assured, we wrote them all down. So, grab a cup of Joe, and be prepared to hear nothing but shit for the next 45 minutes.