Shit Happens

College students talk shit all the time, but we don't actually think about it very much. A superficial conversation is "shooting the shit." "Shit!" we say in anger or amazement. "No shit!" we say when somebody tells us something obvious or unbelievable. "Bullshit!" we respond to falsehood. "To give a shit" is to care. We get "shit-faced" when we drink at parties, but "shit" is also a common synonym for drugs. When trouble starts, "the shit hits the fan." When trouble increases, we're "in deep shit," so we might (ironically) "shit a brick." And when the trouble gets overwhelming, we are, of course, "up shit creek without a paddle." In college culture, shit is a versatile word.

But shit isn't just a linguistic construct; it's a daily reality. Most of us don't know shit about it, nor do we give a shit. Ignorance is bliss. But it's not responsibility.

When we need to take a shit on campus, most of us go to a bathroom. In the average college residence hall, the bathrooms seem a long way from environmental studies. But human waste management is an environmental study.

If you're a human being of average size and weight, your body produces about a pound of waste-solid and liquid-a day. It's one of the few forms of home production still remaining in America , one type of manufacturing that hasn't been shipped offshore. One of these days, perhaps, people in the Third World will even produce our shit for us. But for now, it's a task we tackle ourselves.

We make shit without even thinking about it. It's more biological than logical. When, for example, Joe College orders a cheeseburger and french fries, he masticates his meal and then swallows. The food proceeds down the alimentary canal. There, a variety of digestive enzymes convert complex carbohydrates into simple sugars, turn fats into glycerol and fatty acids, and transmute proteins into amino acids and peptides. In Joe's small intestine, these digested nutrients are absorbed by blood and lymph vessels, and carried into the circulatory system to feed the body's various organs, including his busy brain. What's left is excremental, my dear Watson-the waste that waits until, as the bumpersticker says, shit happens.

Biologically, our excretion reminds us of the beauties of the natural world, the ways in which our bodies are designed to manage the ins and outs of animal life. Shit happens when we use our sphincter muscles to open the anus and push a stool out of the rectum. At this point, usually, the poop plops into a small pool of water, and the shit is submerged, along with its pungent smell. After wiping our butts with toilet paper-soft sheets of treated trees-we flush the toilet. To us, it's not worth a second thought.

Two hundred years ago, college students disposed of their wastes on the premises. The outhouse was removed from the main house, but it was close enough for people to understand the problem of waste. In the winter, people used bedpans, and then carried their waste to the craphouse. Servants often took shit from the upper class, but most Americans took care of it themselves

With indoor plumbing, when shit happens, it goes down the drain instead of back to nature. Most college students-and most Americans-live by what Philip Slater calls "the toilet bowl principle of American life," which states that out of sight is out of mind. But sometimes out of sight is just not seen, and we still need to keep the ends of our actions in mind.

When we flush, for example, the shit disappears down the drain, but it doesn't just vanish. It travels through sanitary sewers to a solid waste treatment plant. At most treatment plants, sewage receives several different treatments. After screening and grit removal, the mixture of excrement and urine and water and paper and other assorted items enters a settling tank. There, solids drop to the bottom and grease and plastics can be skimmed off the top. The water heads for secondary treatment, where micro-organisms feed on bacteria, purifying the liquid. Finally-using sand filters, natural or artificial wetlands, ultraviolet light, or ozone-the water is "polished" to bring it up to legal standards, and it's discharged back into rivers. When we flush, we're intimately (and institutionally) involved in the water cycle.

The sludge-the solid stuff in sewage-also receives additional treatment, using bacterial processes to reduce the number of disease-carrying organisms in the waste. After its purification, some sludge can be used as a fertilizer or soil amendment on agricultural lands. This isn't ideal, because our wastes contain traces of all the chemicals-including heavy metals-that are in our system. And in an increasingly chemical culture, that can sometimes be a lot.

Ecologically, our bathroom break reminds us that all natural systems, including the human body, are involved in processes of consumption and return. Taking in nutrients, they expel wastes, which function in the grand scheme of nature as nutrients for other species. In the natural world, it's difficult to waste wastes, because nature uses almost everything. In the unnatural world of American culture, we treat shit like shit. But we don't have to. It could be prized. It could be worshipped. But it's not. We generally just put it behind us. But if we ever got our shit together, perhaps we'd find a way to make our wastes as productive as our lives.