Go Manure

There was a great story a couple of nights ago on the NBC Evening News, featuring the Crave Brothers Wisconsin cheese farm. During the day while they were going about milking the cows, one of the brothers had a revelation. He thought to himself, can I turn the cow manure into energy? Lo and behold, the Crave brothers constructed a methane container where energy was created to service the farm, and 120 surrounding homes. After the process was completed, the condensed manure was cleaned and recycled back to the fields as new fertilizer. Go green? Go manure!

Now crazy as it seems, I got to thinking….with all the manure that we humans deposit in our toilets daily, why can’t we build plants where the methane created from our manure and waste be transposed to energy? Did you ever think that our contribution to the toilet bowl could end up powering our homes?? A few more stories like the one on the evening news, and I do believe some town or city is going to put this idea fully into practice.

As far as stretching gas mileage, a local television station, WBZ in the Boston area, did a fascinating report on a New England man who has invented a way for a car to get up to 150 miles per gallon with a hybrid automobile. The contraption that he demonstrated was a converter that turbo-charged the battery system in the hybrid, and gasoline was only used when the batteries got low. See, there are people out there looking at ways to solve our energy crisis.

It’s astonishing that many times the greatest inventions or ideas take place from people mucking about in their garages, or doing a job that is totally unrelated to a problem that it solves. I do believe it is only a matter of time before all of our homes will have solar panel roofs. What a waste of space right now, where energy can easily be created to power our homes. Trust me, we’ll all get used to seeing those panels on our roofs when we get our future heating and electrical bills.

We haven’t even begun to try the numerous solutions to our energy problems. With oil hovering around $110.00 a barrel, it’s only a matter of time before we start seriously considering the ways we get energy. So remember the next time you go to the bathroom, how valuable your “deposit” really is.

Go Green, Go Solar, and by all means, Go Manure!:)

Jennifer Avalon