I find this book jumps around a lot with interesting ideas and concerns which demonstrate all the "little shit" humans are doing (in America at least) that we've been told are the "right way" to do something, so people rarely look for a better way.
One example on pg 176 about Cat litter. Yeah, when friends were away and I was put on cat duty, I got to learn about sifting cat litter. The only cat I'd had was an out door cat, so litter wasn't a thing. The amount of garbage 1 indoor cat produces is enormous! (relative to my household which barely produces any garbage because we "recycle" almost everything somehow)
Apparently, there is 2.6 million tons of kitty litter sold every year which is mostly made of bentonite which has to be mined and processed with all the environmental costs that suggests.
"Jonah Levine of Confluence
Energy has [imagined], that a large portion of that bentonite can be displaced with high-carbon, woody biochar made from beetle-killed forests in Colorado". It's much lighter, controls smell and can potentially be composted instead of land-filled. That last claim may be a hard
sell - I researched composting cat deposits and people seem even more freaked out about that risk than the risk from
Humanure which most of us permies has figured out is quite manageable.
There are tons more ideas like this one throughout this book. I'm happier with examples where the companies involved have started "copicing tree plantations" to meet the long-term supply, but I'm also very aware of the amount of beetle-killed standing fire risk we have in the Western North America which can jump-start and prove some of these creative char substitutions. There's a lot of unrest due to job security in North America - let's go char and provide employment and change attitudes so that we're viable long term!
3
