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Landfill rat farms.

Raise rats next to landfills.
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Look, the rats ain't going away. We can't kill them all, hard as we try. So we catch them and transport them to the closest landfill. Aforementioned landfill contains adjacent rat farm. Here, we let rats be rats: They sleep in the farm and meander to the landfill to eat the garbage. They eat everything! We are left with rat droppings, which are sanitized and given away as wonderful fertilizer. Creates many jobs, most taken by eager PETA people. Rats are kept in the farm by stainless steel walls that extend 12 feet into the ground, so they can't burrow out. And they don't want to burrow out! They are happy there! Eating our landfill waste! Reduces waste, creates jobs, manufactures fertilizer. No down side.
widgie, Sep 16 2003

(??) Nightsoil & Sewage http://216.239.37.1...fety&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
This practice is a bit unsafe. [Laughs Last, Oct 04 2004]

What to do with your poo http://www.cardiff....ewerage/bromma.html
...turn it into gas! [Frankx, Aug 01 2006]

[link]






       Contrary to popular belief, not all animal feces makes worthwhile fertilizer. Cow and horse manure is good because all they eat is grass. But rats will eat fucking *anything*. I can only imagine what kinds of diseases and bacteria are in rat shit. You definately would not want to fertilize food crops with this stuff...
DeathNinja, Sep 16 2003
  

       Dag: you need to start Rats Unlimited.
bungston, Sep 16 2003
  

       Rats are supposed to be smart. They should be potty trained for easier collection of the fertilizer. They may not be happy about that, but there is no such thing as a free landfill.
kbecker, Sep 16 2003
  

       This reminds me about an old Cat-and-Rat Farm joke. The cats hunt down and eat the rats, the rats eat the dead cats, and then we sell the cat pelts to coat manufacturers and get rich. A complete ecosystem.
Laughs Last, Sep 16 2003
  

       The trick to using a nightsoil fertilizing regimen is to leave the field alone for 6 weeks after spreading the shit thinly across the top. Composting happens in place, and solar irradiation also gets a chance to work its magic. Walking on a recently nightsoiled field tends to result in infection, and don't even think about letting livestock graze on it.
Laughs Last, Sep 16 2003
  

       "When raw sewage and nightsoil are applied to soils contamination is the net effect, for example: "some 8% of wastewater-irrigated land in China is said to be heavily polluted"   

       I'm glad I don't live in China.
DeathNinja, Sep 16 2003
  

       I used to work on a ship that liked to use nightsoil to fertilize the bathroom floor about once a month... I've got some wonderful pictures of the process, and it didn't help morale, but nobody got sick or died.
ye_river_xiv, Aug 01 2006
  

       Poo, from whatever source, isn't really that dangerous (in terms of microbial contamination - typically "faecal coliforms") so long as you ferment it properly - generally high temperature anaerobic fermentation - and you get biogas from it too! Trouble is the heavy metals. I don't know how they get into the sewage, but you definitely wouldn't want them in your food.
Frankx, Aug 01 2006
  

       What kind of profits do you think you can get from your rat farms? And would cat farms be customers of rat farms. And what are the economics of growing large cats that are fed rats as a security system?
travbm, Oct 29 2015
  
      
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