Faces

Finding Solutions in an Open-Minded Way

Interview with Prof. Dr. Ralf Otterpohl

By Andreas Schoenborn-Schaller, Switzerland

Ralf Otterpohl studied Civil Engineering, specializing in Water, Wastewater and Solid Waste Management. His research focusedon computer simulation and mathematical modelling of wastewater treatment plants at RWTH Aachen, and he completed a Ph.D. (Dr.Ing.) in this field. He is the founder of Otterwasser GmbH, a consultant firm in Lübeck, Baltic Sea, Germany, specializing in Ecological Sanitation and computer simulation of wastewater treatment plants. In 1998 he was appointed as the director of a research institute of municipal and industrial wastewater management and professor at TUHH, Technical University Hamburg-Harburg, Germany.

Links:
Otterwasser GmbH: http://www.otterwasser.de
Technical University Hamburg-Harburg: http://www.tu-harburg.de/aww/

ABOUT ECOLOGICAL ENGINEERING

What do you think about Ecological Engineering?

The term is not used much, so there is no reference for most people. It is indeed a useful term. We start to use the term 'Ecological Sanitation' in many organisations now, it is getting accepted through usage...

Do you consider yourself an Ecological Engineer?

Definitely yes, however it is not on my card.

Are your solutions Ecological Engineering?

We do focus on Ecological Sanitation, I would think this is part of Ecological Engineering? However, it can include MBA, membrane-bioreactors, is this 'in'?

I think that anything is 'in' that leads to more sustainable solutions. Aren't membrane-bioreactors rather energy consuming appliances? One of the principles of Ecological Engineering is that very little external energy sources other than solar energy are used...

This is correct and a real concern. There are new membrane types coming that are rotating to keep them clean. This way less air has to be wasted and they will be a lot more energy efficient. Larger units could have anaerobic first stages (e.g., UASB) to gain renewable energy. In urban areas we will often need such technology for rural and many suburban areas I would go for constructed wetlands.

What are the most important cornerstones of Ecological Engineering for you?

It should be directed to solutions respecting at least the principles of ecology in a scientific sense. Or better yet, those of deep ecology, including awareness of our embeddedness into the web of life in a wider sense.

Fig. 1: Peri-urban (Suburban) settlement Lübeck-Flintenbreite (400 inhabitants). Vacuum-biogas-system for blackwater plus biowaste. Courtesy of Otterwasser GmbH, Lübeck, Germany.

Could you specify a bit more, what these principles of ecology are in your view?

For Ecological Sanitation this is first of all the re-integration of humans into the natural nutrient flows. Conventional sanitation is a gigantic machine that replaces matter from the soil via food into the seas. Mineable fossil phosphate and potassium, also sulfur, are extremely limited, on a timescale of a few generations of humans. There will be no excuse to our decendants. We are in fact violating basic principles of ecology.

We also forget to return unpolluted organics, one of the key elements of ecology, to keep soils fertile. In addition, we forget about trace substances from the soil that we freely waste into the water cycle. We are such primitive societies that we can only spell N, P and K. We forget that we depend on fertile soils more than anything else. Water renewal requires fertile soils too. Small mistakes are easy to address, madness on a global scale is hard to tackle. Noone seems to be responsible.

Do you try to incorporate deep ecology in your work? How do you do that?

I try to work including things that are not yet 'official' science. BSE (= Bovine Spongiform Encephalitis, so-called Mad Cow Disease) was predicted in 1923 by Rudolf Steiner (see reference 1), which included the probable root cause by good knowledge in combination with intuition. One major concern in ecosan is the potential of urine to carry 'information', as in homeopathic remedies. I am not talking of pharmaceutical residues here. By shortening re-use cycles we can create problems that we do not understand yet.

First assessments by Wolfgang Schneider from Quedlinburg, Germany (works similar to Marko Pogacnic from Slovenia) have shown that a treatment step is needed for deleting 'information'. This is fine with composting. However, for urine usage often only storage is recommended, even for [use on] vegetables, with no additional treatment. This may be okay if urine is worked into the topsoil before seeding and planting, as active topsoil is probably [a good reactor for] treatment/conversion.

I need co-sponsors, besides myself, to push this work. It is difficult to include this in normal research programs.

How did you and Wolfgang Schneider assess the potential of urine to carry information?

My part here was simply to explain what is done with urine prior to usage in agriculture, mainly storage. He was describing his intuitive insights and things he sees directly on the samples of stored urine. We would all be capable to perceive such things unless we are totally blocked. However, the very fine 'resolution' is requiring good talents and/or long training.

I keep my fingers crossed that you can find co-sponsoring for that kind of work, because I think it is important.

ABOUT HIS WORK AND IDEAS

You are well known for alternative high tech solutions in the wastewater sector (e.g. vacuum toilets in connection with biogasproduction): How do you 'sell' your approaches to decision makers?

A main 'selling point' is indeed the explanation of the ecological background of keeping water- and nutrition-cycles apart. Most people understand this and the respective technologies after a presentation and discussion of 45 minutes or more, best 2 to 3 times. The vacuum-biogas system for blackwater and biowaste is in fact not high-tech, compared to the state of technology. We work on the full range of more simple ecosan solutions, including extreme low cost solutions with potentially excellent performance

In your presentations, do you use any specific methods to compare your solutions with conventional ones and evaluate their performance?

Mass flows, energy balances and material intensity are good indicators. The differences are of course very obvious.

What are the main obstacles for your approach in the real world?

Probably every person is suffering smaller and larger psychological trauma, mainly in the early childhood. Few people go for personal developement. It is very likely to get lost in the materialistic side of life, not working our way to become ourself. Most activities in our society are driven by people, who are to some extent acting from self-made determination from childhood. In my view this is creating all this violation of basic common sense and and ecological laws.

Our society is acting mad and does not even see that billions of people shit into the waters, treatment being a rare exception done in rich countries. We do ignore the death of 5 million people per year, mostly small children and babies. The simple obstacle to new solutions is voluntary blindness for reality. Those hiding in material safety and disregarding the needs of our brothers and sisters, disregarding the needs to act with respect to coming generations of plants and animals including humans.

Billions of people are simply not feeling responsible. Media is failing more and more. Chasing the Euro, they are increasingly reluctant to hurt those who buy advertisements. Real freedom of press would require mass media to not operate under this increasing pressure. Mainstream is filling media and driving most politicians. No space for complex issues or controversy.

So the main obstacles are political and psychological, not technical?

In my subjective view but with a lot of experiences, yes, but the other way around.

What are the main chances and advantages of your approach?

Ecological Sanitation, to come back to this example, can integrate humans back into natural cycles. It allows highest hygienic standards also at low costs, is often decentral and performs recovery of water,nutrients and sometimes energy. It is a concept and not a technology, the key issue is to always check if the principles are met. More on this in many languages at http://www.tuhh.de/susan, http://www.gtz.de/ecosan and http://www.ecosanres.org

ABOUT RECYCLING AND ITS LIMITS

How far can you go with recycling measures? Where are the limits of recycling?

If the design of technical systems follows the priciples of integration into the web of ecology, it is not a question of limits. The limits of end-of-pipe systems are usually making them non-sustainable. In sanitation we can try to make fertiliser from human excreta in a safe way. There is no limit, and many systems can do this at very low costs.

For greywater we have to address the unsatisfying range of household chemicals. The basic rules would require them to be either mineralisable (industry has managed to get away with the relatively meaningless 'biodegradability') or made for full recovery.

Once again people are blind to the reality of the mess they produce. E.g., chlorine for disinfection is getting us further away from recycling. I do like ZERI for its innovative approaches for production (http://www.zeri.org).

We know today that, for example, urine can contain a lot of unwanted chemicals such as hormones or medical residues. The effects of them in the environment are still largely unknown and may be a potential danger for humans that consume products fertilized with recycled human excreta. How do you deal with this issue in Ecological Sanitation?

The body sets an alarm lamp - pain. Allopathic pharmaceuticals often switch off the alarm instead of looking for the root cause. With a society that will embrace the principles of ecology such nonsense will hopefully end. Until then we have to live with such residues.

Today, we put them into the water cycle without adequate treatment. Even a high-tech wastewater treatment plant does a lousy job, often with only 30 to 70% efficiency [of removing them]. The remaining cocktail is consumed with most tap waters in Europe. Urine storage for 6 months, then usage in active topsoils may be better. Both options are bad, of course.

The medicine of the future is available now. Many illnesses simply do not come by drinking more water, most of us dehydrate in the water rich countries (see book by F. Batmanghelidj, reference 2). Bio-feedback methods and homeopathy could replace most hard pharmeceuticals.

There are more and more indications that there may be yet another way of 'information transfer' in water, not just chemicals or hormones. It has been claimed that water has some kind of a 'memory'. This is of course still speculation, but if you think of homeopathy and assume that it is really working, as I do, a similar information transfer may be postulated for water that has been in contact with human excreta. Is this anything you consider in your work?

The 'memory of water' has been demonstrated so often. I would like to see the experiments to believe with my heart - my brain does. I have strong personal experience with the power of homeopathy, yes. Information transfer from excreta to water, this is a new thought for me. Treatment plants could be good reactors for this, maybe. This is of concern, definitely. Excreta simply do not belong into the water cycle.

Do you have any idea how this postulated information transfer from excreta to water could be proven? Do you know people that have the potential and maybe even the means to bring us closer to some insights on this topic?

There is a great measurement tool: the human body. Bio-feedback could be used to show indirectly if there is a difference in the reaction to waters that have been in close touch with urine or faeces (what is actually true for many tap waters - does your water come from a river or from its filtrate that has treated or untreated household wastewater?).

The other way is the intuitive approach as described above. We could organise a seminar with Wolfgang Schneider to learn and research about all this (please e-mail me with subject 'water seminar with Wolfgang' to otterpohl@tuhh.de).

What other kind of work are you doing?

I try to educate more and more people from the poorer countries of the world in Ecological Sanitation and help find appropriate solutions. However, this is work on symptoms. For a couple of years I have worked with different methods of personal growth.

There are some methods available now that are performing miracles. I was absolutely stunned by the neuro-biological methods developed by Dr. Dietrich Klinghardt (physician, Seattle) and his team. It is interesting, that it all starts with releasing mercury from brain and body, if you ever had amalgam teeth fillings. The way to release psychological trauma is surprisingly simple. Most other illnesses or allergies simply disappear on the way. The massive toxification of bodies, urine and environment by pharmaceutical products is to a large extent unnecessary and counterproductive to health too.

I do like the site of Dr. Mercola (http://www.mercola.com) for a reference on natural healing and nutrition. I do not believe that we can get a better society by Ecological Engineering alone. Going to the root of the problem and to find solutions in an open-minded way is the thing to do. Work on symptoms that can give some relief for a while.

We cannot separate personal growth and the science someone is doing. However, science is based very much on the paradigm of objectivity. Anything a scientist does should be reproducible by others. Quite obviously, if you are talking about personal growth, this is very individual and hardly reproducible in another context, with another person. Can you give a practical example how you include these methods of personal growth into your work as scientist and engineer?

There is no practical example because expanding your intuition and openmindedness is simply changing the way you work, also that part of work based on the scientific principles.

Personal growth is very personal indeed. It is opening up intuition for example. It allows us to consider more options rather than clinging to the safe ground of common practice. Those things, that we want to prove, should of course be checked with the scientific method but not with the dogmatic limitations it has today as it had in the times of Galileo.

Why are so many people claiming: "This is not possible!!!" if confronted with an unusual idea? Science should require us to stay open-minded. Many things that seem 'not possible' are hard to prove. The great thing in Ecological Engineering is that we can simply show things. The tricky part is to have a society that behaves in an open-minded way. We all can add our own growth and love...

Ralf, thank you very much for this interview.

It was my pleasure!