Learn from Elmo, and turn your human waste into renewable energy.

What do you do with your human waste? Well, if you’re no fun you probably just flush it down the toilet, re-enacting what you think is “normal” from what you’ve learned from the rest of society. But now, Frank Sinton, a tech entrepreneur and founder of PMC BioTec, says it’s time to break this silly social norm, stick it to the man, and save some money.

America spends $5 billion a year dealing with sludge. Biosolids producers pay hundreds of dollars a ton to remove it, quickly filling landfills or other means of disposal, Sinton said on Sept. 15 at the AlwaysOn Going Green Conference in Sausalito, California. The scope of the globe’s sludge problem is mindboggling. Every year, cattle feedlots produce more than 150 million tons of animal waste; the U.S. and Europe together generate 40 million tons of sludge from sewage treatment; and food production waste weighs in at a staggering billion tons per year.

So what is Sinton going to do about it? He and PMC have invented a $2 million machine similar to a giant port-a-potty that takes in sludge, mixes it with bacteria, or renders the organic matter into methane gas, an energy source that can offset the high power requirements of many biosolid treatment facilities.

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