Talk:Compost/Archive 2

Archive 1

Archive 2

Some recent edits I find biased

I see that User:Jcjenkins has made a bunch of changes in this edit. Thank you. Some I agree with, others I don't. When I have time (in the near future), I plan to go through them carefully one by one and review them again. It would be good if some of them were better sourced. In one case a figure was changed but I wonder if the existing reference would still match then? Here: The most efficient composting occurs with an optimal carbon:nitrogen ratio of about 25:1.

And things like "true compost" and "incorrect" are always to be carefully reviewed, as this may introduced biased content.

I don't agree with changing "waste" everywhere. One industry's waste (e.g. organic solid waste from households) may well be the input for another industry, such as composting.

This sentence: "The term humanure is used by compost enthusiasts in the US but not generally elsewhere." was changed to "The term humanure is used by compost enthusiasts in the US and is becoming popular worldwide." but without reference and I doubt that it's true. Could it be that User:Jcjenkins is biased because it is "his" term (Joseph Jenkins)? You can find it mentioned in international literature here and there but I am not seeing a trend of it "becoming popular worldwide". EMsmile (talk) 15:21, 25 March 2018 (UTC)

I am putting responces by Jcjenkins into separate headings below. EMsmile (talk) 11:40, 1 April 2018 (UTC)

Ideal composting C:N ratio

Jcjenkins here, in response: The correct C/N ratio for composting, or should I say ideal, is 30:1. According to my book, The Humanure Handbook, 3rd Edition, page 33: "A good C/N ratio for a compost pile is between 20/1 and 35/1.16 That’s 20 parts of carbon to one part of nitrogen, up to 35 parts of carbon to one part of nitrogen. Or, for simplicity, you can figure on shooting for an optimum 30/1 ratio." That's referencing . So to say it should be 10:1 is totally incorrect.

I have no particular knowledge on this but as with anything I am pretty sure that several sources probably say different things. Therefore, it is probably best to quote a range and to provide several references, not just your book. I think it could also be useful to get the inputs of other experts on this, so I might ask the question on the SuSanA discussion forum and alert people to this talk page. EMsmile (talk) 11:40, 1 April 2018 (UTC)

"True compost"

"True compost" is important, as we in the compost industry are constantly defending true compost from everything else that people want to call "compost." True composting requires three conditions: 1) human management (it, like agriculture, does not occur in nature); 2) aerobic conditions (Bokashi and EM, for example, are anaerobic and are not useful in the composting process except perhaps as food for the aerobic composting organisms; 3) the generation of internal biological heat. If these three conditions are not present during the biological degradation/conversion process, it is not compost and should not be called compost.

In Wikipedia we are not there to convince people of what is right or wrong but to rather describe how a term is used by different people. I think yes we can give a subtle direction as to the correct use but we cannot necessarily overrule other uses unless we have really solid references to do so. It can be frustrating but that's Wikipedia. I came across a simlar issue on the talk page of global warming, see here: "True - but not what Wikipedia is about. We're supposed to summarize what is out there rather than fix mistakes people make. That the terms are generally confused is a good reason for Wikipedia to have both of those in the lead as a way of referring to the topic. "EMsmile (talk) 11:40, 1 April 2018 (UTC)

The term "waste

"Waste" is what's discarded with no further use or value. Things that are recycled are not wasted and should not be referred to as waste.

I completely disagree on this. The point is that something can be a "waste" for Person A but becomes a recourse for person B. The term "municipal solid waste" or "organic solid waste" is well established and makes a lot of sense. The fact that the waste can become an input material for composting doesn't mean that we can't call it "waste". Yes, we can talk about resource recovery. The waste of Person A becomes a resource for person B. Same discussion has taken place here on the talk page of human waste: Talk:Human waste. There, I actually argued that it should be renamed to "human excreta" but the decision at the time was to keep it as human waste. EMsmile (talk) 11:40, 1 April 2018 (UTC)

The term humanure

Regarding the increasing use of the word "humanure" worldwide, look at, for example: humanure Kenya (http://humanurekenya.co.ke/); humanure West Africa (https://www.facebook.com/humanurewestafrica/). There is also a humanure power project in India (http://en.aboutindia.it/energy-health-Humanure-project-india); not to mention the 19 foreign translations (entire or partial) of the Humanure Handbook (http://humanurehandbook.com/foreign.html). There are many more examples, including humanure work we have done in Haiti, Mongolia, Nicaragua, Colombia, Ethiopia, Uganda, Tanzania, Mozambique, and presentations given in Finland and elsewhere throughout the world, where "humanure" is the term used in reference to recycled human manure, as opposed to "human waste," or to a generic term such as excreta.Jcjenkins (talk) 00:06, 1 April 2018 (UTC)

These examples that you quote don't convince me. It's basically your book and your presentations, projects or co-workers. If you had an independent secondary source who has done a study on this and con prove that the term is up and coming then we could write that. My perception is completely the opposite. I see it as a "hobby horse name" similar to something like "honey sucker" instead of vacuum truck. It's hard though to find a reference for that either so probably the "fairest" is to make neither statement (neither that the term is getting used more, not that it is getting used less). Unless someone wants to do a Google search and compare the number of hits for "humanure" now compared to some time in the past or future... EMsmile (talk) 11:40, 1 April 2018 (UTC)