BECAUSE MODERN ARCHITECTURE SHOULDN'T JUST LOOK LIKE CRAP (via Steve Jacobson):

Manure: You may be walking on it soon (DAVID N. GOODMAN, 2/11/07, Associated Press)

Home-buyers of tomorrow could find themselves walking across floors made from manure. Researchers at Michigan State University and the U.S.
Department of Agriculture insist it's no cow pie in the sky dream. They say that fiber from processed and sterilized cow manure could take the place of sawdust in making fiberboard, which is used to make everything from furniture to flooring to store shelves. And the resulting product smells just fine. [...]

Under pressure from regulators and the public, more large livestock operations are installing expensive manure treatment systems known as anaerobic digesters.

The digesters use heat to deodorize and sterilize manure, while capturing and using the methane gas it produces to generate electricity. The systems also separate phosphorus-laden liquid fertilizer from semisolid plant residue.

The solids have some known uses, such as for animal bedding and potting soil. Agricultural scientists would like to find more.

"We really need to think outside the box on what uses for manure are," said Wendy Powers, a professor of agriculture at Michigan State University.

Scientists at Michigan State in East Lansing and at the USDA's Forest Products Laboratory in Madison, Wis., are conducting tests on various types of fiberboard made with the "digester solids."

As with the wood-based original, the manure-based product is made by combining fibers with a chemical resin, then subjecting the mixture to heat and pressure.

So far, fiberboard made with digester solids seems to match or beat the quality of wood-based products.

"It appears that the fibers interlock with each other better than wood," said Charles Gould at Michigan State's College of Agriculture and Natural Resources. "We end up with, I think, a superior material."

You haven't lived until you've met up with a flatlander who just got stuck on a back road behind a honey wagon for the first time.

Posted by Orrin Judd at February 11, 2007 10:59 AM