This months’ Wired magazine had an article about renewable energy. I’ll tell yah, I haven’t been this excited about renewal energy. This method is exiting because its main ingredient is human and animal waste. Yes, that’s right. They are turning poo into ethanol. Tell me that’s not cool as… well, let’s avoid a cliché here.

Needless to say, this has captured my imagination.

First, recycling poo for mass consumption reminded me of Zoo Doo. Seattle’s Woodland Park Zoo has been collecting, processing and casting their animal’s waste into figurines that people can purchase at the zoo store. The Zoo Doo figurines are meant to be taken home and placed in the garden. It both looks nice and it acts as a fertilizer. Now, how many other products do you know of that are made out of waste and have both value in form and in function? ("Macs" is not an acceptable answer for this question).

Then, this article reminded me of the 1973 movie “Soylent Green.” While it has nothing to do with turning waste into fuel, it does address the issue of what will happen to people in the future after we have exhausted all of our natural resources – including fruits, vegetable, and meats. “Earth is overpopulated and New York City has 40 million starving, poverty stricken people. The only way they survive is with water rations and eating a mysterious food called Soylent.” Soylent’s secret ingredient (skip this part if you don’t want to know the ending) turns out to be recycled humans.

Finally, I started thinking about what else made sense for us to start recycling. We have looked around the office have identified a couple of candidates: the color blue, transparent .gifs, and "div" tag.

In all seriousness, alternate fuel sources are starting to receive significant support – it is just a matter of time before they are no longer considered “alternative” and become de facto.