Before you throw away that old filthy toilet you had for 20 years...

consider using it to start an oyster farm...

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tm...=4&u=/ap/20041012/ap_on_fe_st/oysters_toilets

Old Toilets a Good Habitat for Oysters

Tue Oct 12, 5:45 PM ET Strange News - AP

NORFOLK, Va. - In an unusual experiment two years ago, unwanted toilets, sinks and other porcelain products were smashed to bits and shaped into two artificial oyster reefs.

One such potty-reef was constructed in the Back River, near the runway at Langley Air Force Base in Hampton; the other was built in the Lafayette River in Norfolk.

Now the results are in: Toilets are a good habitat for oysters.

In fact, they may last even longer in the wild than oyster shell — the material that Virginia has used for building dozens of reefs as part of its bid to revive native oyster stocks in the lower Chesapeake Bay. The native oysters have been devastated by decades of disease, pollution and lost natural reefs.

But there's one catch. Even when the porcelain goods are donated by contractors and developers, as they were in 2002, the cost of moving and placing these tons of white, shiny scraps into public waterways is more than for shell, said Jim Wesson, director of oyster restoration with the Virginia Marine Resources Commission.

The same is true, he said, of other alternative reef-making substrates the state has tried in recent years, including chunks of coal ash and ground-up concrete.

For now, no one's counting on the toilets. But if Virginia experiences a new shortage of oyster shells — which, under a state contract, are dug up from the bottom of the James River — porcelain potties again may rise, Wesson said.

"Really, anything that's made into the size of a shell, is hard, and doesn't float, oysters will find it and grow there just fine," he said.

Wesson and a team of scientists, aides and divers recently inspected the reefs, bringing mud-covered samples aboard a research boat and checking them for baby oysters and overall health. They then arrived at the Lafayette River site, near the Norfolk International Terminals at the mouth of the Elizabeth River.

After they found the toilet reefs, Wesson handed Vernon Rowe, an oyster-restoration aide, a bucket of oyster shells mixed with pieces of moss- and sponge-covered porcelain, a sloppy stew of green, orange and black.

Rowe dumped the contents onto a metal sorting board. Then he and Melissa Southworth , an oyster expert with the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, began taking notes and recording findings.

There were plenty of baby oysters, or spat, taking root on the surface of the toilet shards — just as many as on the real shells, Wesson and Southworth said.

The results were the same a few days before, when the team surveyed the Back River reef, they said.

The city of Hampton spent nearly two years collecting and storing porcelain goods in anticipation of the project. One environmental volunteer donated her grandmother's china to the reef.

It quickly became a popular cause among local media, the city, and local companies wanting to do something positive and public for the environment.
___

Information from: The Virginian-Pilot

 

Did you ask your friends to give you some of the little critters lying at the bottom?

Don't pearls come from clams instead of oysters?

 

As a matter of fact, the folks at Virginia can present their findings along with a bag-full of oysters to this prestigious event as hor d'oeuvres du jour!

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tm...041014/od_afp/afplifestyle_china_041014172006

Flushed with success, Beijing to host the World Toilet Summit

Thu Oct 14, 1:20 PM ET Offbeat - AFP

SINGAPORE (AFP) - Beijing will next month showcase its highly publicised upgrading of public toilets when it hosts the fourth annual World Toilet Summit, the conference's organisers said.

The Singapore-based World Toilet Organisation, which promotes itself as a global body for co-ordinating and promoting sanitation issues, said the Chinese capital had been chosen to highlight its efforts in transforming its toilets.

"We want to showcase how a city that used to have not so good toilets can suddenly become so good, that it's a do-able project," World Toilet Organisation founder Jack Sim told AFP.

Sim said about 400 medical experts, town planners and other delegates from around the world would attend the November 17-19 summit, first held in Singapore three years ago.

Some of the issues to be discussed included the "societal impacts of toilets", setting standards for urban environments, town planning and toilets in rural areas.

Chinese officials, including Beijing deputy mayor Zhang Mao and China Municipal Bureau of Tourism deputy director Sun Gang, will speak at the summit.

Beijing has upgraded many of its public toilets over recent years, and state media said in August that city authorities would spend 400 million yuan (48 million dollars) to renovate another 2,800 in the lead up to the 2008 Olympics.

However city authorities have also cut the number of toilets from 7,700 to 4,700 in an effort to encourage private enterprises such as food outlets to offer their loos for public service, which has drawn criticism from locals.