Holy Shit
Can poop save the world?

In 2000 when I first sat on a dry toilet in my brother’s house in Puerto Rico, I was shocked by the lack of bad smells. Sometime later, the poop became compost which he used to fertilize his vegetable garden. In 2014, I completed “The Absent House”, a film about his house, with three compost toilets, which is off the grid. I realized that dry toilets had an unmerited bad reputation compared to flush toilets.
With an unreliable source of non-renewable phosphates needed to make fertilizers to grow food, and a water scarcity that affects two-thirds of the world’s population, using feces and urine from dry toilets to fertilize fields is a sustainable no-brainer. With these facts in hand and as an environmental filmmaker, I felt responsible to help unpack these issues; which is why I embarked on making the film “Holy Shit: Can Poop Save The World?”

I recognized that disgust would be an obstacle to attract people to the topic, but it did not discourage me because after years of research I had discovered that we are, slowly but surely, becoming more comfortable and less shy to talk about our bodies’ expulsions and the importance of recycling them. I also knew that adding humour to the story would help. Furthermore, I envisioned how the film’s characters would lead a new wave of innovative thinking that will soon become mainstream.

The waste of a living creature is the food source of other living creatures. It is the web of life, like the human nutrient cycle of grow-eat-excrete-compost and grow again. Reusing our excrement is the final frontier of recycling. But putting the poop back into the loop has vast positive consequences beyond fertilizing our fields. It entails that we can significantly reduce the use of fossil fuels, conserve drinking water, protect the environment, generate energy, save lives, and mitigate the climate crisis.
I hope that “Holy Shit: Can Poop Save The World?” will spark conversations to ignite a process of transformation where human excreta are regarded as a resource and not as waste, which in turn can help us reconnect to ecosystems and heal our planet.
– Rubén Abruña