Cow poo: the building material of the future?
Sh*tty build quality 
By Lucy Sherriff
Published Monday 12th February 2007
Researchers at Michigan State University think they have come up
with a new way of disposing of some of the millions of tons of cow
manure produced in the US each year: use it to build with.
More specifically, they are advocating using sterilised cow manure
to replace sawdust in making fibreboard. This is a most useful
construction material indeed, as anyone who has ever watched
Changing Rooms will be able to attest. It finds its way into
housing, flooring, shelving and furniture.
Farmers in the US are under pressure to find new ways of dealing
with their cow pats. It can cost $200 per year to process the
production of a single cow, so some farmers are facing a very big
bill every year.
Part of the problem, according to Wired, is that speading manure on
fields is attracting complaints from the locals. Presumably from
the newly downshifted refugees from the cities, rather than real
locals who must surely be unable to smell the stuff after years of
exposure.
But intensive farming is making it more difficult as well, as farms
can have more cow poo than they can possibly spread around on their
relatively small landholdings.
Instead, cow dung is being processed in anaerobic digesters. The
scientists propose using the solids from these digesters in place
of the traditional sawdust. It would be mixed with resin, heated,
and compressed in the same way. Tests of the finished product so
far suggest a quality at least equal to that of board made with
wood.
Charles Gould, a researcher at Michigan State's College of
Agriculture and Natural Resources, told Wired "It appears that the
fibers interlock with each other better than wood. We end up with,
I think, a superior material."
