Estimated read time: 3 minutes
Todd Miller is the type of person who asks how to make lemonade out of lemons — how to turn problems into solutions. For the past 15 years, he’s focused on a project that’s not edible. It’s big and fibrous and tough. Some people might consider it gross.
He part of a team that takes poop, composted from a wastewater treatment plant, and grows a climate-friendly building material: poplar trees.
Miller and his team run the Biocycle Farm, 400 acres of farmed poplar trees. It’s part of the Metropolitan Wastewater Management Commission (MWMC), a partnership between the neighboring cities of Eugene and Springfield, Oregon, and Lane county, that cleans the community’s wastewater.
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Flush a toilet in these towns and your contribution is whisked away to a wastewater treatment plant. There, the solids (mainly poop and toilet paper) are separated from the liquids (dirty water) and both are cleaned. The solids enter a giant tank, like a mechanical stomach, where they’re digested by bacteria. The digested slurry is pumped six miles away to be further decomposed and dried at another facility. The final product is a dark, crumbly compost — biosolids.
In the past, biosolids were dumped anywhere, including the ocean. Now, they are regulated to prevent pollution, but are still viewed by many people as a waste product for disposal.
Miller disagrees.
“They’re really valuable nutrients [in biosolids] and we shouldn’t be throwing these things away,” he says.
Miller has spent his career caring for the land and water. He started out inspecting water supplies in New York, then moved to California and worked on environmental cleanup projects. Next, he came to Oregon to restore local creeks, and became the director of the Siuslaw Watershed Council. There, he worked with landowners to promote clean water in the region.
Now, he works for the City of Springfield at the wastewater agency where he protects local groundwater supplies and rivers. The Biocycle poplar farm is at the heart of his work.
Poplars grow rapidly and “absorb tremendous amounts of nutrients,” says Miller, “and they’ll take as much water as you throw at them.” These trees are irrigated with recycled water from the treatment plant. The poplars are doing a top-notch job of protecting the watershed. About every ten years, the trees are harvested.
Though the wood is not strong enough for structural timber, it can replace other wood products, such as pulp, wood chips, plywood, or decorative boards like window frames. Right now, the poplar wood adorns two meeting rooms at Springfield City Hall — providing the ceiling in the Library Meeting Room and the back wall of the Council Chambers.
Miller dreams of creating a local economy built around these trees. It's a work-in-progress, as he looks for stable relationships with local mills and woodworkers. For the next harvest, he’d like to partner with an affordable housing developer and use the wood to help shelter the community. His work furthers the vision of MWMC — to protect water quality and develop practices that are financially and environmentally sustainable.
In the dappled light, under the canopy of trees, sheep graze thick grass. They’re a reminder of Miller’s vision — a circular economy based on nutrient recycling. Here, biosolids and recycled water grow trees and grass, wood and sheep, building products and wool. Nothing is wasted in nature. And, says Miller, “we're still part of that natural cycle.”
Laura Allen is a writer and educator based in Oregon. She co-founded Greywater Action, where she teaches people how to transform their homes to reuse water. She authored the books, The Water Wise Home: How to Conserve, Capture and Reuse Water in Your Home and Landscape, and Greywater, Green Landscape. Her article, For a better brick, just add poop, won the Gold Award in Children’s Science News from the AAAS Kavli Science Journalism Awards (2023). Her favorite pastimes include gardening, hiking, reading and visiting eco-toilets.
