Designing Out of the Pot: Mathew Lippincott

SHHH: The Poopcast (aka S**t and Shame with Shawn)

Legalizing green sanitation, kite safety through cartwheels, coming back from serious crisis, and all the ways your shower can kill you. In this special live episode, polymath Mathew Lippincott enlightens Shawn Shafner (The Puru) with his encyclopedic knowledge of everything. A designer who creates future technologies influenced by history, Mathew tells us how he helped create Portland’s emergency sanitation protocol, worked with RECODE to make compost toilets a legal option, and takes us under the leach field to see why most septic tank users are pooping straight into their aquifers. PLUS Shawn tells stories of his travels in Nicaragua, reveals the origins of “justify your existence,” we redeem the value of outside defecation, and learn why it might be best to hold your breath the next time you visit a PortaPotty.

Also mentioned in this episode:

West Side Story, lunar colony, industrial design, University of Pennsylvania, Center for Social Impact, Global Social Impact House, Nicaragua, crisis, Joseph Campbell, hero’s journey, the origins of justify your existence, privilege, poverty, El Porvenir, Public Lab, crowdsource data, Deepwater Horizon, presence, safety, Kite Man, Portland, Oregon, airline travel, REN Project, Wayne RESA, curriculum development, Michigan, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Guerilla Science Group, Oregon Eclipse Festival, shower, sink, low-flow toilet, design object, Victor Papanek, Design for the Real World, basic human needs, consumer society, James Hennessey, How Things Don’t Work, unbalanced mixer valves, pressure valves, intentional community, bucket toilet,Molly Jean Winter (née Danielsson), sepsis, Art Monastic Laboratory, bucket system, majority world country, libraries, ARPANET, OhioLINK, apocalypse, interlibrary loan, Clara Greed, Alexander Kira, Joel Tarr, Carnegie Mellon, Cloacina, Cloaca, Rome, portable compost toilet, Henry Moule, Australia, Natural Event, Pootopia, Hamish Skermer, green, sustainability, Adam Rome, Bulldozer in the Countryside, primary treatment, scum, leach field, aquifer, laminar flow, Pacific NorthWest College of Art, Neighborhood Emergency Training, Portland Bureau of Emergency Management, emergency sanitation, citizen science, Uniform Plumbing Code, Rich Earth Institute, 20/20 Engineering, Greywater Action, Laura Allen, Watershed Management Group, John Grey, Interface Engineering, Nicole Cousino, Nature’s Commode, International Association of Plumbing and Mechanical Officials (IAPMO), Green Supplement, American National Standards Institute (ANSI), WE Stand (Water Efficiency), public domain, NorthWest Permaculture Convergence, open defecation, family restroom