Nance Klehm

Ecologist Nance Klehm is best known as an urban-foraging docent, attuning city slickers’ senses to the edible and medicinal wonders Chicago’s unlikely soils have to offer—mustard seeds, burdock root, wild spinach and the like. Her latest endeavor, Humble Pile, a human-waste–composting project, though wholly unappetizing, is no less fascinating. In April, Klehm and 20 other Chicagoans cast off traditional toilets, taking aim instead at sawdust-filled five-gallon buckets. Their goal was to make a “nutrient loop”—taking food from the ground while also giving a little something back postdigestion. Klehm has collected hundreds of gallons of the group’s output in a South Side shed, where it’s decomposing into fertilizer (a.k.a. “humanure”). We chatted with Klehm in anticipation of Humble Pile’s pie potluck and discussion, Thursday 18 at Mess Hall (6932 N Glenwood Ave, 773-465-4033).

Why is our shit valuable?
Our bodies are like soil factories; the composition of our poop is the perfect, most fertile carbon–nitrogen ratio—30 to 1. It processes into compost really quickly and you produce a really good product.

You gave up your flush toilet. So what happens when your house guests ask to use the bathroom?
I had someone come over once and ask, “Where should I pee?” I said, “Well, there’s a flush toilet, a dry toilet or you can go outside.” So, he went outside—totally liberated! [Laughs] Some guests are totally into the bucket. There’s something nicely unstructured about it. At one point, though, I pulled my dry toilet out of my bathroom and hid it because I didn’t want to have that conversation with a certain somebody.

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