SO WHAT do you call it? Shite perhaps — that “e” makes it much more polite, or poo, crap, excrement, stools, faeces, dung, faecal matter, manure or even good old number twos.

Shakespeare’s Juliet said: “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet” and whatever you call it, the sweet and smelly stuff will always smell just as sweet and smelly.

Today despite the vast increase in human population there is massive shortage of the stuff that is so important to nourish all kinds of organisms further down the food chain both on land and sea. 

Prime cause of the shortage is the vast decline in animals, particularly large animals roaming wild. 

Populations have declined massively due to climate change, forest clearance, lost habitat and, of course, slaughter.

Best estimates suggest that today the amount of animal manure deposited in forests and other wild landscapes is only 8 per cent of what it was at the end of the last ice age.

In the oceans the figure is worse with only 5 per cent of the marine excrement level there was at the end of the last ice age. 

My ocean favourites, the whales and other marine mammals at the top of the food chain, produce masses of waste products. Newly recovering populations are helping just a little with the shortage.

Whale shit isn’t just big, it is really important in ocean life. It helps fertilise the entire pelagic food web. 

In shallow water where sunlight is abundant many plants grow. In deeper water plants float to stay in the light, tiny single-celled algae known as phytoplankton use tiny oil droplets and spiny hairs to slow their sinking so as to stay in the light as long as possible.

These microscopic animals produce billions of tiny waste pellets that, if they are not eaten, gently sink.  

If the water is not too deep, some faecal pellets reach the bottom nearly intact where worms and other bottom dwellers eat them.

Some sink much deeper and on the downward journey bacteria slowly decompose the material, creating sticky mucus that binds particles together into flakes.  

Back in the 1930s marine explorer William Beebe first saw the particles from the window of his science fiction like Bathysphere. 

He marvelled at what he described as marine snow. By 1960 Beebe’s Bathysphere would be diving seven miles (11 km) deep.

Rachel Carson wrote in The Sea Around Us (1951), “When I think of the floor of the deep sea… I see always the steady, unremitting, downward drift of materials from above, flake upon flake, layer upon layer… the most stupendous snowfall the earth has ever seen.”

Nearer the shore additional input from agricultural runoff and flow from sewage pipes being dumped in the ocean help a little to improve nutrient levels.
 
Not only do large marine mammals produce lots of shit, but they deliver it to the right place. Whales often feed well below the sunlit zone where plant plankton grows. Sperm and beaked whales may dive a mile or more to hunt squid and deep water fish. Whales and other large deep divers, such as elephant seals, deliver nutrients to plants deep down. 

Population trends for whales and people have gone in opposite directions during recent centuries, causing the ocean to see a lot less whale shit and a whole lot more of the human variety. 

Just one example, numbers of blue whales in the southern hemisphere have declined by 99 per cent during the last century from a third of a million a 100 years ago to around just a thousand today. 

At the same time, the human population has skyrocketed from 1.6 billion in 1900 to more than seven billion and is expected to reach nine billion by 2050. Back on dry land let’s look at our biggest land mammal, the elephant.

These animals are Guinness Book of Records shitters. A full grown elephant will produce a steaming 33lb (15kg) pile eight to 10 times a day. However 90 per cent of our elephants have been slaughtered in the last century.
 
In reality it is the huge decrease in smaller animals, rather than the big beasts, that has led to the massive decrease in nutrients from droppings.

Birds too produce a lot of shit and they are also good at distributing it particularly on my black car. Seabirds have, over the years, built vast mountains of what is called guano. A huge industry developed excavating these nitrogen, phosphate and potassium-rich deposits for use as agricultural fertilisers and explosives.  
 
Now let’s look at what you, I and the rapidly increasing world human population are doing. Calculating the global amount of human shit is difficult. 

Individual humans make different amounts depending on their sex, body size, diets, frequency of bowel movements, health and other factors. Most studies estimate each of us produce three to eight ounces (200g) a day, more if you eat lots of fibre. 

Between a half and three quarters of what you and I produce is just water and the rest is about a third bacteria. These bacteria are normally in our intestines where they digest food and help us in many other ways. The rest is fat, inorganic matter and a bit of protein. 

The rough average per person per day is five ounces (150 gm) made up of about 1.25 ounces (35g) of solid matter and 3.75 ounces (100g) water.

Some years ago I was invited to South Africa just after Mandela had established his Rainbow Nation. They invited me to advise them on developing camping and caravanning sites – my specialist subject. 

From what was happening in the townships they already knew a great deal about temporary and manufactured housing. They showed me how they calculated populations in those townships. Surveys and censuses were unreliable among the many immigrants from other parts of Africa. 

However by monitoring the amount of sewage they could get remarkably accurate population figures. The method would often indicate that populations were a fifth to a quarter larger than the number of people who said they lived there. 

Unlike in South Africa 14 per cent of humans – more than a billion of us – have no sanitary facilities at all and do our business in the open. This is mainly in India, Indonesia, China, Ethiopia, Pakistan, Nigeria, Sudan, Nepal, Brazil, Niger and Bangladesh.  In these countries pigs, dogs and other scavengers eat human shit. What the pigs and dogs leave is dealt with by flies and maggots. 

Worldwide another 11 per cent of people have pit toilets but no flush. Another 11 per cent share sanitary facilities with two or more families, or use public facilities but do not have toilets at home. Finally 64 per cent have flush toilets with piped sewage to septic tank or town mains.  

The proportion of the world population using proper sanitation increased from half in 1990 to 64 per cent in 2012 but two-and-a-half billion people still lack such facilities.

The normal solution for improved sanitation has been flush toilets piped to sewers that connect to a sewage treatment plant. Often we just pump the results into rivers or the sea.

Improved sanitation reduces the spread of faecal-borne disease. It keeps sewage and clean water apart. However it does not necessarily help much with adding nutrients to the environment. 

Some affluent people concerned about saving water are installing dry composting toilets. These treat human waste by a biological process that uses bacteria and fungi to turn human shit into something like garden compost. They use no water but these toilets do not destroy all pathogens. Also unless operated correctly, which isn’t easy, they can be smelly. I have no doubt that composting toilets will improve and become more popular. 

I could write a great deal more on this most interesting subject but unfortunately I haven’t got time. 

I really must just pop out for a…