The lavatory, the loo, or the dunny – whatever you choose to call it, the flush toilet is a marvel of engineering that those of us lucky enough to have one, simply take for granted. But without them, and the sewers they connect to, cities would quickly become unlivable. Just to give you some context – London sewers manage 1.25 billion kilograms of feces (equivalent to the weight of 2174 Airbus A380 jumbo jets) and around 6 billion liters of urine (enough to fill 2400 Olympic-sized swimming pools) every year. But many researchers are looking at ways to ‘mine’ this foul-smelling mountain, to use the energy stored in excreta to produce electricity.

Keep reading at Forbes.