And the winner is ...

Sometimes an idea is so wonderful, solves so many problems, and is so right for the times, it just cannot be stopped: ideas like easy mortgages for the poor, the Snuggie and gun-carrying clubs at the mall. Great Ideas that make America greater!

The Poopster for America Prize (the contest searching for a new eco-sound, toilet-replacement) just received one entry so powerful that we stopped the contest! It was a game changer, a show stopper and the mother of all inventions, rolled into one. Just as we predicted when we set up the contest--your days are over Mr. Crapper and your tired old invention has had it, too.

Today, the Poopster Institute proudly announces the winner in its new millennium toilet replacement contest: NetPoop--the idea that flushes away all those tired ideas of street sewer plumbing, constant street dig-ups and repairs and local, inefficient sewage plants. Mr. Crapper was right for the 1860’s; NetPoop is right for today!

Just like you do for your dog, do for yourself. Get a baggie and pick it up. That’s the NetPoop way. Then the baggies are mailed to NetPoop Central where the methane that we collect will light our American torch once again.

NetPoop won because it not only makes our trillion dollar sanitary sewer network obsolete and unnecessary, but also chips away at two other troubling issues that we face in today’s complex, interconnected world :

• Problem 1: The end of the Post Office will come when NetFlix stops shipping DVDs and delivers all its movies online. Ten percent of the US mail will disappear. Mr. and Ms. Mailman and about 3 percent of the US workforce will start looking for Macjobs if we don’t replace a ton of crappy movies with something else. Net Poop solves that problem. Now the mailman has a pickup at every house everyday (if you are healthy) and he does not have to worry about losing his job to email or iPads.

• Problem 2: Contamination of our precious dumps with dog droppings is threatening out water supply and filling our landfills with evil bacteria. Who would have thought that humans would become a dog do-do service NetPoop works for dogs too. Now humans will be on an even par with their pets: baggies for all, two legs or four.

So you are wondering why it’s NetPoop, and not MailPoop. Because you get to check your account online and see how you are doing in the save-America-one-bag-at-a-time campaign. You log in and order your individually barcoded baggies (Don’t just take the ones in the park dispenser). Then you can check your creditpile as often as you want.

Now that we have a path thru this messy issue, we at The Institute are starting a new contest cycle. Send us your worrying issues and we will pick one for the next contest. Don’t fret about a solution, just sent us the problem. Our contest will get those all-American minds humming away, working on something besides loopy politics for a while.

Green Thoughts

I cut down on stuff coming into my house. I save electricity—curly lights in every room. I save water—the lawn dies happily each summer. I buy less—don’t have the money anyway these days.

And I pay attention to what goes out. I recycle—I sort stuff into big green and blue bins and instruct my wife (with moderate effect) on the intricacies of plastic reuse classifications. I compost—my banana peels and coffee grounds will soon be born-again dirt. I dutifully trek back to Safeway with my plastic bag offerings (suspecting that they just chuck them in the dumpster when no one is looking).

I am one green guy.

But I have been thinking about something we send out everyday and spend God knows how much money, time, effort and energy in transporting to a big industrial-style, centralized processing plant. You know, the family sewage.

In this time of decentralization, how come we have a big, superhighway of poop under every street? Right next to the fresh water pipes and cable TV.

I know that in the good old days everyone just dumped their poop out the window and men just took a walk in the newly invented garden behind every upscale urban house. Sewers were a big (but little considered) advance for civilization. With sewers, poop flowed downstream and the rich moved up on the hills. Then when the scientists learned how to cook it and clean it up in their processors for dumping in the rivers—Wow! Cities didn’t smell the same. Except for the horses and then later for the cars.

I left out the part about cholera and dysentery, (formerly known as the bloody flux, thanks Wikipedia) going away. With these guys flushed from polite society, stomach growling and cramps were a thing of the past. Hurray for Sewers!

But now in post-industrial America, when we have closed down shoe factories, plants for making steel and iron and even lots of our airplanes get built in France, do we need the biggest factory in town to turn out processed poop, just to remind us that the US was once the industrial giant of the world. I suspect no.

It's just no one has had the foresight to see what is hidden. Sort of like before vacuum cleaners, or food processors, or even back when the best place to sit and read was just over a big hole in the floor. This was before Mr. Crapper (now of great fame--his name made immortal thru daily use) did his great work and invented the toilet with its water valve that lets poop go out, but keeps smells from coming in.

Now is time to move beyond centralized, industrial-sized solutions. We have cell phones, not central switchboards; we have laptops, not IBM 360’s; we have ipods, not radio stations; we have skateboards, not steam trains. Life in the US is small and spread out, like the suburbs, and poop needs to keep up.

We need a new way to deal with it. No pipes coming out of the house. Just pull the handle and BAM: everything gets processed, clean water flows out to the tomatoes and a pile of clean, sweet-smelling, org-dirt comes out ready for the garden.

We have a prize to send someone up to outer space. That encourages rocket development. I say lets develop the poopster. Offer a new prize, a million bucks, to you, Mr. or Ms. hot-shot inventor, to think about poop for a few minutes and design us a poopster. that's what I call the invention now, but remember, it will be named after you when you succeed.

Mr. Crapper’s big days are over. When you win, you will be remembered once or twice a day by everyone on earth (if we have good marketing).