DARPA wants to make you eat your own trash

Those mad bois over at the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency are at it again. This time, they want to create a system that would let you eat your own trash, and to be honest, you'd probably like it. (The system, not the taste.)

Senior Airman Frances Gavalis tosses unserviceable uniform items into a burn pit March 10, 2008, at Balad Air Base, Iraq.

(U.S. Air Force Senior Airman Julianne Showalter)

Right now, the U.S. military either carts out or burns much of its trash, depending on security and environmental factors. This is resource-intensive for a force, especially during missions that are already logistically strained like special operations, expeditionary task forces, and disaster response.

But that means that the military has to burn fuel to bring supplies in on trucks, then use more fuel to cart out the trash or burn it. If the trash can be recycled locally instead, especially if it can be turned into high-need items like fuel, lubricants, food, or water, it could drastically cut down on the logistics support that troops need.

And that's why DARPA wants you to eat your own trash. Not because they find it funny or anything, but because macronutrients can be pulled out of trash and re-fed to troops to supplement their diets.

A DARPA graphic shows how a military force's trash and forage could be fed through a system to create organic products like fuel and food.

(DARPA)

And that leads us to ReSource, a new program under DARPA's Biological Technologies Office. It's led by Program Manager Blake Bextine, and he said in a press release that, "In a remote or austere environment where even the basics for survival can't be taken for granted, there can be no such thing as 'single use.'"

The press release went on to say:

A successful ReSource system will be capable of completing three main processes: breaking down mixed waste, including recalcitrant, carbon-rich polymers like those in common plastics; reforming upgradeable organic molecules and assembling them into strategic materials and chemicals; and recovering purified, usable products. In the case of food, the ReSource output would be a basic product composed of macronutrients ready for immediate consumption.

Spc. Mary Calkin, a member of the Washington State National Guard, takes a plate of food at the Freedom Inn Dining Facility at Fort Meade, Maryland.

(U.S. Army photo Joe Lacdan)

Operators would feed waste into the system and then select what supplies were most valuable to them at the time. Need food? Well, it sounds like you're getting a paste, but at least you'll have something to keep you going. But when there is plenty of MREs or locally sourced food to go around, commanders could opt for fuel for generators and lubricants for equipment.

And there's no reason that the feedstock would necessarily be limited to strictly trash. After all, a bunch of tree branches may not be edible for troops, but the ReSource setup might be able to extract the nutrients and create something that troops could consume, maybe with a lot of spices.

Systems would range in size depending on what is needed, potentially as small as a man-portable system for small teams but going as high as a shipping container that could support much larger operations. Ideally, no specialists would be needed to run the system. Troops don't need to know how the system works; they just feed waste in and take supplies out.

It's a new DARPA program, meaning that DARPA is looking for researchers to bring ideas and nascent technologies to the table for consideration.

Their Proposers Day meeting for ReSource will take place on August 29 in Phoenix.