Imagine a bustling industrial street, crumpled newspapers somersaulting between vehicles, sidewalks crammed with preoccupied businessmen and wide-eyed tourists gawking at new surroundings. Small children clasp the hands of fresh-faced mothers pushing newborns in strollers. A red balloon emerges from a street café and sails through crowded car lanes, up past skyscraping buildings and into the fresh open air.

Now imagine an ashen industrial street: dirt soaked newspapers pasted flat onto concrete, sidewalks overstuffed with sluggish, congested people trying to clear dry sinuses and sore throats. Small children grip the hands of weary mothers navigating across streets filled corner to corner with abandoned cars. A red balloon lays soggy and trapped beneath an immobile tire.

The second street is a snapshot of a world that has depleted its natural resources and never weaned itself off the dependency of fossil fuels. The first world utilizes an "e-fuel" that is easily sustainable and harmless to the environment and ozone layer because it comes directly from the waste we create.

Enertech Environmental has opened the nation's first power plant that utilizes biosolids, (or poop, to be frank) into energy. Enertech creates what it calls "e-fuel" via the SlurryCarb process. After biosolids arrive at the facility they are softened into a consistent liquid that is then heated and pressurized in a way that extracts water from the cell walls, enabling them to remove the water from the solids. The sludge is then dried to create the e-fuel, a renewable fuel that can potentially be used as an alternative to fossil fuels.

E-fuel is better for the environment since it does not produce any additional carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, the substance attributed to the advancement of global warming. This is good news for the environment and your lungs, but bad news for oil companies if e-fuel takes off as society's new fuel of choice. Oil companies should not fret, though, since Enertech is still in the developmental stages in exploring gasification technologies to create a synthetic gas according to Brian Dooley, Director of Marketing for Enertech.

Dooley says he is not surprised that competitors have yet to contact Enertech, since "there is such a demand for energy even oil companies are looking for alternatives." Besides which, Enertech's resources are a "drop in the bucket compared to our overall energy needs."

Fossil fuels are a limited resource that is closer to reaching depletion levels with each passing year. Statistics vary from 85 to 95 percent in terms of our dependency on fossil fuels, which include natural gas, coal, and oil. Fossil fuels are a controversial source of energy since the acquisition of them can lead to the destruction of forests and other natural landscapes, which has incensed environmental groups in the past. Most recently, Chevron is awaiting the verdict on its liability suit filed for damages done between 1964 and 1990 to the Amazon rainforest from oil drilling executed by Texaco, which Chevron owns.

The acquisition of biosolids to create e-fuel is easy and the supply is seemingly endless -- not to mention more environmentally conscientious. The resources are boundless because they come not only from human waste, but also from animal manure, agricultural waste, lumber, and paper products. "What you end up with is every part of the biosolid ends up being completely recycled," Dooley says.

E-fuel can also be used to replace coal and is less expensive since it is paid by city sanitation districts for managing the recycling of human wastes, which allows Enertech to produce its product at a lower rate.

Enertech services primarily industrial customers like cement kilns that are "taking as much as we will give them as an alternative to coal to bring down emissions," Dooley says. He adds that they also mix ash into the cement to cut down on the needs for lime and other additions that are less eco-friendly.

Currently Enertech services clients mostly within the Southern California area but Dooley says the company is in the process of exploring their options in San Francisco and the Bay Area, talking with waste management firms and assessing potential projects.