On composting toilets, again

21 Nov 2005

Got questions about the environment? Ask Umbra.

Dear Umbra,

I'm attempting to "green" my home, room by room. I've heard of low-flow toilets, but someone just told me about composting toilets. Do they smell bad? Will my grandmother use it or ask for an outhouse? Thanks for your wisdom!

Moira
Providence, R.I.

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Dearest Moira,

Excellent, manageable room-by-room plan.

What in tarnation?!

Composting toilets are basically the technology we should have adopted instead of the water closet. Although there's a wide range of models, all of them compost human waste into a humus-like end product that can go back into the earth whence it came. Essentially a compost pile within the home. These toilets either contain the waste -- oh, I might as well use the cute term "humanure" -- just below the bowl or send it down a chute to a central holding container. The odors are vented outside. Water use is either low or none, electricity use is low or none, smell should be zero, conversational value quite high. Unfortunately, price can also be quite high, ranging from $1,000 to $5,000.

The smelliness and effectiveness of the toilet will depend on your ability to follow instructions. Do you remember our past discussions on anaerobic and aerobic composting? Aerobic composting integrates oxygen and moisture, and the microorganisms that thrive in this rotating, air-rich environment reduce smell, process raw materials quickly, and leave you an excellent final product, no matter what you are composting. It is essential that humanure composting use an aerobic process if it is to be anything more than an outhouse. Your toilet may require adding wood shavings or another "accelerator," and turning a handle or pressing a button. It certainly will require removing the humus, but hopefully not more than once or twice a year.

The tricky thing is that you become responsible for your body's waste, from start to finish. The EPA has put out a little primer [PDF] listing the pros and cons of composting toilets. The cons made me giggle, because they all boil down to: It's POOP. Human waste is stinky, carries dangerous pathogens, and is socially unacceptable -- dealing directly with adult poop is foreign to most contemporary Americans. Although composting toilets are supposed to remove pathogens, and humanure has a long tradition as a soil amendment -- it even has a special superhero name, Night Soil -- all officials advise caution in handling what could basically be a big pile of disease. Check your local solid-waste regulations for more guidance.

If you are intrigued but worried about grandma and other visitors, the scourge of being weird, or the strangeness of such a novel concept, perhaps you could find a local compost toilet to visit. The manufacturers can tell you who sells their product locally, and those dealers should be able to send you somewhere to view this paragon of common sense.

Poopily,
Umbra

Yours is to wonder why, hers is to answer (or try). Please send Umbra any nagging question pertaining to the environment -- but first check out her FAQs!

The claims made in this column may not reflect the views of this magazine. Neither the magazine nor the author guarantees that any advice contained in this column is wise or safe. Please use this column at your own risk.

Umbra Fisk is Grist Research Associate II, Hardcover and Periodicals Unit, floors 2B-4B.

Comments: (7 comments)

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The Humanure Handbook

The Humanure Handbook, by Joseph Jenkins is worth looking into. He makes it available free on his website (http://www.jenkinspublishing.com). I started reading the free pdf, but soon bought a copy to add to our book collection. It is well researched, and he makes a good case that thermophilic composting is the safest way to deal with human waste.

We've been using his sawdust toilet for about a month now, and we are very happy with it. It cost about fifty bucks for two new buckets, and a toilet seat lid. I built the enclosure out of some plywood a friend had around the garage. Thus, it was much cheaper than any of the commercial alternatives that we were looking into.

I reviewed the book on my blog, http://carfreefamily.blogspot.com. Just look for the entry titled "Interesting Shit"

by pcooley at 2:01 PM on 21 Nov 2005

Fecophobia

I was so pleased to see the topic of humanure being digested here. Thanks, too, for the reference to the Humanure Handbook.

I have lived with a sawdust toilet here in Northern New Mexico for almost 6 years. Even though I live without a flush toilet, I still have friends, guests, and out-of-town company.

The Humanure Handbook has been my trusty guide. The sawdust toilet system works so well even my mother (a Virgo, no less) came to stay with me for a month and didn't complain.

More of us need to get over our fecophobia. As Humanure Handbook author Joseph Jenkins says, "We need to stop shitting in our drinking water." So much of the world has no clean drinking water, and here we are defacting in ours. What a strange species we are.

Try a sawdust toilet. Follow the guidelines in the book. You'll get over your fecophobia in no time.

by EarthDog at 7:35 PM on 21 Nov 2005

Humanure

I have lived with composting toilets both in my home and non-profit organizations. There are a couple of things that prospective buyers/users should know:

First, depending on your family size and usage, certain models need extra compost added if you put a lot of liquid in the unit. Read: beer parties can be a problem with excess liquid.

Second, as time goes on, some models may harbor little flying moths, or beasties, as they were called by my children, and in addition to being unsanitary as they fly about the house landing on your body or on food, etc., your children (and grandparents) will take up writing poems or songs about the adventure, in addition to being grossed out.

Third, in hot, humid weather we did detect the odor outside. Composting toilets are a great alternative, but they are NOT for everyone. You might want to consider adding a standard low-flush model in addition to a composting unit. Do your research and make sure the model you choose is not prone to these problems.

by phyllisfitz at 5:49 AM on 22 Nov 2005

Outlawed!

A couple of friends built a house in California 100 miles north of San Francisco (Mendocino County). They were told by the county that they were legally required to have a flush toilet in order for the house to be up to code.

This is disgusting! What should be outlawed is flush toilets, which waste five gallons of water with every flush. Instead, our highly anti-environmental society actually requires these wasteful toilets, and does so in an arid part of the country that can't support the number of people living here now, even if they did't waste water. Talk about assbackwards!

Jeff Hoffman

by jdhlax at 9:51 AM on 22 Nov 2005

Jane Jacobs gave props to composting toilets

The great Jane Jacobs, author of The Death and Life of Great American Cities and other essential greenie texts, converted me (so far only theoretically) to the genius of composting toilets in one of her books (it wasn't Death and Life; it might have been Economy of Cities). She pointed out how counterintuitive it was to use our waste to foul up our water rather than using it to build our soil. Though I would certainly heed Umbra's advice to grow food in "night soil" only with great caution.

Victual Reality

by Tom Philpott at 11:17 AM on 22 Nov 2005

composting toilets, the wave of the future

It is essential that we revolutionize our societal perspective in order to achieve balance with the environment. Changing our relationship with our own fecal matter is an important aspect of this. We must begin to look at our poop as an asset, and not as a liability.

I here by move to strike the term, "human waste," from the daily vocabulary drill. "Human waste" should not be used to describe the one of the "fruits" of our labor - Poop!

by RobertW at 6:47 AM on 23 Nov 2005

Worm box alternative to composting

We switched to a worm box from composting our people waste a couple of years ago. It has worked out fine. The worms (red wigglers, not any worm) digest everything including household compostables, leaves, grass clippings, sawdust, newspaper and the human contribution. When they get done with it, it looks and smells like forest soil. The only recognizable item I have ever found is an avocado pit.

We haven't had any problem with smell. I think the worms work the material introducing air so that it does not go anerobic, which is the real smell producer. I use the material when the worms are done with it, which takes about a year. I don't use it on the surface of the soil, but bury it instead, and I don't use it in the vegetable garden.

We like this approach much better than composting the stuff. The worms do all the work and they do it really well!

by Wayfarandgone at 12:42 PM on 24 Nov 2005

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You're Only Humanure

On composting toilets, again