Well I don't know about sexy, but it does sound rather exciting! :p
I dread to ask, but what is a compost toilet? I have a septic tank, but I'm guessing that's not the same. Is yours down the garden or is it in the house?
I dread to ask, but what is a compost toilet? I have a septic tank, but I'm guessing that's not the same. Is yours down the garden or is it in the house?
You may regret asking this – I have been known to bore listeners into sleep on the subject!
So I’ll try to be brief – a compost toilet is basically a toilet which is used to turn human ‘waste’ in compost. Many are ‘long-drop’ toilets. A diagram can be seen here.
Ours is a ‘dry’ type. The liquid and the solids are separated, and stored in different chambers. Liquid goes into a bottle and is emptied when necessary. Usually this is onto leafmould or into the compost bin – urine is a great compost activator – or it is diluted with water and used as a plant food.
The solids turn, eventually, into a rich humus that can be used on the garden, or (if not fully composted when you need to empty it) into the compost bin.
Remember that urine is sterile when it leaves the body and faeces generally have no pathogens that will survive this process.
What makes the smell is the two being mixed together. Kept separately, there is no smell.
I would love one inside the house, but my partner is yet to be completely converted. So ours is in the outbuilding where our shamanic workroom is. Everyone on courses uses it, clients use it and we do during the day.
Although both earth closets and water closets were used since ancient times, by the time Moule took out a patent on his earth closet, there was already money being made by the builders (i.e. the people who bankrolled the projects, not the ones who actually built them) of the sewerage infrastructure in the rapidly expanding cities. Parliament backed the water closet. At a stroke we lost a valuable source of nutrients and we gave ourselves the problem of having to treat and clean water that had been polluted by sewerage.
I think it also contributed greatly to the modern notion of ‘out of sight, out of mind’. Nothing can be thrown away, ‘waste’ has to be dealt with somehow, but we tend to live as if things disappear if we throw or flush them away.
I said you might regret asking. I get very enthusiastic about compost toilets.:D
Well that's quite a revelation Crowan! I'd heard of people using similar methods in the wilds of Africa, outback Australia etc (where I see the link you gave was from) etc, but I never realised you could get them in the UK.
You obviously are 100% committed to your alternative lifestyle - good for you! I'm happy to know that there is a possibility that there will be large scale energy composting from human waste in the future, like from that bus link above.
Thanks
Judy