Is Composting Human Waste Possible?
I’m 65 years old and have seen technological advancements that have been truly amazing. The list includes; landing on the moon and exploring the outer reaches of our solar system with unmanned space crafts, organ transplants, cloning, and gene splicing. When talking about composting human feces however, it is only possible with individuals or small groups of like minded people. Is this really impossible, or is it the culture that cannot see the possibility?
The reasons to seriously explore this are mounting. Just taking one example of many, California, which is responsible for a good portion of our food supply, has been in a drought for years. Instead of building the carbon content and fertility of the soil so it can hold water while lessens the need for irrigation, we continue to use our limited fresh water to flush and purify this valuable resource (for more information see Humamanure and Urine).
Wendell Berry captures the picture of our culture in his forward of The Toilet Papers by Sim Van der Ryn.
If I urinated and defecated into a pitcher of drinking water and then proceed to quench my thirst from the pitcher, I would undoubtedly be considered crazy. If I invented expensive technology to put my urine and feces into my drinking water, and then invented another expensive (and undependable) technology to make the same water fit to drink, I might be thought even crazier. It is not inconceivable that some psychiatrist would ask me knowingly why I wanted to mess up my drinking water in the first place.
The “sane” solution, very likely, would be to have me urinate and defecate into a flush toilet, from which the waste would be carried through expensive sewage works which would supposedly treat it and pour it into the river from which the town downstream would pump it, further purify it, and use it for drinking water.
Private madness, by the ratification of a lot of expense and engineering, thus becomes public sanity.
The composting toilet springs from an elementary insight: it is possible to quit putting our so called bodily wastes where they don’t belong (in the water) and start putting them where they belong (on the land). When waste is used, a liability becomes an asset, and the very concept of waste disappears. This of course, is the commonest of common sense.
WendellBerry
The reasons to seriously explore this are mounting. Just taking one example of many, California, which is responsible for a good portion of our food supply, has been in a drought for years. Instead of building the carbon content and fertility of the soil so it can hold water while lessens the need for irrigation, we continue to use our limited fresh water to flush and purify this valuable resource (for more information see Humamanure and Urine).
Wendell Berry captures the picture of our culture in his forward of The Toilet Papers by Sim Van der Ryn.
If I urinated and defecated into a pitcher of drinking water and then proceed to quench my thirst from the pitcher, I would undoubtedly be considered crazy. If I invented expensive technology to put my urine and feces into my drinking water, and then invented another expensive (and undependable) technology to make the same water fit to drink, I might be thought even crazier. It is not inconceivable that some psychiatrist would ask me knowingly why I wanted to mess up my drinking water in the first place.
The “sane” solution, very likely, would be to have me urinate and defecate into a flush toilet, from which the waste would be carried through expensive sewage works which would supposedly treat it and pour it into the river from which the town downstream would pump it, further purify it, and use it for drinking water.
Private madness, by the ratification of a lot of expense and engineering, thus becomes public sanity.
The composting toilet springs from an elementary insight: it is possible to quit putting our so called bodily wastes where they don’t belong (in the water) and start putting them where they belong (on the land). When waste is used, a liability becomes an asset, and the very concept of waste disappears. This of course, is the commonest of common sense.
WendellBerry