Laurence recently built us a composting toilet so we now do all of our toileting into a bucket. As horrific as this may sound it has actually been quite a revelation. Instead of flushing we sprinkle sawdust and this acts as a bio filter and prevents bad odour from building up. It smells quite pleasantly of sawdust in our toilet nowadays.
We got the saw dust by asking the man at our local hardware store. He removed a few planks from the floor beneath his saw to reveal mountains of soft woodshavings, he then told us to take as much as we wanted. He even laughed when I offered to pay. We filled a couple of black sacks and then strapped them to our bikes and cycled gleefully home, unable to believe that we’d been bestowed so much beautiful treasure.
It is a little strange pooing into a bucket at first because you can see what you leave behind in a way that is just not possible in a traditional toilet bowl - where your bowel movements are distorted by the water. I cannot explain why but this gives me immense pleasure. The only alarming thing to speak of is that we have filled 5 buckets in just 12 days. Now admittedly we have had Airbnb guests during most of that time, but I had no idea of the sheer quantities of waste that 4 people could produce. It was a lot more than I’d expected.
When the buckets are full we take them to the humanure heap located down in the garden. Constructed out of old pallets by our co-inhabitant Kerry, we will fill the berth for a year and then close it off and let it rot down for an additional two years. After this, a beautiful black compost will be left behind. And it will be completely safe to use because all of the dangerous microbes will have been broken down during the composting process.
And that is it.
In my opinion this method of excrement disposal makes so much more sense than the more common methods of sewage plants or septic tanks. There is little expense, no use of dangerous chemicals, no leakage into the sea or water ways, and the compost that is left behind at the end is of the highest quality. The Chinese used humanure very successfully in their agriculture for thousands of years, right into the 20th century. Whilst they used raw, uncomposted humanure, they demonstrated the way in which humanure can be used as fertilizer on a huge scale, to feed a population of millions. Humanure makes even more sense when you consider that industrial agriculture relies on artificial fertilizers – why not use our own excrement instead?
The cyclical nature of a humanure system appeals greatly to me and whilst there may be little I can do to change industrial agriculture at this particular moment in time, it makes me very happy pooing into my bucket, very happy indeed.
The cyclical nature of a humanure system appeals greatly to me and whilst there may be little I can do to change industrial agriculture at this particular moment in time, it makes me very happy pooing into my bucket, very happy indeed.