Composting toilet

A small documentary about the composting toilet on national geographic, showing an interesting solution to a huge environmental problem. Could this be a new renaissance for the composting toilet?

Category:

Howto & Style

Tags:

• composting
• toilet
• environment
• documentary

[mechanicalbu11]

The thing is how do we get toilet water from our home to the staving thirsty people in Africa if we make the change to the composting toilet? The fact is we have abundance of water in the USA and to say we have a "World water problem" indicates these Do-Goo0ders have a way to get my toilet water to needy poor nations.

[magua73]

@mechanicalbu11

It always baffles me when people choose to interpret the "World’s water problem" as a means of transport water around the globe. Did you really understand the documentary’s message in that way?

Well I can tell you that neither I nor anyone I know in my circle has this interpretation; we understand perfectly well that composting, here in Norway for example, won’t help directly with water shortages in a village in Africa.

[matchbox555]

you can flush this stupid idea

[magua73]

@matchbox555

So you disagree, well enough! But would you care to elaborate on your opinion so I could better understand why you think composting is such a bad idea.

[Vigilante108]

What about kids falling down there? It appeared to be very deep? I love this toilet Idea, and I want to make something similar at home. I want to make sure though that I don't have to change it very frequently.

[magua73]

Well, I actually never though about it although I don't think that it is much of problem but I guess you could apply some safeguard againts kids falling down.

It can take years between changes if done properly, so no worries there.

[cimiox]

this is the future! lets help mother nature, composting our shit! our shit is also our energy - then, after composted goes to the earth and to the land, that we farm - so we eat our energy in a natural cicle - more green and positive!

[magua73]

Well I guess that's a way to see it! But when it comes to the environment, direct causation and short strategies are never a good idea or you get interpretations like yours.

Rather look into the long term effects of composting and its indirect consequences.

Of course where I live there is no problem with water shortage, but still composting is far better environmental solution and not because of one reason but many.

[BlueStrikeP]

@mechanicalbu11 @magua73 has the right of it... the issue is not "how we get water over there" but "what water?"

if you really want an actual example then here: use shipping containers, yes... shipping containers. because the US is a largely importing country most of the shipping containers go back empty. Full coming in empty going out. Fill them with water and drop them off where needed. A Swedish architecture firm did that for an exhibit in China.

[nicknameian]

what is the name of the documentary?

[MrWirelesscaller]

How do you clean a composting toilet when people have "accidents"? Most chemicals are very anti-bacterial by nature and might affect the biomass negatively and might not be suitable for the compost pile. I don't seem to see any composting sites mention or show how to clean up after such accidents in an environmentally friendly way. Steam cleaners use too much electricity so aren't green, chemicals aren't green, so what other choices are there?

[mechanicalbu11]

@MrAnthonyRizzo say we do what you want, then we will have a compost issue where organic compounds from the composted wast will enter our water supply and poison us,

how about this as a real issue, Radiation and radioactive compounds have found their way into our food supply, Fukushima, Chernobyl, Michigan: where oxidized tritium found its way into our lakes by the millions of gallons and radiation background levels up X8, but hay at least fertility will be reduced, right?

[MrAnthonyRizzo]

@mechanicalbu11 Conserving water in industrialized areas has an indirect effect on the usage of water in developing countries. Just look at YouTube videos about toilets in rural areas of India. The usage of contaminated water because of pollution due to human fecal waste is wide spread. Elegant, low cost, low tech solutions to keeping human waste out of the water supply in industrialized areas spreads quickly to developing areas when it can be easily duplicated.

[MrAnthonyRizzo]

@Vigilante108 The hole in that toilet does seem rather large but I’ve seen other composting toilets with much smaller holes that provide adequate enough room for the passage of human manure but that restrict the passage of anything larger than a softball.

[MrAnthonyRizzo]

There is no reason why the depositing of the bulking material in a composting toilet couldn’t be automated. In much the same way that water is released from a holding tank in standard toilets bulking material could be released with the flick of a handle from a holding tank in a composting toilet. In large scale operations the holding tank could be centralized for all the toilets and gravity fed.

[thenerdal]

What is this documentary called?