OK, so whats all the hype about Composting toilets? Are they better, are they worse, do they stink?

Well……

Everybody has to do it sometime…the topic may be a little taboo. The question is: what really happens to all that crap that gets flushed down your toilet? And my god! How much drinking water is wasted every day when the millions of toilets are flushed across the planet?

Half the world is thirsty, dependant on polluted sources of drinking water, and each and every one of us that has a toilet (or three!!) in or homes flushes perfectly fine drinking water down the pipes every day. I live in a city of about 120,000 people. If each person flushes 3 times per day, we’re looking at 360,000 toilet flushes each day! Now, if thats not enough, we’ll say that each flush happens on a low flow 6 liter/flush cycle. Thats 2,160,000 liters of water each and every single day in my city alone. I really believe that number to be pretty conservative as well.

Once thats happened, whatever gets flushed goes somewhere….but where? Well, to put it simply, it probably ends up going through someones tap again! Don’t lose your mind just yet….It goes through several processes before it goes back into your favourite lake or stream…….if you are lucky! Some sewage systems still deliver raw, vile stuff directly into waterways. Thats probably an entirely different topic though, so I won’t go into it here.

The real topic is Composting Toilets. These nifty contraptions work by converting human waste into an organic compost and usable soil. It all occurs through Micro and macro organisms in the natural breakdown of organic matter as they work through various stages of oxidation and decomposition.

Composting toilets can be installed just about anywhere you may like. You could, for example build a outdoors compost toilet at your cottage, or purchase a compost toilet for your garage, your home, backyard……..anywhere really. Some are electric, using fans for exhaust which helps to speed up the activity of the organisms at work. Others are completely manual and may require tumbling or stirring.

Do it yourself, build composting toilets are becoming quite popular, such as the plans found at Smart Sanitation Solutions. And many pre manufactured systems are available for purchase such as the Enviro Loo. Thats a neat name, isn’t it??

A friend of mine mentioned that he’d be trying to build an outdoors composting toilet quite soon, so once that starts to happen, I’ll try to document what the outcome is on Green Home Hints and Tips.

If you are interested in building a composting toilet, it might be worth your while to look at the resources available here: http://wordpress.com/tag/finding-out-how-to-build-a-composting-toilet/