Humanure: Goodbye, Toilets. Hello, Extreme Composting

Time magazine puts the spotlight on ecological sanitation (ecosan) in the US in its issue of 14 December 2009.

An article by Adam Fisher portrays:

  • Humanure Handbook author Joseph Jenkins
  • the Rhizome Collective from Austin, Texas, which managed to introduce the “first legal composting toilet” in the US
  • “radical ecologist” Nance Klehm who got her neighbours to use eco-toilets in Chicago, and
  • MCPOOP – the Marin Composting Portable Odorless Outhouse Project in California.

Read the full article in Time

See below a video on the Loveable Loo compost toilet

7 responses to “Humanure: Goodbye, Toilets. Hello, Extreme Composting

  1. Interesting concept, this has been practiced for a long time. The term I believe is Night soil, although it was not always for compost, it does seem a much better way to use resources. Plus put nutrients back in the soil, which is something that we desperately need.

    -Cheers-

  2. Pingback: Fresh From Twitter: Humanure: Goodbye, Toilets. … /  Worm Farming Books

  3. hmmmm interesting. Not sure if I could actually do it though, it sounds a little gross.

  4. Kelvin Bai Lugaka

    How can we get our children from Kibera slum(Nairobi-Kenya) get involve in sanitation marketing?

  5. TIME got it a little wrong. We have been making selling “legal” composting toilets for 30+ years.

  6. Years ago I used Joseph Jenkins’s Humanure Handbook to build a composting crapper. It was great. Yeah, sometimes a bit gross when you’re hauling the buckets, but that’s what handwashing is for. You get used to it. And my tomatoes the year I used the compost were unbelievable!

  7. I too was inspired by the wonderful Joe Jenkins and his Humanure Handbook to build my own extremely simple compost toilet in 2002.

    I use a commode and have a lidded brewing bucket, and a bag of sawdust. Sawdust in the commode, then humanure and urine (I don’t try to separate) and then more sawdust immediately on top. This gets tipped into the brewing bucket.

    Every week or so, the brewing bucket gets taken down the garden to a 600 litre static composter, which only takes humanure/urine and sawdust.
    This takes 18 months to fill.

    I then fill the next one. And a third. By the time the third is full, the first one has had 4 years sitting and is only a third full, and it is great compost for tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, raspberries and fruit trees/bushes. It saves thousands of litres of water every year, which I therefore don’t have to pay for.

    There is nothing legal/illegal about this… it is in my garden and nothing to do with anyone else.

    Easy to do, more than satisfying!
    John, York, UK

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