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Eating Organic Foods:
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Composting Toilets:
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Radiant Thermal Mass:
 A photo-illustrated primer on trapping extra heat... more>>
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Composting Toilets
The toilet that most Americans are accoustomed to using - white porcelain, puddle in the middle, stench trap etc. was invented in the 1800's along with many other zany Victorian inventions including passengered space baloons, robotic mustache combing devices and chicken spectacles. Realistically, the modern Victorian toilet in an invention that fits right in with it's contemporaries as just another fabtrabulous whimzy. The key concept of the Victorian toilet is to take human feces (which contains a mild population of potentially dangerous microbes) and to immerse it in WATER, which is a terrific growth medium for these said microbes. The concept is akin to trying to drive away an anthrax plague by throwing petri dishes filled with growth medium at it. The idea is as ill-concieved as Leonardo DaVinci's "human wings" , looking nice on the surface, but...
So (in a nutshell) that's the problem is with the modern Victorian toilet, it takes a mild problem and turns it into a big one (while at the same time wasting millions of gallons of pure drinking water*). So what's the solution? Well, one solution is the composting toilet.
 It works by simply mimicing the natural process that has rendered inert and recycled feces for millenia. Instead of dropping the feces into a growth medium to help the pethogens multiply, it drops it into a drying bin, which dries it out as quickly as possible (killing any dangerous viruses etc) and allows it to naturally break down into loam (which could theoretically be used in the garden - although most people, myself included, might prefer to use it to fertilize a non-edible plant - say a tree?). That's all there is to it. Composting toilets are made and used throughout the world (if you've ever gone to a public park, there's a good chance you've used a composting toilet and not even know it**). Also, they cost SUBSTANTIALLY less than your average Victorian septic system. At about $700-$3,000 for a complete system.
Composting Toilet Pros:
- $ Save a LOT of water
- $ Make use great organic material
- $ Cheaper than installing a leach field
- $ No need to hire a truck to pump your septic tank periodically
- No aquafer contamination
- No plungers needed
- No possibility of being splashed by toilet water
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Composting Toilet Cons:
- $ May Require Electricity for venting, heating or zapping bugs
- Competes with other devices (woodstove, fireplace, bathroom vent) for air
- requires conscious design of house around system
- Occasional fly in house
- Extra time needed to maintain
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All in all, if you have the opportunity, join the future and install a composting toilet system - because having a composting toilet means never having to say, "Can someone get me a plunger?!"
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* If you can call most modern drinking water pure - in cities and towns with public water supplies, tap water is little more than raw sewage that has been strained and bleached!
** Some composting toilets use a small amount of water (to move the feces) which is immediately drained off and the feces is allowed to dry - so it's difficult to tell if you're using a compostion toilet unless you're using a totally dry one.
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