May 05 2009
Let’s Talk Crap!
When we speak about becoming self-sustained, we are speaking about relying solely upon ourselves for all of our needs. This idea doesn’t just revolve around harvesting our own vegetables, getting “off the grid” or learning to bake our own bread and make our own cheese, it means “all of our needs”. This includes ridding ourselves of the waste that we as humans tend to make. Sure we can reduce, re-use and recycle, we can burn our garbage, and we can even turn our food waste into compost to feed our gardens, but what about a composting toilet?
A composting toilet is like a little tiny ecosystem that will recycle human excrement. It will actually safely contain the excrement while microorganisms turn it into humus for you to return back to the soil. The composting toilet uses very little water, unlike the toilets that we use now. A “normal” toilet uses almost 5 gallons of drinking water to every ounce or so of waste, which accounts for over 30% of our household water used only for flushing the toilet.
As long as these “humanure toilets” are operated correctly they can be clean, odor-free, environmentally friendly, provide fertilizer for your garden and use less water. So, what do you think? Would you go this far to become self-sustained?
~Wind
Sounds like a great option for those super eco enthusiasts. I myself don’t even compost my food yet, so this would be a stretch for me.
This would be a great product for boats and yachts! My new husband had to replace a tiolet pump on a small yacht last week, yuk. We were joking around saying that the issue could be resolved by recycling the waste to a clean drinkable water…..ice cubes anyone??