6 Comments

• 1Daniel Scharf August 26th, 2021

  I the Solent area of Hampshire housebuilding has been stopped due to nitrate pollution. Last year Defra tried to help.”Housing growth has stalled in the Solent area for over a year due to concerns that nitrates were causing a range of negative environmental effects. These include excessive growth of green algae which smothers and damages rare habitats and wildlife, including the Solent’s internationally protected estuaries, salt marshes and seagrass beds, as well as protected birds including curlews.”. Compost toilets could be another answer if housebuilders thought that these could be sold?

  
  

• 2Malcolm August 26th, 2021

  My wife and I experimented with a compost loo in our conventional bathroom this year. We used a plastic bin with a home made wooden seat and lid. We were amazed at how easy it all was and were surprised at the lack of smell (we used a sawdust soak), less smell than a conventional loo. We emptied it 1 or 2 times a week and that was also surprisingly easy and hazard free, much to our surprise. Would thoroughly recommend it.

  
  

• 3Andrew Rollinson August 27th, 2021

  Dear Michelle,
  
  The problem here, if you live in a flat as you say “with no garden [and] no plot of land”, is where do you empty the toilet? This is not mentioned in the blog, nor can I see anything on the Kildwick website. The toilets on the Kildwick site are not big enough to compost the solid waste in-situ, and to a lesser extent there is also the issue of where to put the liquid waste.
  
  I am in favour of dry toilets, and now only have such systems where I live. But people must be aware of the practicalities..
  
  For solids, you either need a large. ca. 1m3 per user composting area below the toilet and two of these to alternate. This is unlikely to be practical in a flat and it still leaves the issue of urine disposal. Or they will need to dispose of the solid at very frequent intervals. For a toilet such as the one shown, and a flat of two people, expect emptying a large sack of un-decomposed faeces at least twice per week. This will mean carrying it out of the flat and ideally burying it in the soil somewhere nearby or having some large sealed compost bins to put it in. This gets very tedious.
  
  It is, I think, misleading to not make this clear on your blog and website Michelle.
  
  Andrew

  
  

• 4Dave Darby August 27th, 2021

  Daniel – I wonder if they could be sold if the local authority sent around trucks to empty them?

  
  

  Malcolm – yes, I’ve seen very effective, simple solutions, like this one: https://www.lowimpact.org/the-simplest-diy-compost-toilet/

  
  

  Andrew – good point. I’ll try to get Michelle to respond.
  
  [actually, she does say: In a flat scenario, flushing the collected liquids into your conventional toilet every few days and disposing of the solids (dried, stink-free and tightly wrapped in a bio-degradable bag!) in the household waste]
  
  (don’t know what the local authority would make of that, but I don’t see that it would be a major problem, unless thousands of people were doing it, which they wouldn’t be? It would go back to the soil eventually – just taking the long route)

  
  

• 5Aimee July 9th, 2022

  The problem with a composting toilet in the city is that people have to bag up their ‘solids’ and put them in the garbage, which takes it to a landfill that is anaerobic and therefore doesn’t break down, as curbside composting will not take humanure, even if it’s zero-smell like the Natures Head one that has you mix it with coir. We had a NH composting toilet on our farm and loved it because 1) the pee could be poured around the perimeter of our veggie garden fence which was a free way of keeping the deer out since we didn’t have a 6′ fence around it – not one deer in 4 years! and 2) we could easily bury the zero-stink solids on the back of the property. Plus we vented it through a rigid pipe through the roof, a step above what the manufacturer provides for tiny homes, since our house was larger. Everyone else with these for is throwing their poo in the trash which is not saving the planet one bit, as they are trading water use for landfill use, yet still patting themselves on the back. Advocating for city composting programs to take humanure from composting toilets would not only help this but get more folks to use this type of system. Now that we are back in the city, we switched all our toilets with dual-flush as well as stick to the yellow/mellow philosophy with the liquids…but really miss our composting toilet. Ironically, it was hard to explain to folks when we were selling our house as even though it was marketed with zillions of sustainability features, many wanted to yank out this $900 toilet and replace it with a wasteful water-based one. 🙁

  
  

• 6Dave Darby July 10th, 2022

  Aimee – yes, I think compost loos work well when you have land / space to compost further and to use the finished compost. This could work in town houses, but would be difficult in flats. I think compost loos will only work well in cities when local authorities send round collection trucks, take the waste to further composting facilities, and then on to farms.