Reusing ALL of our Waste: The Compost Toilet

February 22, 2024

When I arrived to the Organic Learning Center (CAO), Glen gave me a bucket for my room which he told me I could pee in at night and then throw on some plants in the morning. Urine contains nutrients like nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium that help plants grow. Therefore, Glen's philosophy on the farm is to close the nutrient loop and integrate everything back into the circle of life and growth.

Instead of having a toilet that flushes with water, we use a compost toilet. The compost toilets at CAO separate the solid waste (feces) from the liquid waste (urine).

• As you can see in the image below, the liquid waste passes through the white funnel and out into a separate container. When you pee, you add a bit of water into the white funnel to dilute the urine.

• The solid waste goes into the back compartment where it is stored and decomposes. When you go number two, you add a cup of sawdust to the back compartment. There is always a bag of sawdust and a big bottle of water in the bathroom. The toilets have very little smell due to this efficient system of separating liquid and solid wastes!

 The bathroom from the outside; The PBC pipe where the urine comes out the funnel; The two chambers and the doors to open them to remove the soil; The toilet that separates solid and liquid wastes; Evelin showing the fertilizer ready after 6 months of decomposing!

What are the benefits of a composting toilet?

1. First, we use a lot of clean water to flush toilets. In contrast, composting toilets don't use hardly any water. In times of drought and water scarcity, compost toilets are very important! After all, it doesn't make sense that we waste one of our most important resources (water) with our toilet waste.

   
   

2. Second, when combined with a dry material such as saw dust, solid waste (feces) is broken down into a nutrient-rich organic matter that can be integrated into the soil. This returns nutrients to the soil. This was once a common practice for rural communities before the flush toilet became a modern "necessity". The compost toilets have two separate chambers (as pictured above). When one side is filled with solid waste, they close it off and let it decompose. While it decomposes over the span of 6 months, they use the other chamber. And the cycle goes on like this.

The organic matter from the compost toilet is used to fertilizer the trees on the farm. This is another way to ensure that we give back to the soil. This maintains a give and take relationship on the farm.

Because we have used modern toilets that flush, the idea of using a compost toilet can seem unpleasant, but after a few days you get used to it, and logically, it makes sense to preserve natural resources like water. Luxuries of modern life have distanced us from very natural processes of life. These processes don't require purchasing external fertilizers or wasting natural resources, because they use those resources that are organic and readily available to us.

I asked the students on the farm what they thought about the compost toilet. Instead of saying it was weird or gross, they shrugged and were indifferent to it. Many rural communities use latrines which are essentially holes in the ground that are later covered up when they get filled. Latrines are much smellier because the solid and liquid waste are mixed together and there is no dry material like saw dust added to the waste. The compost toilet, in contrast, has very little smell.

Imagine how much water we could save and how much less fecal waste there would be if we all used compost toilets!