COMPOSTING TOILET

"A composting toilet?  What's that?  Isn't it like an outhouse?"  "Maybe it will solve all my drainfield problems and I won't even need a septic tank."  "If I get one, I want the most energy efficient kind that doesn't need any power."  These are some common reactions to the words "composting toilet."
    There are many ways to transport and dispose of human waste.  Most of them are anaerobic.  In China along the farm roadsides are outhouses with signs asking please to be used by passers-by.  For centuries human waste has been composted and used as fertilizer in China and the same land is still being farmed, while in America after a few decades of chemical fetrilizers large areas of land have become sterile.  When the flush toilet was invented people loved the concept of having it all washed away out of sight to somewhere else; they no longer had to see or deal with their own waste. This attitude has permeated American culture and life styles.  Still there are alternative options for the disposal of human waste.  One of the oldest is manual removal, where the toilet sits above a container (like a pot -- hence, "potty" or "honey pot") that periodically needs to be hand-carried to a pit or to a holding tank where contents are dumped.
    The use of holding tanks is prevalent in a number of situations.  RV's, boats, trains, airlines and other forms of transportation which used to dump their toilets directly out wherever they were now use holding tanks that unload into septics or sewers.  Portable toilets seen at worksites and large public events have to dump a mixture of toxic chemicals and unhealthy feces: not an environmentally sound practice. Recycling oil toilets use oil rather than water to flush; the light materials float to the top and are removed, while the oil is recirculated until it, too, needs to be disposed of. burn up the waste, using electricity, natural gas, or propane, leaving nothing but a fine ash.  Another method of transporting waste is a pneumatic system like that in Sweden where all the toilets in the city are connected to a central vacuum.  In Arizona and other arid states, lagoon systems are used, where a fenced-in pond collects the sewage; the scum that develops on the surface grows algae and the sun treats it, while the solids settle to the bottom and anaerobically decompose.  In some areas of ten acres or more, evapotranspiration is allowed, wherein the land is flooded and allowed to evaporate on its own time.  In parts of India, a country where all the available trees have already been cut down and used for fuel, the manure from the pigs and chickens is scooped into digestor tanks which produce just enough methane each day to fuel the family cookstoves.   The Circulaire  system is an extremely high-tech total recycling system that continuously recirculates all household water from toilets and laundry back to drinking water and showers, etc.; it encorporateschemicals, filters, electricity, and a centralized computer monitoring system located in Colorado.  The more complex a system, the more possibilities there are for break-down.
    At the other extreme, in Sweden, over forty years ago, the Clivus Multrum was invented, from which hundreds of varieties of offshoot aerobic composting toilet designs  have come and gone.  The one thing they all have in common is that they are simple to understand, build, operate and maintain, with minimal problems and maximum benefit to the environment.  These units range from $3000 to $6000. The , the , the , and the are the ultimatewaterless toilet systems.  They consume all wet organics: toilet wastes, all kitchen scraps and compost, floor sweepings, occassional leaves and garden wastes, cooking grease and oil, and whatever else decomposes.  There is no odor; in fact, the system acts as a bathroom ventilator so that the room itself never smells, and what comes out the roof vent is nothing more than carbon dioxide and water.  If you were to climb up on the roof of a house with a conventional water-flush anaerobic toilet you would smell sulfur, ammonia, methane, and other unpleasant odors.  If you recycle your glass, metal, paper and plastics; put all your wet organics in the compost tank; burn all your dry organics in an efficient airtight woodstove; and avoid plastic, styrofoam and any non-recyclablematerials by leaving all excess packaging at the store where you bought it as a socialstatement, then you have literally no garbage.  You can bottle the liquid from the holding tank and sell it as concentrated liquid plant fertilizer, since the nitrites in the urine convert to nitrates which plants need.  If you need to retrieve anything valuable that fallsdown the toilet, nothing is lost.  The toilet is silent, requires minimal maintenance, has no moving parts (except the Phoenix and the Vera), has no pipes to keep from freezing, and is actually personally satisfying to use.  Composting toilets avoid pollution; manage pathological wastes; create a valuable fertilizer; save water, energy and money; anderadicate the flush toilet.
    There are times when these large tanks are not applicable.  For example, if there is noroom for a tank under the toilet, like in the basement; if the use requirements are small, like one person part-time; or if price is a great concern.  In such instances, the smaller "dry" or are more practical than the true composters, even though theydo use more power and require more frequent maintenance.  Because these containers are small -- ranging from two to three feet square -- they have to employ supplementary heat,stirring and aeration to aid and speed up the rate of decomposition, while fans keep the air flowing from the room down into the toilet and up the vent.  These toilets are easy to use -- simply plug in the cord and install the vent -- and can be moved readily to otherlocations.  They range in price from $800 to $2800, and average around $1200. For people who already are on city sewers but don't like wasting valuable drinking water, there is yet another option: .  Most of these operate on the principal of a high blast and use 1.6 gallons instead of five to seven gallons per flush. There are models that use as little as one quart per flush and a Japanese toilet that uses a one-cup foam flush.  These range in price from $125 to $800