How to deal with... "waste"

[me&thegals]

Speaking of contamination.... In my transcription job last week, a hilarious story came up. An elderly woman was asking one of our docs for a refill on birth control pills. She had been getting them from Mexico and dissolving them in her shampoo bottles to help her grow more lush hair. Needless to say, the doc did NOT refill her Rx and I was left wondering exactly which lake or stream her shower water was draining to!

 

[Beekissed]

Just when ya think you've heard everything...... Sad, isn't it?

The fish here are dying from some weird fungal disease on their gills.....incidentally, they find more dead fish and fungi in the waters below the chicken houses in the area.

 

[Big Daddy]

So if a composting toilet is fully self contained and you didn't have a master bathroom you could set it up in your master bedroom. Be just like old times when my Dad would set up the folding toilet seat in the tent on our camping trips.

 

[tortoise]

So, tortoise, what do they do with the stuff once it's full? Compost it, send it to a waste processor? Just curious.

It is right over a compost pile. It's a simple setup and seriously neat-o!

 

[sylvie]

We're not talking about using someone else's poop, Morel....talking about using our own! If you have a disease you can't give yourself more of a disease!

You are soooo funny!

I know what you mean....but I think we are talking about using our own, safely-composted treasures.

Oh ya...you've never raised a teenager like my oldest...he would obviously have been using the same composting toilet as me...I don't do hot tubs for the same reason...a little paranoid maybe but I have my reasons

Aren't mushrooms grown in somewhat composted manure? And most recipes that I have read throughout the years suggests not washing them, but lightly knocking or wiping the visual debris off the mushroom.
Also, wild gathered mushrooms will colonize in a well manured area, like where deer frequent.

 

[noobiechickenlady]

Bee is correct! Wolf-Kim, you should really download this book. It's free!

Tortoise, I think I'd like to talk to you about this PM on it's way shortly!
Couple of folks' concerns:

1. Stink, not at all. I know this from personal experience with a sawdust collection toilet. Just like when your cat uses the litter box & doesn't cover, it stinks. If you don't cover, you get problems with flies & other bugs, plus the smell. However, when that cat scratches the litter over it's deposit, the smell goes away fairly quickly, just like when flushing a toilet.

2. Using raw manure on food crops (grown in the ground, like tomatoes & cabbages) - NO! This is what many asian countries do. This is night soil. This is how many food born illnesses are spread. Raw manure of any kind should NEVER be used on a food crop.

3. Using composted manure. The authors have had their finished compost tested for pathogens, etc. And these folks have done their homework. Check out the information here: http://humanurehandbook.com/downloads/Chapter_7.pdf

The authors (and many, many other people, as I am learning) compost humanure for use on ANY crop. Potatoes, tomatoes, cole crops, fruit trees, berry bushes, etc. The key is a properly managed compost pile.

The pile gets HOT (thermolithic) and basically, cooks the poop out of the poop Pathogens can't survive for long in that type of heat.
Also, it is AGED for a year after the last LIVE deposit was made. Some folks age it two years or more before use.

Does this fly in the face of modern composting wisdom, right up there with composting meat, milk & other protein & fat containing foods? Yep. But not historical wisdom. For example:
Many people have heard of the Healthy Hunzas, a people in what is now a part of Pakistan who reside among the Himalayan peaks, and routinely live to be 120 years old. The Hunzas gained fame in the United States during the 1960s health food era when several books were written about the fantastic longevity of this ancient people. Their extraordinary health has been attributed to the quality of their overall lifestyle, including the quality of the natural food they eat and the soil its grown on. Few people, however, realize that the Hunzas also compost their humanure and use it to grow their food. Theyre said to have virtually no disease, no cancer, no heart or intestinal trouble, and they regularly live to be over a hundred years old while singing, dancing and making love all the way to the grave.

Now, this could be entirely due to the fact that they ate an all natural diet, just the way they had been raised for generations. But, it surely can't be overlooked that they use their manure to return nutrients to the soil.

 

[Wolf-Kim]

So if a composting toilet is fully self contained and you didn't have a master bathroom you could set it up in your master bedroom. Be just like old times when my Dad would set up the folding toilet seat in the tent on our camping trips.

You could... I wouldn't... LOL

While the toilet itself may have no smell, I'm sure the person doing their business could put off some smell.

I will have to check the book out. Properly composted it should be fine to use.

I think I would prefer a composted toilet over the ones that run off water. I believe I read somewhere that 1/3(it MIGHT have been 2/3) of a house's water consumption goes down the toilet. I'm sure the rest is split between modern washing machines, dish washers, and the shower/bath.

Granted, some of us have wells and don't have to pay for water itself, but we do have to pay for the electric that pumps the water up.

A lot of my interest into composting toilets, borderlines with my interest in methane digesters. There are dairy farms that run on methane from their cows manure.

One day, I hope to be able to play around with the idea of a methane digester. Something that I can collect all my animals manure, run it through the methane digester, harvest fuel and still have the sludge afterwards to compost and put back into the earth. It fascinates me that we don't do this with our own sewage already.

-Kim

 

[ScottSD]

I can only imagine how The Wife™ would react if I told her I wanted to reuse our human waste......

 

[Wolf-Kim]

I can only imagine how The Wife would react if I told her I wanted to reuse our human waste......

Don't word it that way! LOL

Say, you would like to utilize your resources to the maximum. Or that you want to go green! Or you want to lower the water bill and spend less on fertilizer.

 

[sylvie]

I can only imagine how The Wife would react if I told her I wanted to reuse our human waste......

You've trademarked your wife?