Interesting - I was curious about the problems with pathogens, but they've covered some of that. It would be difficult to get parasites in particular down - as they pointed out, the eggs of some species can live for ages in soil. One advantage of not using water would also be fewer breeding sites for mosquitoes, and therefore possibly a reduction in some diseases (although given that southern India at least is still monsoon-affected I can't see epidemic malaria/dengue for example going away any time soon.)
The other thing that really interested me was that I hadn't even though of menstrual hygiene being an issue - but of course, it'd be a huge problem where you don't have toilets and/or running water.
One other piece of trivia - I found out recently that what I've always thought of as the traditional British habit of boiling vegetables to death actually came about as a result of WW2, when all fertilisers were being used for explosive purposes and night soil was being used as a fertiliser instead. As a result, people were advised to boil vegetables in order to ensure no organisms survived - and kept doing so right through the 50s and 60s and beyond.
At work we had a discussion about how much water we use to flush our solid waste.
It was reported that someone had collected all his poo for a year by pooing onto a piece of cardboard. At the end of a year he had two shoeboxes of dried matter.
At one per day, using a full flush of 4.5L, you could save 1640L of water. If you consider urine output at 3L x 3 per day as well =3285L; total water saved per person is about 4930L.
I have half baked plans of setting up a batch system, using a commercial compost bin (insulated and aerated) outside and a bucket inside which we empty regularly. Our house would save about 20 000L of water per year, at a cost of about $500. It compares well with installing a 20kL water tank and has the same effect.
If we two buckets, one for waste and one for liquid, it won't smell too bad either.
If you want to come have a look at how we redesigned the CERES system, let me know. We've had a lot of entertaining issues with the compost toilets there. It's not available for general-public-wanderers to look over (for a whole bunch of reasons), but we can take people down there easily enough.
On our farm we used a commercially-available worm-based non-permanent-for-renters option for a few years as well - basically a seat and lid with two interchangeable tubs, that you could just sit in a room somewhere and move out every few months when you needed to change them over. That worked mostly OK, according to Mum, though less well once she started living there permanently and the time the containers got to sit around decreased. It also worked better if we encouraged people to piddle somewhere else - "go water the orchard". Which was fine in the patches where most of the people on the farm were casual male workers, but not so effective in the patches where most of the people were female visitors. Mainly this was because the composting system didn't really filter or absorb urine particularly, so the worm juice that you were always draining out was probably at least half urine, and if you didn't keep it drained you'd drown the worms. So much more maintenance needed when we had lots of ladies on the farm. There were a few ways you could redesign that particular system to make it deal with these problems better though.
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Date: 2009-03-19 09:19 pm (UTC)The other thing that really interested me was that I hadn't even though of menstrual hygiene being an issue - but of course, it'd be a huge problem where you don't have toilets and/or running water.
One other piece of trivia - I found out recently that what I've always thought of as the traditional British habit of boiling vegetables to death actually came about as a result of WW2, when all fertilisers were being used for explosive purposes and night soil was being used as a fertiliser instead. As a result, people were advised to boil vegetables in order to ensure no organisms survived - and kept doing so right through the 50s and 60s and beyond.
no subject
Date: 2009-03-19 09:50 pm (UTC)It was reported that someone had collected all his poo for a year by pooing onto a piece of cardboard. At the end of a year he had two shoeboxes of dried matter.
At one per day, using a full flush of 4.5L, you could save 1640L of water. If you consider urine output at 3L x 3 per day as well =3285L; total water saved per person is about 4930L.
I have half baked plans of setting up a batch system, using a commercial compost bin (insulated and aerated) outside and a bucket inside which we empty regularly. Our house would save about 20 000L of water per year, at a cost of about $500. It compares well with installing a 20kL water tank and has the same effect.
If we two buckets, one for waste and one for liquid, it won't smell too bad either.
no subject
Date: 2009-03-19 11:58 pm (UTC)On our farm we used a commercially-available worm-based non-permanent-for-renters option for a few years as well - basically a seat and lid with two interchangeable tubs, that you could just sit in a room somewhere and move out every few months when you needed to change them over. That worked mostly OK, according to Mum, though less well once she started living there permanently and the time the containers got to sit around decreased. It also worked better if we encouraged people to piddle somewhere else - "go water the orchard". Which was fine in the patches where most of the people on the farm were casual male workers, but not so effective in the patches where most of the people were female visitors. Mainly this was because the composting system didn't really filter or absorb urine particularly, so the worm juice that you were always draining out was probably at least half urine, and if you didn't keep it drained you'd drown the worms. So much more maintenance needed when we had lots of ladies on the farm. There were a few ways you could redesign that particular system to make it deal with these problems better though.
The farm now has a Biolytix system, instead.