Anyhow, I like to keep an eye on the horizon with regard to home building trends and sustainability is very much one of my buzzwords. What does this have to do with a pit toilet in an otherwise charming cottage in the middle of nowhere? Pay attention.
I was watching a TV show on sustainable building recently and the show's host dropped in on the Bronx Zoo to check out a new public restroom they built. The Eco Restroom at the Bronx Zoo accommodates a half million people a year and uses 3 oz. of water for each time one of those visitors flushes a toilet. The host was saying that the eco-restroom saves a million gallons of water a year using a composting system instead of the typical low-flush toilets required by building codes.
I heard "composting toilet" and flashed back immediately to the pit toilet of my childhood. But I kept watching, despite my negative associations. It turns out that a composting toilet is nothing like a pit toilet. It is an odorless, closed system that turns human waste into fertilizer. Most of them use no water at all, but the system the Bronx Zoo uses a tiny bit of water to generate foam from biodegradable soap. This foam allows a foam-flush composting toilet to look and behave like a conventional toilet. The image above and to the right is how one looks, and below is a diagram that shows how it works.
But there's a solution out there and utilising that solution will require that folks get over some of their squeamishness on the topic.
The system at the Bronx Zoo was installed by a company called Clivus Multrum in Massachusetts. Clivus Multrum refined and brought to market the idea of a modern, composting toilet more than 30 years ago. Clivus also invented the foam-flush toilet.
There is a whole subculture out there dedicated to composting toilets I'm learning, and a clearinghouse for information on the subject is a website called Composting Toilet World. That sounds like the name of a particularly spooky campground or something, but they have some really great information and resources.
Now I love the idea of a dual-flush toilet, but the idea of a composting toilet takes the idea embodied in a dual-flush and takes it to an extreme the purist in me loves. All Hail Clivus Multrum!
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