Disconnect to Reconnect: Ditching the “Flushie” for a Composting Toilet

Image from the Wikimedia Commons

We're lucky to have another guest post by Nancy Klehm (see a nice interview with her on foraging here). Nancy visits us at the Root Simple compound at least once a year. What follows is an account of a plumbing misadventure she had on her last visit. 

To give you some context, ever since we've remodeled our bathroom and switched to a low-flow toilet we've had periodic backups. We think there is a low spot just within reach of our turlet snake. The toilet flushes OK most of the time, but at least once a week I've got to deploy that damn snake.

Here's Nancy:

I don’t use a flushie often, I made the decision to ‘go dry’ years ago, adopting the bucket toilet + sawdust system as it pairs nicely with my composting obsession and food growing habit.

I stayed at Erik and Kelly’s back in February. Their low flush toilet and antique piping can’t seem to handle even the most modest bodily donation. Once a flushing attempt proves unsuccessful, and immediately following the ‘oh no…’ guilty grimace, a light-hearted blame game plays out and then according to homestead rules, Erik snakes the toilet. The closet augur is kept on the front porch (to greet visitors?). Erik augers for a few minutes, flushes successfully, marches the tool back outside to air out and we settle back into our routines relieved that our burdens are flowing into the larger mystery of pipes and their soupy contents to the municipal waste treatment plant miles away.

But with Erik and Kelly out of town on one of the weekends during my stay, the daily chores of feeding the kittens, letting out the single hen to roam the yard and snaking, if so needed, fell on me. And yes, the toilet clogged and no, I did not assume the blame. I am regular enough (2-3x/day) as are Erik and Kelly for the record [editor's note: the editors demur from either acknowledging or disavowing the hypothetical frequency of their natural propensities.] to avoid creating such monsters and yet, the flushie needs snaking every day soon after the post-caffeine effect.

Using a closet augur looked pretty self-explanatory, but I decided to check in with YouTube University and watch ‘the pros’ do it. I was fortunate to find a true pro: Ramona’s Plumbing, a D.I.Y. plumbing site with 36 videos uploaded of Greg Chick, a licensed plumber in flipflops who walks you through fixing problems on a variety of topics including faucets, showers and yes, toilets.


I watched a 10:37 minute video of Greg dislodging a ‘soft blockage’ of intentionally placed, wadded paper towel. He was sensible and upbeat, but the bowl in the video was clean. The one I was working on was not. My tool was the poor cousin of the streamlined one Greg was using. So I opened the window wide, and with a burning candle and a wad of mugwort smoldering on the back of the tank, I swung the augur into the bowl and batted a foul. I closed the door and grabbed the phone. Fortunately, I managed to reach Erik and he coached me through my next attempt. My heart-rate jumped ugghing that augur coil into the tank. I yanked it out. There was a sloop. I flushed. Pooping in a bucket with sawdust ultimately feels more sanitary, sane and more manageable as very little can go wrong with such a simple system.

And, when I sat with cup of tea to write this, I had just snaked the toilet for the 6th time in three days. Sure I was glad to learn a new tool and this skill, as well as earn some more insight into the workings of water toilets and yet, snaking a toilet is one of the more compelling arguments for why I ‘go dry’.

Considerations for abandoning your flushie (and switching over to the bucket):

• Your body’s nutrient should be returned to the Source and by that I mean Mama Earth. This has always been the way. Now is the opportunity to revisit this connection. 
• Pooping into sawdust allows you to observe your waste, an indicator of healthy body function. This is commonly understood in the medical community be it Western, Aruvedic or Chinese.
• Human waste is a source of healthy soil if properly composted. (subset of consideration #1) It is sane and safe to compost your human waste if you are a competent (read: very experienced) composter of other organic waste and have the place to do so that will not create a nuisance (aka SMELL) for your neighbors or family. 
• Waste should not foul potable aka drinkable water. Waste treatment plants use chemical and loads of energy (gas and electricity). Electricity by the way, depending how it is generated also uses large amounts of fresh water. 
• Greywatering your house is a much more enjoyable way to stretch into your plumbing fantasies than dealing with a clogged flush toilet. 
• Your water bill will plummet. Toilet’s account for 30% of our daily water useage. 
• It’s quiet. No one knows you are ‘using it’ even if you are on the phone. 

In other words, Disconnect to Reconnect, folks.

Since I haven’t been able to convince the most thoughtful people I know to join the dry movement, I am investing in a closet augur and taking this show on the road.

 <<>>

For more information on humanure composting, visit www.humanurehandbook.com

See our milk crate toilet design

Emergency Toilet Sanitation

I was asked by our local neighborhood council to talk about emergency turlets for their public safety committee. Doing some preliminary research about what our government suggests concerns me.

FEMA and, it seems, all the state and local agencies I looked into rely on a poop in a bag, throw in some enzymes or bleach and throw it into a pit approach. In a short term emergency, a day or two let's say, this might work fine. But if the emergency stretched out longer I can see some potential problems. And the cynic in me sees an opportunity for a contractor to sell toilet and enzyme kits to government agencies.

So what's wrong with pooping in a bag? First off, it's disgusting, something I know from backpacking. I have a feeling people might avoid latrines set up with "poop bags" and go do their business behind a bush. And I have a feeling that the government experts suggesting this approach have never tried it themselves.

Secondly, those pits full of bags could become a serious biohazard should rats, let's say, start pulling the bags apart or should the pit get flooded.

As an alternative to the "poop bag" I was impressed with Joseph Jenkin's humanure approach that he explains in a series of videos he shot in Haiti after the earthquake. You can see those videos here. Essentially what Jenkins did in Haiti was to forage carbon material ("bagasse" or sugar cane waste) and use that as a cover material in the latrines. This eliminates smells and maggots. He also set up a large humanure compost pile in a refugee camp using the same bagasse material as the carbon source. The hot temperatures in the compost pile kill hazardous microorganisms in human poo. As long as you've got a carbon source you can keep Jenkins' sanitation system going indefinitely. With the FEMA approach you've got a problem when you run out of those bags and proprietary enzyme mixtures.

One problem with Jenkins' approach could be finding a carbon source in an urban area, but I think that's solvable (suggestions invited!). You also need water for the compost pile but it need not be potable.

I'm no sanitation expert and am interested in opinions on this topic, particularly those who have worked in emergency situations or in impoverished communities. What I like about Jenkins' approach is that it relies more on knowledge (how to compost, set up a latrine) than equipment. The job then is to spread that knowledge. Learning how to compost should be a skill everyone knows how to do.


Jenkins' Humanure Handbook: for purchase or free pdf download.

Nance Klehm at Farmlab Tomorrow

If you're in So Cal tomorrow Nance Klehm will be doing a talk at Farmlab:

Metabolic Studio Public Salon
Nance Klehm
Friday, December 11, 2009, Noon
Free Admission

There are three fundamentals that guide this time of descent into northern-hemisphere darkness. The winter season is one of decline and decomposition, activity below ground and general shadowiness. The fundamentals that guide us are:

Everything comes into this world hungry.

Everything wants to be digested.

Everything flows towards soil.

This salon will discuss various methods of transforming what is perceived as waste and turning it into soil or building/healing existing soil.

Nance Klehm is a radical ecologist, designer, urban forager, grower and teacher. Her solo and collaborative work focuses on creating participatory social ecologies in response to a direct experience of a place. She grows and forages much of her own food in a densely urban area. She actively composts food, landscape and human waste. She only uses a flush toilet when no other option is available. She designed and currently manages a large scale, closed-loop vermicompost project at a downtown homeless shelter where cafeteria food waste becomes 4 tons of worm castings a year which in turn is used as the soil that grows food to return to the cafeteria.

She works with Simparch to create and integrate soil and water systems at their Clean Livin’ at C.L.U.I.’s Wendover, UT site. She uses decomposition, filtration and fermentation to transform post-consumer materials generated onsite (solid and liquid human waste, grey water from sinks and shower, food, cardboard and paper) as well as waste materials gathered offsite (casino food waste and grass clippings, horse manure from stables, spent coffee grounds) into biologically rich soil. The resulting waste-sponge systems sustain or aid: a habitat of native species of plants, digestion of the high salinity of the indigenous soils and the capturing, storing and using of precipitation.

She has shown and taught in Mexico, Australia, England, Scandinavia, Canada, the Caribbean, and the United States. Her regular column WEEDEATER appears in ARTHUR magazine.

Directions to Farmlab are here.

Also, Klehm and Mr. Homegrown are in Time magazine this week talking about humanure.

Klehm's Website: www.spontaneousvegetation.net

Humanure Happens

Simparch's dry toilet located in Wendover Utah

From the 1806 edition of the Old Farmer's Almanac,

"Four loads of earth mixed with one load of privy soil, will be equal to five loads of barnyard dung. Let it lie for several months and occasionally turn it over with a shovel, and it will be of use as manure."

The editors of the Old Farmer's Almanac 2010,where I found that quote, deemed it necessary to tack on a disclaimer, "Human waste, as well as that of dogs and cats, is not recommended as manure for fertilizer today." But after fielding a couple of calls from journalists interested in the subject of composting human waste, I'm thinking that humanure is about to get serious consideration again. After all, why waste a good source of nitrogen in the middle of a recession?

Simparch's striking Clean Livin' compound

All this is a long winded intro to get you all to check out two fine examples of dry sawdust-based toilets. First is the one at the top of this post, designed by a collective known as Simparch, and located on the historic Wendover Air Force Base on the Nevada-Utah border. The facilities are simple: a toilet seat sits atop a 55 gallon drum. Each time you use it you add some sawdust. After composting, you've got rich soil. But what makes the Simparch crapper so amazing is the view. From the throne you look out on a landscape so flat you can see the curvature of the earth, punctuated by munitions bunkers dating back to World War II. The toilet facilities are part of a self-sufficient living project they call "Clean Livin'".

It ain't the moon but close: the view from the Simparch Clean Livin' crapper

The second example, nicknamed the "crap-cedral", is featured on Lloyd Kahn's amazing blog. Built by someone with the improbable name of Birchbarkbobananda, the crap-cedral features intricate woodwork and an equally stunning location. What both of these dry toilet facilities prove is the siting possibilities that can happen when you can put your crapper wherever you damn well please. No sewer line means you can have a nice view!

Humanure Dry Toilet Made From a Milk Crate

Modern toilets take two valuable resources, water and nitrogen rich human waste, and combine the two to create a problem: sewage. In a dry or "humanure" toilet, you cover your deposits with a layer of non-toxic sawdust. Once the toilet is full you dump the contents into your outdoor humanure pile and compost the waste at high temperatures for at least a year. You can then use that compost as fertilizer for plants. The ubiquitous five gallon bucket is the most commonly used humanure receptacle. Most humanure toilet designs I've seen such as the ones on Joseph Jenkin's website make use of wood which I'm not crazy about in the wet environment of a bathroom. Even with a coat of paint wood gets grungy. Alternatively, you can buy plastic camping toilet seats that will clamp on to a five gallon bucket but they have, in my opinion, an unacceptable wobble when you sit on them. For these reasons I designed a sturdy dry toilet making use of a scavenged milk crate. Even if the idea of humanure grosses you out (and it's definitely the most controversial subject in our book), our milk crate toilet would be great for camping, emergencies or your remote cabin.

Putting this toilet together takes just a few minutes. First, find a milk or beer crate and a five gallon bucket. Make sure that the crate you use is large enough to accommodate the bucket. And note, I know of someone arrested for scavenging beer crates behind a strip club, of all places, so be discreet or ask for permission. Incidentally, when the police finished booking the beer crate scavenger the officer placed the paperwork in . . . a scavenged beer crate doubling as an in box!

Attaching the Toilet Seat to the Crate

Next, find a toilet seat. Forage one or pick up a cheap seat at your local hardware store. In an emergency situation, you could also use the one on your regular toilet and simply bolt it back on when the zombie threat has passed and the sewage pipes are flowing again. To attach the seat to the milk crate simply position the plastic bolts and nuts that come with the lid in the center and on the short end of the bottom of the crate. Don't over tighten.

Cutting Out a Hole in the Crate

Place the bucket so that it will be appropriately positioned under the seat. Mark the outline of the bucket on the crate with a knife and cut out a circle with a jigsaw or keyhole saw so that the bucket will fit through the former bottom of the crate.

Attaching Legs to the Crate with Cable Ties

Cut four pieces of scrap wood (we found some old table legs for a more finished look), and attach them to each corner of the crate so that the bucket projects about a 1/2-inch above the level of the crate. The legs will be approximately 13 1/2-inches. Make sure that the toilet seat will fit snugly against the top of the bucket. We attached the legs with cable ties, but you could also use screws or bolts.

Moving the Spacer

The last step is to move the spacer on the bottom of the lid, so that it does not hit the top of the bucket. Pop it out with a knife or chisel, drill another hole, and reposition.

Your humanure toilet is now done and ready for use. Simply lift the crate off the bucket when it comes time to empty the contents. Follow the detailed instructions on Joseph Jenkin's website to learn how to properly compost human waste.


This toilet is simple to make, easy to clean, and is made of readily available materials. I think this particular design will be useful in emergencies and, when combined with Jenkin's excellent humanure methods, would prevent the dangerous raw sewage nightmares of the sort we saw in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina. There is a creative commons licence on all the text and photos on this website so feel free to translate and disseminate this post widely. We're "open source" here at Homegrown Evolution. If you make an improvement in the design please let us know.

Save the World--Poop in a Bucket

Learn about composting your own poo by checking out our new post, How to Save the World by Pooping in a Bucket, at the consciousness shifting blog Reality Sandwich, for which we write a regular column.

And should you want more potty talk you're in luck due to a minor sewage synchronicity going on in the magazine/internet world. As we wrote our meditation on human waste, a number of other stories on the subject came out at the same time:

• Wasteland: A Journey through the American cloaca in Harper's Magazine. Journalist Frederick Kaufman traces sewage from New York's North River Solid Waste Treatment Plant to . . . [spoiler here!] bags of soil at Home Depot.
  
  
• A Mother Earth News reader submitted a photo and description of a handsome sawdust privy made out of an old garden hose box. Very clever!
  
  
• Science Daily reports on Converting Sewage to Drinking Water.
  

So take that laptop into your "meditation room" and get some reading done!

Cooking with Poo

Homegrown Revolution Toronto correspondent Nicholas Sammond wrote us this morning asking if it would be possible to generate enough methane in his new abode via a composting toilet to cook with. It's a great question since once abundant natural gas is getting scarce and expensive here in North America, and the desperation has gotten to the point that large and dangerous liquefied natural gas terminals are in the proposal stage across the continent.

Unfortunately, as individuals we produce just enough methane gas each day to barely heat a cup of tea. If you own pigs, it's a different matter. Francisco X. Aguilar of the Royal Agricultural College, Cirencester has come up with a simple way for folks with a few pigs to generate methane with little more than a big plastic bag. Each day you add one bucket of excrement and five buckets of water. In return you get "biogas" and usable compost.

Some clever artistes have turned biogas into art. A Danish collective who call themselves Superflex have created a biogas system involving an bright orange ball to collect biogas and claim that just two cows will generate enough gas for 8 to 10 people.

SurviveLA is working acquiring a herd of water buffalo for Silver Lake. Next step will be to tear up the asphalt parking lot of the RiteAid for pasture. A plastic bag, some pvc pipes, and we're in business.

Build a Sawdust Toilet

SurviveLA would never have guessed that the composting toilet could provide such a great outlet for aesthetic innovation!. Thankfully you can build your own for less than $25 (pdf instructions).

Bucket Crapping

Those ubiquitous five gallon buckets we've used to make self-watering containers are good for another purpose-- an improvised crapper.

When the shit hits the fan, you'll need a place to shit and thankfully the fine folks at the World Toilet Organization have come up with a clever design for an improvised flush toilet using just a five gallon bucket, a coat-hanger, and a plastic bag. Now, not to be too graphic, but thanks to the Sierra Club we've had the opportunity to #2 in a five gallon bucket before and surplus stores even sell toilet seats for buckets. But the World Toilet Organization design has some distinct advantages, mainly keeping odors to a minimum. Advanced versions of the same five gallon bucket can even be used for composting and adapted for flushing with water.