The no-flush, composting toilet, starting around $120. (The model in the photo, with “patented six-way automatic aeration” is around $1,600.)

From an LA Times article about the thing:

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Just under the seat is something called a Separett, a device that sends urine through one hole and feces down another. Each lands in lidded, 5-gallon containers, which are vented to the outside and accessed through a small door on the side of the house. When the receptacles fill up, they’re emptied. Nitrogen-rich urine is diluted with water and fed to plants; feces is left to mellow for a year, at which point it has decomposed enough to ameliorate health concerns and can be used for amending soil.

Disgusted? I certainly understand. One of my main arguments against installing a composting toilet was that it was so hands-on. Did I really want to be mucking around with my own body waste?

Uh, no. But that’s a bogus defense. We, as socialized, acculturated humans, are already mucking around with it every time we sit down on that molded slab of porcelain. We just don’t like to admit it—or think about it once we flush. Parents or pet owners deal with doo-doo all the time, but there’s something about handling our own waste that’s way more revolting.

I don’t know, LA Times lady. We’re supposed to be scatophobes. Mammals—hell, animals—have evolved over millions of years to drop our business, far from our hands or faces, and trot away, never to think about it again. (Poop-flinging monkeys notwithstanding.)

When I was in high school, I worked as a gardener for an old couple. He was tall and thin, a retired psychologist with a short, sharp beard and a bizarrely calm aspect. He peed in a big blue bucket that he kept by the back door and occasionally poured into his compost pile, then onto his beloved roses and raspberries.

He was a considerate employer and didn’t ask me to pour out his bucket for him. But I would, sometimes, when I turned the compost pile and its dense ammonia fug was like a punch in the brain. Clearly, the human nose was not supposed to be anywhere near that much human piss.

If the coming apocalypse forces us to abandon flush toilets can we forget the you-empty-’em receptacles and try out the arborloo or the tree bog instead?

Brend an Kiley has worked as a child actor in New Orleans, as a member of the junior press corps at the 1988 Republican National Convention, and, for one happy April, as a bootlegger’s assistant in Nicaragua....

26 replies on “Notes for the Coming Apocalypse”

  2. Compost from human excrement cannot be used for growing food if the human(s) involved consume:

    1. Pharmaceuticals of any type;
    2. Most illegal drugs, apart from marijuana (or tobacco);
    3. Certain preservatives and additives used in items sold as “food.”

    Traces to large quantities of contaminants from these things can remain in soil for a long time and can enter into food grown in such soil.

    E. coli and certain other bacteria can also persist in soil and grow *into* foods, e.g. lettuce.

    In addition, these waste products cannot be used for growing *organic food* if the human(s) involved do not consume a 100% organic diet themselves.

    For ornamental gardening, however, such compost is generally acceptable.

  3. I’m not fertilizing my garden with my own poop, no sir.

    If anyone out there wants to fertilize their garden with my poop, hit me up and we’ll make arrangements. But we all have our limits, and I have to draw the line at this one.

  5. Point taken @2, but I suspect these concerns would only be temporary in a societal collapse of truly apocalyptic proportions.

    In such a scenario, once stockpiles of manufactured pharmaceuticals, illegal narcotics, and processed foods were depleted – in oh say, eight months to a year or so, depending on the remaining population’s general resourcefulness – anyone left standing at that point is going to be consuming a nearly complete organic diet anyway (not including the inevitable cannibalism, of course, but that’s probably a discussion for another thread).

  8. I don’t think High Density will survive the coming apocalypse if it forces us to abandon flush toilets.

    Or, rather, people will not survive High Density…

    Arguably, it was the flush toilet that made urban density bearable and the industrial revolution possible.

    Historically, great civilizations have been made possible by great sewers.

  10. > Mammals—hell, animals—have evolved over millions of
    > years to drop our business, far from our hands or
    > faces, and trot away, never to think about it again.
    > (Poop-flinging monkeys notwithstanding.)

    what abut rabbits eating their own pellets to get nutrients they missed the first time around?
    i’m just saying… people maybe, but “mammals – hell, animals”?

  19. Not going to fucking happen. SOrry, but I sure as shit am not going to get one of these. Look if society collapse then, eh, all bets are off, but until then I am going to enjoy the luxuries of civilization. Flushing my waste away for others to deal with being one of them.

  20. ” ‘ One of my main arguments against installing a composting toilet was that it was so hands-on. ‘ “

    My cat fastidiously licks his butthole several times between poop sessions.

    Argue that, Miss Primmy McSqueamish!

  22. Whoa.

    Speaking as one of the emerging generation of hippie-yuppies with a deep infatuation with sustainability and self-subsistence, I gotta get me a composting toilet. I’ve already taken to composting everything else I can around the house.

  23. The Humanure Handbook is worth reading (it’s free on line). It suggests a system based on the round five-gallon buckets and a separate compost pile. The key is in the cover materials. You use peat moss (or hardwood sawdust) in the buckets, and put in enough to cover up whatever is in it each time you use it. The compost pile is mostly straw. You rake the layer of straw off the top, dump the buckets in the middle, then rake the straw back over the top, adding more if necessary. I haven’t tried it yet, but people who use it claim that the neither the buckets nor the pile smell, and pests are not a problem. The compost file reaches a high enough temp to kill anything bad in the waste, and you leave the pile alone for a full year after filling it. If you have any doubts about the safety after that time, you can send samples to a lab.

  25. composting toilets are strangely perfect and awesome. no harder to clean than a flush toilet, really and the fancy ones have little fans that allow for a remarkably refreshing experiencing.

    and humans have used their own magic for fertilizer forever. cholera is a water/shit/festering issue that is entirely different from how shit and dirt and air work together.

    poopy kisses to all!

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