- cross-posted to:
- design@lemmy.world
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These ideas are all pretty horrible… it’s your typical “we need to replace the entire system” bullshit that always fails to look at more than one aspect.
The big upside of modern sewers is that nobody has to shovel human waste. You don’t just drop it into a hole like with a vacuum toilet, zero water toilet or a modern outhouse, you transport it to a modern facility for treatment without anyone touching it.
The number of diseases that spread through your poop is very high. Having people move around and pick up your pile of poop(and hay), to use as fertilizer is just a begging for an outbreak.
Granted, using potable water to transport feces is dumb as shit, pun intended, but that’s an entirely different problem to solve.
Source: am safety lady, work with hazardous materials (indirectly, I only very rarely actually handle human waste)
We are pretty good in moving around solid waste in containers, and if you separate the urine and add a bit of mineral adsorbant like cat litter to the solids they should be pretty safe to transport.
At the treatment side the solids can be easily heat-composted in an automated way that results in class A biosolids that are pathogen free.
Imagine you’re sitting there and the floor just drops… You’re literally in some deep shit!
Even worse can happen. Soldiers used to enter through the shitter in order to open the way for others. Imagine you’re taking a dump in the early hours of the morning and then all of a sudden you get stabbed in the asshole by a sword. Conversely imagine youre the guy scaling the wall and you look up and get a log to the dome. That’d take a little pep out of my step.
Of those who died, many drowned in human excrement or suffocated from the fumes emitted by the decomposing waste, while others were crushed by falling debris.
Just imagine the smell of essentially living in an outhouse.
I’m surprised by the negative comments even here.
My wife and I have been using a urine-diverting composting toilet (Nature’s Head) full time for six years now. It has its quirks, but we both prefer it to a normal toilet - although we both lament that there is no “bidet toilet seat” possibility.
Obviously, there’s no water needed, but there is also no smell. Like, less smell than a flush toilet. We have a tiny vent fan and no matter how terrible your deposit, whatever smell there is never makes it out of the bowl.
The compost, after sitting a bit longer with our outdoor compost, goes on our trees. But the overall volume from the toilet is really minimal. I change it every 5 weeks or so.
There was a slight adjustment period to get used to changing it. Again, it’s not the smell, it’s just the idea of “these are clumps of coco coir covered shit nuggets I’m looking at.”
The worst part is the urine, which, when you’re swapping out the bottles, does stink. It’s not for everyone, but in the summer I dilute the pee with water (1:10) then I use that to water our compost.
Anyway… I think with more interest the design of toilets like ours could really be improved. I’m sure it would work without issue for families with their own suburban-like lots. Condos or apartments might need more infrastructure.
My impression is the real blocker is just “ew, gross” and maybe some manly “I only stand to piss!” We’ve also been surprised how many people seem to be totally tuned out to their… Uhh, “waste elimination” I’d say. Like, if you’re pooping, you need to open the flap. We tell everyone, we have it written down. There is a whole explanation of how the toilet functions. But we’ll still get home after being away, or after a guest leaves and one of us goes to the bathroom and - oh lord, what were they thinking.
We’ve had a Nature’s Head for nearly a decade. We don’t have “guest problems” partly because we get few guests and partly because we’ve got it set up in a little ensuite in an unused corner of our bedroom. That leaves the main toilet (an RV toilet) for guests.
Having worked with sewage in the past, dealing with the contents of the composting toilet is almost pleasant!
This size of system isn’t for everyone, but one of those “family sized” models with a separate chamber and urine diverted to sewer plumbing or french drain that also handles grey water should be a no brainer. One that we looked at even used the weight of the user to automatically open the flap, eliminating most “guest problems”.
These will be great for dry, rural places. However, for dense cities, I think the best things we can do are water recycling, using non-potable water for toilets, and saving tons of trees, water, and forever chemicals by adopting bidets- which would also considerably cut down the amount of waste we send through sewer systems. Nearly 60 lbs of toilet paper per person.
There are many urban areas especially in dry countries that are very unlikely to ever get full sewerage. A container based dry toilet solution is IMHO the best technological option for densely populated non-sewered urban areas.
Isn’t this a middle East thing? I’m not aware 9f other major cities without a sewage system
It a majority of earth’s population thing 🫠
I’m talking about cities
Yes the majority of earth’s population lives in urban areas these days and most of them are unsewered.
Many cities in the developing world have either no or only in a very small area sewers, and even less have sewer treatment systems.
We use a simple homemade compost toilet, saving 150kg of climate change emissions per person each year, and instead of creating sewage, we create compost.
This is my day! Worm toilets exist, and require almost no compromise. They can use water like a flush toilet or be a bit more rustic. So cool. Real harmony with nature shit and no one cares!
Going to be a downer.
Not a living chance in hell these see any adoption in rich countries. Not .000001%.
Yep, RV/boat toilets are a much more realistic solution, using the flush pedal you put as much water as you need, ideally you want it close to the main drain but worst case you need to do one “big flush” a day so all solids get evacuated.
That’s what we’ve got at our cottage and it’s been working flawlessly for years now and the two of us must use less than 10L/day for it. The shower drains in the same pipe so when we take our shower it cleans up any solids that might have clinged…
