The Composting Privy
As a gardener of 30 years I have come to love compost. Compost is gold to the gardener. I have mastered the art of making compost. I love the idea that you can speed up the process of nature in your own controlled environment. Building a compost pile takes time and knowledge with a special recipe of carbon to nitrogen ratio. If there is too much carbonaceous material in the mix the pile will not heat up enough. Too much nitrogen the pile will get too hot and burn off quickly wasting a lot of mass. Having the right ratio and right amount of moisture creates an alchemical process that turns dense/led garbage in to light humus/gold. In alchemy they have a phrase that the gold is in the shit. Which brings me to the real topic I am here to write about “human waste.”
I am a strong believer and practitioner of composting outhouses or privy’s. I could use the term composting toilet but this is not the right description. I am a strong believer of squatting so that is why I do not include the word toilet in my description. The toilet was a British invention designed for English and French kings who had portable thrones called “close stools” The kings refused to squat like the common folk.
The toilet is a human disaster as far as human physiology is concerned. Sitting on a toilet seat prevents complete evacuation and does not allow emptying of the lower bowel in the way it would if you were squatting. In a squatting position the thighs are pressed against the abdominal muscles, the pressure within the abdomen is greatly increased so that the rectum is more completely emptied. Constipation and hemorrhoids are much less common in squatting cultures of the East. Having become enlightened with squatting 30 years ago I now have developed very strong muscles in my legs. I am always reminded of this when I am in yoga class and we are doing postures involving squats. Everyone in the class is moaning with discomfort while I experience no discomfort and able to hold the position much longer then most.
When entering my privy you may be shocked to see no toilet. Instead sits a tightly fitting rectangular shaped wooden lid on the floor. A 12-inch diameter opening is just about right for the feet to be spread for comfortable squatting. Ideally there is a grab handle to hold onto for more comfortable squatting. Under the floor is a sealed concrete block double chamber that has an access door on the outside. Generally it takes 2 years or more depending on how many people are using it to fill the chamber. When it is filled you move over to the second chamber leaving the waste in the first chamber to sit as long as it needs to break down. After about a year of disuse the carefully sealed clean out door of the first chamber are opened and inside are a beautiful odorless composted material that looks nothing like the original product. All toilet paper is completely broken down. Not many people in the modern western world have an opportunity to gaze upon their own human manure that can now go back to the earth. I am happy knowing my waste is not ending up in some polluting treatment plant as I literally take responsibility for my own shit. Composting toilets or another term used “dry toilet” uses no water and instead after each use you cover it with sawdust or lime.
Composting privies do not smell especially if you avoid urinating in them. Water and human feces is a bad combination. The waste has no way to break down in water and just becomes pollution. It takes 40 tons of water a year to dilute a few hundred pounds of your wastes that when composted fit into several five gallon buckets. Billions of dollars are spent trying to treat the waste going down our toilets so that it can then be dumped in to the river or lake and then further down stream another town is taking in the same water spending more money to purify it for drinking. It makes no sense at all.
The East and West are like night and day when it comes to human waste matters. In China and Japan human manure was called “night soil” and was seen as a valuable product. Farmers competed with each other by each trying to build the more beautiful roadside privy’s hoping to lure travelers in need of relieving themselves. Carts traveled through the cities collecting precious waste where it was carried off to dung heaps and decomposed. Later to be spread on agriculture fields. In the West chamber pots were emptied into the street gutters where the rain carried it away. City streets were not pleasant places to be in the west.
Composting outhouses are an important way of life for me. Because I do not use them for peeing I only need to walk to it once a day. I like it in winter for it forces me go outside. It’s too easy to stay inside by the wood stove on a cold day. Another good reason for squatting is no cold toilet seat to sit on. In my bathroom I use a bidet to pee in. They are not popular here like they are in Europe. I find it to be the perfect women’s urinal and does not require using toilet paper, you spray yourself after each use and then dry your self with a towel. The privy design I use has a fairly large window facing south and the whole building is insulated along with the earth bermed chamber. The idea behind this is that it will continue to break down all year rather then freeze up in the winter. The room also tends to not be so cold on a sunny winter day.
What a great surprise and delight to discover when I traveled to India and other countries in the East that everyone used squatting toilets. Here it was normal for everyone to squat. I was so happy to go into a public bathroom and not have to go through the trouble of having to lift up the toilet seat, hold myself in an uncomfortable position to pee into the toilet. It never made sense to me that people shared toilet seats in a public place. In India I felt right at home. It did not take long for me to adapt to their practical designed squatting toilets. It made perfect sense to not use toilet paper but instead to have a water faucet with a cup under it to collect the water to wash with or a sprayer like the ones we use in our kitchen sink. These toilets do use water to flush with. In India in some public bathrooms they have one stall with a sign on the door that says western toilet. It was great to have another option to the western toilet and I was always happy to chose the squatting toilet instead.