It's not waste, it's an opportunity!

Let's talk about toilets. We sit on the throne, do our business, wipe, pull on a lever, and feel all clean and sparkly, never having to deal with our own waste. This process requires copious amounts of water, crazy piping systems, and large-scale effluent treatment (can you say wasteful, expensive, and complicated?). It leads to a whole variety of problems, ranging from clogged pipes, pest infestation, the occasional overflowing during floods, etc... (I omitted links to pictures and sites, I'm sure you'll understand). In the rural areas, where urban sewage is not an option, septic tanks are usually required, coming with the added bonus of occasional tank pumping, tank backup, and septic failure ("Most septic systems will fail sometime" - what?? I didn't actually know that).

In the meantime, the process does not need to be gross or complicated. Poop is basically future earth, it just needs to be reminded of it :-) By composting the waste (also lovingly called humanure), you can avoid creating a smelly health hazard and instead create compost, the stuff happy food grows in. If you think about it, animal manure has been used for soil amendment for as long as humans farmed. We're just as good at producing the stuff, why not use it properly?

Is it gross? No, it shouldn't be. Here's a good and humorous list of the reasons why a flush toilet is actually way, way grosser. We just don't think about it, because flush toilets are the current mainstream paradigm (= because that's how we currently do things).

So there we had it, hippie-mode Sima meets urban, kinda squeamish Josh (wasn't there a TV show about that?). There were several mildly heated discussions, one moment where Josh asked hopefully "well, can put one regular toilet in the house, just in case?", but I stood my ground, and we have a winner! Looks like we'll be getting one of these slick things:

Considering that you can use things like dry grass clippings and cedar wood shavings to "flush" your goods, that bathroom is going to smell awesome. At least, we sure do hope so!