Making humanure on a large scale is possible, however it is unlikely. We have a large sewage treatment facility where all of the waste from a large, gavily populated area is brough in and processed in a tertiary treatment facility and the sludge that results is spread on fields that grow crops for animal food. There are, fairly costly, composting toilets you can buy for your personal use, just be sure that you also have the "normal" waste system so that if you ever sell your house it will.
Most people have no idea what happens to the wste they send down the sewer pipes, and don't care as long as that creates no problems for them. Get rid of it as quickly as possible so I don't need to think about it seems to be the prevailing attitude.

Unfortunately it would have to come after intensive education to alleviate the phobias society has about human waste. When society stops seeing humannure and urine as waste and sees it as a resource it then becomes more acceptable.

People freak out about composting VEGETABLE material(nobody here, I know), I dont see humanure EVER becoming mainstream.

we used to have a composting loo when we lived in rural, no phobias in this family hey? recycling humanure house by house is waht is needed to alleviate the problems of treatment plants and water waste, we are just coming into a period where sewerage water treated will be put back into the drinking system, now where are the ones with all the phobias?

but doing your own family waste will generally give you around equivalent to a 55 gallon drum of worm composted waste for feeding food trees or in the garden about every 7 months.

now the solids from the sewerage farm as far as i am aware well at least over here all get composted nowadays and most ends up mixed into that composted material they sell/give-away at rubbish tips, some gets used in regular potting mixes so it turns up in all sorts of places and they tell you not.

so set up your own composting toilet and when you sell take it with you unless of course the new buyers are earth friendly people as well?

google 'nature-loo' take a look at their simple system worked a treat for us.

len

Here is a link that might be useful: len's garden page

We are going to get smarter about this. It's just going to take a while and be done on a smaller scale first. The first Vermont rest area on I-89 North has plants cleaning its sewage. They call it the Living Machine. It's kind of a neat place, because you can go in and see the plants. Doesn't even smell.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m3724/is_6_63/ai_63325940

And my hometown is also using a similar system for some of its sewage treatment. http://www.time.com/time/reports/environment/heroes/heroesgallery/0,2967,todd,00.html

Funny how I moved one state away, and they don't seem to have as many of these programs. It's like everything though. Someone has to try it and make it cost effective first, then others will follow.

Here is a link that might be useful: VT Rest Area Article

Human waste has been utilized for a long time (city of Chicago for example), resistance to the idea generally has more to do with heavy metal content than the origin.

FS,
You are describing sewage sludge, which is a mixture of grey and black water and can have many things besides humanure in it making it a less quality product. It is good to use but separating the grey water and black water streams would be best. Or eliminate the water from the blackwater stream and compost the pure humanure and urine.
The reuse of grey water for irrigation and not creating black water And composting all waste created by a household is the ultimate goal, saving water energy and returning OM to the earth.

I say if the human manure involved comes from people who only eat organic, unprocessed foods then go ahead. If you're diet consists of processed junk food then don't bother unless you don't mind putting those things in your soil.

I successfully made a cubic yard of humanure a few years ago. The stuff had been brought to thermophilic temps. for more than long enough to kill any pathogens. However, during the process, everyone I spoke with was repulsed. And these aren't stupid or uneducated people. We're talking about a dentist, a lawyer and a computer scientist with an MBA. So, I suspect that composting toilets will never happen on a large scale for that reason alone. Also, many people just don't have or want to take the time or have the patience to do it properly. Anyhow, the tomatoes I grew with the humanure were dubbed "turdmatoes" by my brother (the lawyer) - LOL. It's amazing how closed minded even bright people can be.

Seedboy, I bet that was some outstanding compost.

Rutgers: Doesn't New Jersey make their own humanmanure called "Ocean..." something or other?

It'll take a change in consciousness. After the shift, people will say incredulously, I can't believe they used to go to the trouble of purifying vast amounts of water just to pee into it! And then they drank water polluted with all kinds of pharmaceuticals because they couldn't afford to purify such a huge volume that one last bit that would make it healthful!

It's easy to divert urine to a separate collection container, either manually (pour it in) or as part of a system. Then you don't need to contaminate 2-8 gallons of drinking water every time someone has to go. Lately I've noticed lots of studies on the use of urine as a fertilizer, and I've started using it.

Poop is a harder sell. Twenty years ago, I saw some composting toilets in solar houses that dehydrated the poop, which eliminated odors and greatly decreased the volume (but required electricity). This kind of end product (heh) could be collected just the way greenwaste and food waste is collected in some communities, perhaps in a biodegradable wrapper. Logistically, there's no reason that kind of composting could not start today; the main factor to overcome is the ick factor. Commercial composting facilities cook and turn their compost so thoroughly that no pathogen or weed seed can survive (heavy metals are still a problem, though).

More likely, and more ecological, is composting onsite. (And I like to think I'd be doing that now if only my garden were at home, rather than a mile or two away in a public space.)

I haven't heard of any communities that are even thinking of doing this, but then I remember that 25 years ago, curbside recycling pickup was just starting to gain popularity, and for years people were still saying that it would never catch on and never pay for itself because too few people would comply.

I've also recently read an essay on Daniel Quinn's website about the Renaissance -- how the mindset that arose then could never have been imagined in medieval times, it was such a total, unpredictable shift. He claims we need a new shift in consciousness, a realization that we are a part of nature, not above and separate. So I'm optimistic that such a shift can happen, not as incremental steps, but as a wholesale "aha."

So humanure is not the same as sludge. I still worry though. You feces is the part of the food that your body does not want. It would seem that if your eating habits regulary include things your body rejects, then you could end up concentrating those things on your property. Water is going to be an increasing issue as the years roll on, so it would be nice to reduce the water needed to do your business.

I do like the idea better than treated sludge. As far as treated sludge goes, in addition to worrying about the heavy metals, I worry about the other things that they might not test for. I understand that many people flush unused pharmaceuticals down the toilet. I don't understand how well these things survive the treatment process.

I don't worry so much about the pharmaceuticals(I doubt a plant is affected by estrogen for example) but rather chemicals such as bleach and anti bacterial products that hinder the composting process.

As for what our bodies pass, this is interesting. We have a very simple 1 stomach digestive tract and we have developed the habit of cooking foods to extract more digestibility from them. Unlike a ruminant(multi stomach cud chewing capable of digesting very fibrous materials, a bovine for example) we pass most our fiber without digesting it, it's not because it is bad, it is simply beyond our capability to break down.
A Cow can digest grass, we cannot. We would pass it with little benefit and I imagine some discomfort.
After the food is broken down in our acidic stomach it is sent to intestinal tract where more complex foods such as meats and fibrous veggies are worked on. Bacteria in our intestinal tract also take part in this process helping us break the food down so that the intestinal lining can absorb the nutrients. When we finally pass the food through our system it has really been worked over already by the fermenters in our gut. and many of these bacteria are still in the humanure. This is excellent for the compost culture. and they will continue to work on digesting the food until other organisms take over. No animal I know of can eat without passing indigestibles.
A owl for example will cough up a hair or feather-ball of indigestible material full of fur, or feathers and bone. I would certainly compost feathers or bone. Fish poop, everything poops and it is not because what they are eating is poison, it is just the limitations of the digestive systems of the organisms in question, even bacteria excrete.

Back to the food I eat, I am omnivorous eating fish, and chicken primarily for protein(I tired a Vegan diet for a while and could not make the leap but did give up the mammalian meat). I eat pasta and a lot of vegetables and fruits and some dairy. If any of this food went bad in my fridge(which would be a waste) I would have no problem composting it and using the resulting compost in my veggie garden. So if the food goes through me first there is little difference other than I didn't waste the food at any point.

Hello,

Human manure could possibly be used as a manure for garden.It is used in third world countries.However must be treated to destroy nocive microorganisms like forms of deadly bacteria.Cholera is wide spread in areas like Africa due to raw sewage and lack of sanitation.Also the use of raw and untreated human manure is used in Asia.So the cases of cholera are pretty common there.However the cost would have to be competetive.

I am not aware that Chicago has been manufacturing a plant food based on sewage. I do know that they changed the direction of the Chicago River so it could flush the sewage down the Mississippi. Up the coast in Milwaukee they do produce a plant food that is made by digesting the sewage from the city. That started many years ago when the brewerys also needed some place for their waste products to go, so originally Milorganite was about a 50/50 mix of human waste and brewery waste, anaerobically digested with the gas generated by that process used to heat the sludge to dry it out. There are a number of other cities that do much the same thing.

The yuck factor and the various chemicals and other nasty things that people toss down their drains are the biggest sources of resistance. Good composting and UV light or other systems could take away pathogens. Vermicomposting or something else that changes the look and smell of the product could reduce or eliminate the yuck factor. However, vermicomposting all humanure would take a lot of worms. More enforcement would be necessary to keep improper pollutants out of the sewers. As competition for water increases we will probably see more efforts to at least reclaim the water. Attached is a link to a magazine about water treatment that I occassionally read on-line.

Here is a link that might be useful: On Site Water Treatment Magazine

kimmsr: Chicago does in fact have a similar program to create plant food from sludge. I heard on the radio (WBBM, _the_ news :) ) that they were giving it away (or was is super cheap) if you went and picked it up. Unfortunately I couldn't go when they were talking about it.

I don't know if it's a regular output thing, or they just have it available at specific times, but they're joining the game. So far I know of Milwaukee, Austin (or Houston?), and Chicago doing the sludge thing...

Here's a nice Time magazine article from '71. Surely we've improved since then? http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,910078,00.html

Here is a link that might be useful: Doing it for a long time

The number of bacteria in a human body is greater than the number of cells in that body.

Most of the waste product (poop) is bacteria, which are easily digested by composting.

Never flush pharmaceuticals! Studies have detected them in the bay here, so the local water quality control plant has a collection bin for used pharmaceuticals, which are incinerated, or they can be dropped off at hazardous waste collection sites. Pharmaceuticals are a big problem in the water supply, whether flushed down the drain to pollute drinking water directly or sent to the landfill to leach and percolate into the water table.

Most sewage treatment plants have biosolids re-use program. Many clean solids are applied to regular farmed fields. Alot of people are consuming food that has been fertilized with sewage sludge and they don't even know it.

The difference between humanure and sewage sludge is the volume of water and the non-human components.

When potable water becomes as expensive as oil, then humanure will be socially acceptable.

Habitat Gardener is right to discourage flushing drugs down the drain. Attached is a link to one of many articles discussing fish on prozac, etc.

Here is a link that might be useful: Fish on Prozac

Here's the New Jersey bio-solids fertilizer. It's called OceanGro.

http://www.ocua.com/Oceangro.htm

Though I agree that one shouldn't toss pharmaceuticals down the toilet.

I suspect that most of the pharmaceuticals in our waterways, passed through a human before it made it to the sewer system.

The persistence of triclosan, the anti-bacterial agent in so many cosmetic and cleaning products, in sewage is still not fully understood, nor its transformation when it interacts with air and other chemicals in the environment. This is one reason I don't trust the purveyors of sludge fertilizers to know what they're talking about.

I've looked for a good, affordable composting toilet system for years and find they're all kind of Rube Goldberg-esque and expensive. I keep coming back to Joe Jenkin's solution - the bucket of sawdust, carried out to the designated humanure pile - as the best and most elegant, and it's virtually free. Maybe this coming summer....

For four years now we've at least been separating out the 'golden streams' (might as well put in a plug here for a great song by the Hidden Cameras) by peeing in a bucket and tossing that wherever - the lawn, compost pile, leaf bin, shrubs, etc. Many people remark on the lushness of our rose hedge - it's the pee, wood ashes and manure, but we don't tell everybody about the pee.

Separating at least urine from the waste stream can be done on a large scale. It's something anybody with a bit of property can do easily and could make a huge difference.

g'day paulns,

have you looked at the nature-loo product, we found it the better value for money and also the simplest design with good versatility ie.,. if your needs grew simply buy more bin space, not like some units that are more dramatic than that.

www.nature-loo.com.au/

you can c&p this addy into your address line of your browser.

i still seperate my urine from the sewerage system as for me it is more valuable in our small garden than down the drain.

the same purveyors of re-using sludge are the ones who then want to add their "treated water" into the drinking water system, wher money is involved ie.,. profits, then trust goes out the door.

len

Here is a link that might be useful: len's garden page

Well the last think that I thought I would be talking about when I started gardening would of been reusing human poo or pee but then again I was one of those people that was brought up mowing the leaves off of the lawn at the end of the year just to throw them back into the woods.
Now some questions:
Let's start with the pee how is it when you pee on anything enough it will not only kill it but also reek to high heaven? How do you use pee and is it a green or a brown?
If it's ok to use human waste why do all the books warn you so much about dog and cat waste? I see someone talking about rose bushes and pee so is it ok to pour it directly next to certain plants or does it always have to be composted first?
As for the main part of this conversation I don't see human waste ever being reused by the average person. Hell most people are still throwing out their leaves, grass and other garden waste so before we can even hope to have people take the poop step we need to teach them more about the easier steps like leaves and grass. I have a friend in landscaping and he's just now starting to accept some of the ideas that I've learned about. It was kind of funny because I spent this weekend helping him strip all the nutritional stuff off of Bob Evans landscaping just so it would look better. Of course I brought a large portion of it home so that I could use it on my beds. I personally think that a composting class in school would be worth it's wait in gold. How can we make kids take 10 to 14 years of history and not teach them anything about becoming more green. Just imagine if 50 to 60% of the world had some type of compost pile! Look at the decrease we would have in landfill space.

Strouper

Only 2.5% of the water in the whole world is fresh water. Nearly 70% of that is frozen in the icecaps. Less than 1% of the world's fresh water is available for direct human use. And we have spent the last 100 years fouling it as fast as we can. Talk about needing a reality check!

I have been using Joseph Jenkins method for urine disposal, although I still use the toilet for solids, simply because I'm not set up to deal with that at this point in time. (For those of you not familiar with him, see his online book -- full text, drawings and photos -- at http://jenkinspublishing.com/humanure_contents.html)

While looking for the PERFECT (!) composting toilet, I ran across this one at The Mother Earth News Magazine (TMEN) in an archived article titled "Mother's Compost Commode" [Jan/Feb '84] at http://www.motherearthnews.com/UnCategorized/1984-01-01/Mothers-Compost-Commode.aspx They've put a lot of thought into the problems of existing commercial composting toilets, and this one may be more trouble-free than many of the commercial ones.

Most outhouses in the U.S. (yes, they still exist) are treated with lime or lye to keep down the odor. A woman working in Africa came up with an idea to at least contain a lot of the raw sewage in the impoverished area where she was. A hole was dug in the ground and a portable privy was placed over it. Compost materials were dropped into it along with the human waste. When it was near filled, the top was covered with soil, and a fruit or nut tree was planted there. The privy was moved to another hole, and the whole process was repeated. This probably isn't the ideal way to handle possible pathogens, but it's certainly no worse than the typical septic tank in America.

Sue

paulns wrote: "Separating at least urine from the waste stream can be done on a large scale. It's something anybody with a bit of property can do easily and could make a huge difference." You don't even need property, just a place to discreetly put the liquid gold.

Strouper, undiluted urine will burn grass because it's high in nitrogen, a "green." (For dog urine, someone recommended sprinkling dry molasses from the feed store to encourage the bacteria to digest it faster and thus not burn the grass -- haven't tried it.) For plants, urine needs to be diluted with 3 to 10 parts of water (or 20 parts for containers), and the dilution depends on the plant and also on the strength of the urine. Male urine (from every species, AFAIK) is much much stronger-smelling than female urine. If odor is an issue or your neighbor's window is close, dilute it more. Urine can be added directly to the compost.

Poop is another matter entirely. Poop from omnivores and carnivores should always be hot-composted, because it consists of bacteria, some of which may be pathological.

Paul was talking about adding sawdust to the urine so this has me wondering how I can use our cats pee. We have 2 cats and they use a litter called feline pine, which is like small pine pellets that break down when the cats pee on them and when we clean the pan we separate the solid pellets from the ones that are broken down. I'm assuming that this would be a good mixture of green and brown and that I could put this directly on my beds or on my compost pile is that correct?

Strouper

with me i currently mix water with my urine (mostly grey water) so that i have enough product to share between at least 2 plants at a watering, and for the main it goes to our citrus trees, which over a week get about 1/2 a bucket each.

yes if you pee in the same place all the time you will over dose the area and pee can kill, the idea is to share it around. any urine smell will be gone within a day or 2, and it also helps keep the ferrel cats out of the garden, any poop that goes in our agrden will be ours so to say.

i heard with pet poop it is more to do with the viability of their worm eggs in the soil and the possibility you could transfer an egg from gardening activities to you body in which case they can cause liver damage? again for carefull gardeners that may never happen and not sure how many have suffered/ but!! why take the risk when there is much other stuff to use? our dog poop goes around fruit trees where we are unlikely to be doing gardening activities.

for me i don't savor the idea of gardening around where my dog poop has been placed, don't mind if it is our composted poop at all.

'strouper' can't see an issue using your pet pee that way after all urine is urine hey?

my urine gets dilluted about 50/50 or 1/3:2/3's(water), but as i say only so i ahve a full bucket of fluid to use.

the humanure book (available for reading online) has some good ideas that probably at least one person in the home could use, that could save around 20 litres of water per day.

if you use a bucket method wood shaving will keep the odour very low to none at all, we used dried out mushroom compost from the farm until our nature-loo was installed. the contents of those buckets where buried each week in a an area that became our pawpaw/papaya grove and very nice fruit we got as well.

len

you wrote:

"A woman working in Africa came up with an idea to at least contain a lot of the raw sewage in the impoverished area where she was. A hole was dug in the ground and a portable privy was placed over it. Compost materials were dropped into it along with the human waste. When it was near filled, the top was covered with soil, and a fruit or nut tree was planted there. The privy was moved to another hole, and the whole process was repeated. This probably isn't the ideal way to handle possible pathogens, but it's certainly no worse than the typical septic tank in America.

Here is what I don't get. Why would burying waste be bad? If someone isn't playing in it, what could happen? Wouldn't worms and other compost critters get to work on it and turn it into soil? How long could the "bad" things live in it?

Planting fruit trees in the old outhouse hole seems like the perfect solution.

Len thanks for that link and I'm glad that system worked for you. It always comes back to the same thing though, the cost is prohibitive for us right now - 2000+, an electrical system would be preferable but what if the power goes out, and somehow the thought of the all-in-one system makes me more squeamish than the sawdust bucket does, while the split-level system would be difficult here given our basement is a dug one with barely 4' headroom - not looking for any more reasons to crawl around down there.

Strouper the idea is to fill a bucket with sawdust and use that. As for the cat litter, I don't think you could separate pee from poop safely. You can get a 'Green Cone' digester, or make one yourself out of a trash bin sunk in the ground with holes in the bottom for drainage and the lid on top, and put pet poop/litter in there, along with harder to compost things like fats and meat scraps. That's what we did with our dog's poop.

Diluting the urine before tossing it is not necessary everywhere. We never bother and we've never noticed any vegetation burn as a result. Maybe it's our temperate - rather rainy - climate. In winter we dump it quite carelessly on the snow. In summer we make sure to distribute it better, and in hot dry weather put it on the compost pile or leaf bin. Maybe this sounds complicated; it's a matter of thinking like soil and plants, and it's taken a few years to get into these habits.

As for the smell it goes away in a matter of hours, even minutes, unless the urine has been sitting for days before being tossed. If we had closer neighbours I'd worry about that, and have sometimes waited until the wind's blowing in the right direction.

I can tell you from experience it takes ALOT of urine to make an area smell.
I worked at a Boy Scout Camp for 4 summers and all the male counselors would just step out of the cabin take the perscribed 4 steps and let fly. Usually you'd have a somewhat sheltered area for privacy that most everybody (up to 4 guys in a cabin) would use. If it didn't rain for a week or two it'd get a bit stinky and the plants would start to burn so you'd usually switch to your reserve spot. Then after a good soaker rain (in Maine when working at a Boy Scout camp you could pretty well count on good soaker rains weekly or every other week) the smell would go away and the plants would immediately perk back up.

The following summer the spot you'd used the previous summer would be even more sheltered because all the plants would grow like crazy...

The ever growing ranks of anti-biosolid zealots are long on "it might be a risk" or Europe's standards are lower, or "I just don't think it is safe" are quick to condemn products like Milorganite, yet they still fail to produce real hard data. For example, what they leave out is the load limit of some of these metals, such as copper and lead in class A and even class B biosoilds. You would need to apply Milorganite EVERY year or some other biosolid like it for 345 years for lead and 278 years for copper for it to reach its EPA load limit. That doesn't even account for organic binding, mineralization and leaching/migration of the metals harmlessly in the soil. I don't know about you, but even with long life in my family, I doubt I will be around that long to worry about it. I use Milorganite on everything and I have even seen the independent report and have spoken with an independent scientist who tested it for a bioremediation project for the DoD. She indicated it was lower in metals and other contaminants than the tap water and virgin soil they were going to use in the project. Compare class A biosoilds to Scott's or Ironite sometime and decide which will be better to put down as fertilizer for your kids or pets to play around. BTW, the National Science Foundation did an independent study and risk assessment in 1995 of EPA biosolids regulations and found they were far below any levels that would possibly pose any threat to humans, wildlife, soil or water and agriculture. The zealots seem to overlook this fact as well in their quest to malign well managed practices of biosolid use. There has NEVER been a documented case of the regulated use of biosolids causing harm to people, animals or plants in over 35 years of use in our environment-yet the myth and junk science persists. I will continue to use and benefit from Milorganite on my lawn, veggies, ornamentals like temperate tropicals and palm trees.

There are tons of these old posts on this subject, Virginian. Some as far back as 2004 if they haven't been purged in the latest housecleaning. Is it your goal to drag all of them back up from the archives or just these few?

Dave

I haven't decided yet, but you will be the very first to know I'm sure.

Humanure on a large scale is possible, just look at the agricultural history of China. But biogas is probably a more efficient use of humanure as opposed to the cost of a composting toilet, simply because it costs about $250 to set up a home system. And you cook for free! Bon appetit!

Here is a link that might be useful: Guardian article on human waste use

The best resource in this regard is Joseph Jenkin's "Humanure Handbook". It's a great all-around composting resource and guide.

To those people that debate the safety and sanity of composting your own waste, know this: The question of wether we should compost our own waste or not has been answered.. a million years ago by mother nature and every other mammal (strike that.. every living thing) on this planet.

Not composting our own waste is just another nail in our comsumer-driven, fossil-fuel burning, wasteful society that will lead to our own end. Not only is it safe, but, in-fact, it's the *only* safe way to deal with our own waste.

Consider that from the year zero to 1000, throwing our waste in to the street in front of our homes was considered acceptable. From the year 1000 to 2000 we've moved to throwing that waste into rivers and streams destined for oceans. Is one really better than another? We're still living in the same closed system we were before, only now we can't smell sh*t when we walk out the front door.

Let's hope that from the years 2000-3000 we figure out a better way (if we're still around).

Here is a link that might be useful: Humanure Handbook (free full content)

I agree it is a resource that should be used more, not less in a safe manner. One thing that has been of benefit from biosolids is land reclaimation of mines and the land that was ruined by them. Penna., Utah, Ohio and many other states use a layer of biosolids to restore acid wash out areas of mine tilling heaps and pits, strip mines and over forested areas. The results are amazing.

Check the ingredients in Milorganite. It is made from human waste sludge.

If any of you have a chance the Chicago facility in on E122nd and Stoney Island Ave. It also borders on the Calumet River on two sides (This is where I get to see it from). It is about 50 acres of open field they repeatedly flood and drain. The run off must be treated onsite as there is a small water fall further down river (across from the Ford plant) that comes from that area and the water is crystal clear. The smell is strong once in a while I go by, but not really as offencive as you would expect. It is actually more on the earthy side then feces.

Sir Albert Howard mentions that several towns in Africa were successfully converted to composting all of their waste material, and were so successful that they became models for other areas that followed suit. This was in the early 40's. Americans have come so far since then (not all good) that the likelihood of humanure ever becoming mainstream is probably nil.

I agree w/ several others, further up and years back that stated it's not a matter of if, but when something will have to change. Potable water being used in this way is very wasteful. New buildings being built more eco friendly to capture gray water and that being used for toilet flushing, lawn watering would be much easier to sell, and alot more likely.

Urine for gardeners like us isn't that big of a step. I think the humanure is a lot tougher sell. Biosolids are being dealt w/ in mostly acceptable manners. Here in VA nutrigreen takes all of the OPBL I can't get to, yard cleanups and mixes them in w/ the biosolids(sludge) from water treatment and make compost. It's not cheap, $5 a bag and I think it said on the bag don't use w/ edibles. I bought one bag last year out of curiosity, It smelled great/earthy. But was chock full of twigs and woody material that wasn't broken down enough. If you are eating local in VA it's likely that you've had stuff grown in this. The website says they supply it to local farmers. I'm sure it's a better deal than the $5 a bag.

I think if any one is green enough to have a composting toilet or saw dust bucket great. I can't imagine my dw being ok w/ a bucket in the house. I'm the only contributor of urine to the compost pile and probably always will be, and have to do it in the garage.

I disagree with the overall feeling that composting toilets will not be widely accepted in the near future. I think that with the move to "green" everything, as well as the natural lifestyle that is being embraced by society (specifically amidst the financial issues going on now), people are looking for new, practical solutions. There are certainly some people who will never embrace the idea, but they will eventually die... kinda like racists that were prolific 20-30 years ago, but have been dying off and that has been making our world a MUCH better place! lol

I would not have told the brother/lawyer about the source until AFTER I fed him the tomatoes & showed him the lovely garden! ;)

Humanure is already used on a large scale for agriculture in the UK.

The sludge from wastewater treatment works is dewatered, composted on farms and spread on land.

It stinks for miles as it composts and after it is spread. The stench is so bad that people who live downwind cannot sell their houses.

We are now looking at strict regulations to try to deal with the appaling odours created, but that will increase costs and make it non-viable.

My advice to you is - don't go there. If you want to be 'Green' then look at non-electric sewage treatment plants instead.

Here is a link that might be useful: Sewage Treatment Plants and Septic Tanks

over here the sludge gets composted and the sewerage farm before it is transported generally the waste disposal recycle compost (smell factor very low) heaps where it is mixed in with lots of other stuff (up to medium grade industrial liquid waste, low grade includes hospital waste aleady goes into the sewerage system), then either sold to gardeners (some time free), landscapers and blenders of potting mixes and other soil improvments sold in plastic bags. of course the general public quiet oblivious to what goes into potting mixes etc.,.

the gov's have bandied around the bit about wanting to get that material from transfer stations to farms (has merit also involves road miles just like food miles) but our farms here are along way from the end product, and farmers trying to not support if with all sorts of claims which includes added cost of transportation.

len

Here is a link that might be useful: lens garden page