Ultimate compost

It is always good to see someone attempt to fix an environmental problem with a creative, technologically advanced solution. Mass amounts of sewage is an issue in large cities and this Marin county, California based company, Humanure, is trying to update an ancient technology for modern urban use. It is simply put, composting human waste. Yes, your sewer system will be replaced with a waterless holding tank that allows your recycled meals to decompose. The decomposed waste ends up eventually as fertilizer on some organic farmer's field.

For more than a decade, 57-year-old roofer and writer Joseph Jenkins has been advocating that we flush our toilets down the drain and put a bucket in the bathroom instead. When a bucket in one of his five bathrooms is full, he empties it in the compost pile in his backyard in rural Pennsylvania. Eventually he takes the resulting soil and spreads it over his vegetable garden as fertilizer.

I get a kick out of the name for this version in California (yes I have Irish roots).

Meanwhile, over in California, the Marin Composting Portable Odorless Outhouse Project, a.k.a. MCPOOP, is doing Klehm one better. The goal of MCPOOP (which is pronounced the Irish way as opposed to the rap-star way) is to get the government into the night-soil business and put humanure toilets in county parks and town squares. The group is less than a month old but already has the support of the local environmental establishment and Marin County supervisor Steve Kinsey. "The whole thing is like a good acid flashback," says Kinsey. "We approved several experimental permits like this in the '70s." He estimates that a small-scale municipal demonstration project could be under way in less than a year.

Those selling the idea claim it does not smell. In my experience with compost, if done well it does not smell that much. Odor will still be present though.

Personally, I think the idea works on a small scale and in certain situations. Portable toilets and rural type outhouses that require pumping the holds out would be excellent use of the simple technology. Serious problems arise if we replaced all sewers and toilets using this crappy technology (pun intended). Think of the amount of oil burnt to remove the compost. The inconvenience to households as workers invade your house to clean the can about once a month. Conventional toilets systems are still the best deal on large scales.