it’s so awesome that we went from my grandparents generation using communal dry toilets in the yard behind the apartment building to my parents generation using indoor toilets that flush ridiculous amounts of clean drinking water down the drain, back to communal dry toilets behind the apartment building in my lifetime
composting toilets are cool but i’ve only used them in the countryside where they’ve been surrounded by fresh air and shared by a few people in total. urban public composting toilets are going to be interesting
This isn’t a special case; our use of many modern technologies is going to burn their logistics out of existence because we insist on deploying everything to its fullest extent rather than considering what the long-term effects and benefits and interests are. One way or another, we are going to go back to using appropriate technology for 90% of our everyday needs; the only question is whether we do it voluntarily with preparation or all of a sudden with mass disruption and suffering.
The highest number of people I’ve ever seen using composting toilets is 80 across two latrines (in-ground) for a few days, or 130 across three stalls (removable buckets) for a week.
It’s incredibly easy to do; anyone who has read/researched/understood the equivalent of two or three specific technical books can build something that won’t be an airborne or waterborne biohazard, does not consume the obscured embodied labor of third parties (beyond what it takes to make toilet paper and collect sawdust and ash), and can fit at least 12 person-years of solid waste for each rotating 2-compartment construction. While keeping them within a 90-second slow walk and with no unpleasant impacts beyond a 20-foot radius (basically the same separation as smoking away from building entrances), you could easily fit 5 of these double units to service an acre, maybe more. 60 people per acre rivals a typical urban density in an apartment complex with a Floor Area Ratio of 0.5 or an urban neighborhood with dense single-family houses.
It’s totally doable in an urban setting; the biggest hurdle is people being decontextualized and insisting on having a place within 20 steps where potable water is pumped in to whisk away their feces. That sort of thing only makes sense when you’re accustomed to everything operating in a state of ecological overshoot, and ignoring the consequences.
Composting toilets, rocket mass heaters, passive solar and geothermal construction, solar water heaters, rainwater collection, bicycling as the main form of transportation, and doing most cooking in bulk would reduce our resource usage by maybe about 80%. PV solar and heat pumps would take a big chunk out of the rest. Combined with the “collective will”, appropriate technology can save the world and give people an equal or better quality of life.
it’s so awesome that we went from my grandparents generation using communal dry toilets in the yard behind the apartment building to my parents generation using indoor toilets that flush ridiculous amounts of clean drinking water down the drain, back to communal dry toilets behind the apartment building in my lifetime
composting toilets are cool but i’ve only used them in the countryside where they’ve been surrounded by fresh air and shared by a few people in total. urban public composting toilets are going to be interesting
This isn’t a special case; our use of many modern technologies is going to burn their logistics out of existence because we insist on deploying everything to its fullest extent rather than considering what the long-term effects and benefits and interests are. One way or another, we are going to go back to using appropriate technology for 90% of our everyday needs; the only question is whether we do it voluntarily with preparation or all of a sudden with mass disruption and suffering.
The highest number of people I’ve ever seen using composting toilets is 80 across two latrines (in-ground) for a few days, or 130 across three stalls (removable buckets) for a week.
It’s incredibly easy to do; anyone who has read/researched/understood the equivalent of two or three specific technical books can build something that won’t be an airborne or waterborne biohazard, does not consume the obscured embodied labor of third parties (beyond what it takes to make toilet paper and collect sawdust and ash), and can fit at least 12 person-years of solid waste for each rotating 2-compartment construction. While keeping them within a 90-second slow walk and with no unpleasant impacts beyond a 20-foot radius (basically the same separation as smoking away from building entrances), you could easily fit 5 of these double units to service an acre, maybe more. 60 people per acre rivals a typical urban density in an apartment complex with a Floor Area Ratio of 0.5 or an urban neighborhood with dense single-family houses.
It’s totally doable in an urban setting; the biggest hurdle is people being decontextualized and insisting on having a place within 20 steps where potable water is pumped in to whisk away their feces. That sort of thing only makes sense when you’re accustomed to everything operating in a state of ecological overshoot, and ignoring the consequences.
Composting toilets, rocket mass heaters, passive solar and geothermal construction, solar water heaters, rainwater collection, bicycling as the main form of transportation, and doing most cooking in bulk would reduce our resource usage by maybe about 80%. PV solar and heat pumps would take a big chunk out of the rest. Combined with the “collective will”, appropriate technology can save the world and give people an equal or better quality of life.