Tiny Home Living: Using a composting toilet
We have all heard about compost piles in which people discard food and other stuff. With composting toilets, you can put your waste to good use in your garden. I know what you all are thinking "Eww gross." Stay with me on this. Let me explain more about composting toilets.
A composting toilet is an indoor toilet that processes human waste into usable soil. It requires no water usage whatsoever. If you're wondering about the odor, there is little to no odor in using a composting toilet. After one uses the toilet, human feces is mixed with either coconut coir, peat moss, or sawdust, in order to remove the odor and begin processing.
Many individuals may use a waterless urinal in order to keep urine and feces separate (this isn't mandatory, this is up to you as a composting toilet user); excess urine in the composting chamber is unpleasant to some users of composting toilets. Again, it is up to you.
Components of Composting Toilets
Generally, composting toilets are made up of a place to sit, and the composting/collection part.
There are 4 parts that make up the toilet:
1. Composting chamber/storage
2. Ventilation unit (This unit helps to vent the odorous gases and that all goes smoothly during the degradation process).
3. A Leachate collection system (this system removes extra liquid in the system).
4. Access door (This door is used to extract the compost from the unit).
Uses for the compost
Once the composting is complete, you will notice that the material is humus-like. Those who use composting toilets use the compost and soil for their gardens. Surprisingly, using this compost is beneficial to gardens, food or flowers. The material is said to have substantial nutrient availability.
Getting into the legal stuff
One would not think that there would be a law about composting toilets. However, several states have rules about how to dispose of the material from the toilet. Some of these states include:
-Washington state
-Massachusetts
-Oregon
-Vermont
-Rhode Island
-Virginia
To find out the composting toilet laws in your state, go to your state's website.
Closing thoughts
While the upkeep of a composting toilet may be tedious at times, it seems worth it if we are cutting down on water usage, and enriching our gardens with materials from the compost. Not only that, we are helping to keep rivers and streams clean from waterwaste.
If that doesn't seal the deal on using a composting toilet, I don't know what will, LOL!
One more thing, when the collector on the toilet becomes full of material, it is time to empty it. You don't want to let it sit for too long, as your space can become odorous.
