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Urine is full of phosphates that are good for plants. Up to a point my neighborhood has a lot of dead trees and bushes from dog walkers burning (chemically) the
by yardie 3y ago
Urine is full of phosphates that are good for plants. Up to a point my neighborhood has a lot of dead trees and bushes from dog walkers burning (chemically) them.
Human and animal waste is compostable but only at industrial scale. They have to brought to a high temperature to kill bacteria and then aerobic bacteria has to be introduced to begin the process. This is not something your backyard composter can do. It’s why only allow pant matter. Composting animal waste is so much harder.
- chiefalchemist 3y agoAren't there toilets that turn human waste into compost? Isn't that the ideal goal of the Gates' Foundation challenge?
- red-iron-pine 3y agothere is a reason it is a 'challenge'. they'll kind of do that, but not without specialized treatments, lots of dirt, and lots of worms. and those critters may not work in all climates.
- stOneskull 3y agoyeah, straw in a container under the toilet works. the straw absorbs it up. then you can use it on fruit trees. humanure.
- tstrimple 3y agoI was looking into composting toilets for a while when I was day dreaming about a camper van build. Based on what I saw, the systems which use peat moss are very effective at composting human waste and virtually eliminating all the smells. The key to these systems is to separate solid matter from the liquid which is where the "sewage" smells tends to come from. A number of the systems I looked at used urine diversion to keep the solids more dry and speed up composting.
- cameronh90 3y agoI have a "hotbin" composter that maintains around 60c and have had success composting animal manure for decorative plants. However, I wouldn't use it for the vegetable garden, personally.
- mahogany 3y ago> Human and animal waste is compostable but only at industrial scale. Not true! Plenty of people use composting toilets, for example people without plumbing (e.g. off grid houses) or homesteaders that embrace a re-use philosophy. You can do it at home - it's not that hard and it doesn't even smell if done right. Completely safe to use for trees and decorative plants if you keep it separate, but some people mix all their compost together and use it for everything. (If you want do the latter, you should probably read a little bit of compost literature first.)
- yardie 3y agoThere are a lot of things that have to go right to go from human waste to farm to table. Almost no one is doing it at the individual level. Almost no one trusts a random individual to give them human compost. Of the few homesteaders I know they will happily use the byproduct from their compost toilet in the flower garden but weren't ready to use it in their vegetable garden. I guess they wanted it to pass through a few cows and goats first. They happily used the manure from cows that ate the grass that was fertilized from the human manure.