BRILLIANT! For Pennies, a Disposable Toilet That Could Help Grow Crops

By SINDYA N. BHANOO
Published: March 1, 2010

A Swedish entrepreneur is trying to market and sell a biodegradable plastic bag that acts as a single-use toilet for urban slums in the developing world.

Once used, the bag can be knotted and buried, and a layer of urea crystals breaks down the waste into fertilizer, killing off disease-producing pathogens found in feces.

The bag, called the Peepoo, is the brainchild of Anders Wilhelmson, an architect and professor in Stockholm.

“Not only is it sanitary,” said Mr. Wilhelmson, who has patented the bag, “they can reuse this to grow crops.”

more:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/02/science/02bag.html

It's available online.

Thermophilic composting is the only way to do this on a large scale, for next to no money.

:hi:

I am an ancient civilization geek. One topic seldom talked about is how people dispose of waste.

It is insane for a civilized society not to turn its waste into "gold".

I read the account of a guy who rode his bike around the world in remote areas of China the farmers build roadside toilets as ornate and welcoming as possible to encourage travelers to stop and make a deposit.....

Read that book - he's probably the world expert in the field.

And, he fed his entire family for 20 plus years out of his garden, self-fertilized.

Night soil, in simpler cultures, is the practice of crapping directly onto your fields as fertilizer. The problem is that the human bowel can contain all sorts of pathogens, including Coliform bacteria, which can infect your crops and spread disease. That's why most nations ban the practice nowadays, and why those that don't have frequent disease outbreaks.

This bag contains a liner designed to kill off those pathogens. If it can be made cheaply enough to be affordable to those in the poorest parts of the world, it could really make a difference. Human waste is a HUGE contributor to waterborne pathogens in parts of the world that can't afford proper wastewater treatment. While it's usefulness as a fertilizer is great, I'd say that its potential to keep untreated human waste OUT of the worlds ecosystems is even more important.

it makes recycling of human waste easy AND cheap. There are lots of ways to treat it so that it is safe to use as fertilizer (e.g., humanure, which is a great site, btw) but they all take planning, coordination, and at least some labor and materials.

E coli is the least of your worries with recycled human waste. My main fear when I travel/live in undeveloped countries is hepatitis, followed by dysentery and TB.

... and rent collection was the lesser of the two. The primary value was in the collection of night soil to fertilize the landlords' fields.

I don't know how far back this practice went, but I was fascinated by this ingenuity and how different the attitude was historically from Europe and America. I know all about diseases that can live in the human gut and be spread by fecal contamination -- and it definitely must have lent a certain ripeness to the fields -- but imagine constructing apartment housing so you could have a ready source of fertilizer.

I wish I could remember the name of the book I read it in, but it was a series of reminiscences of an old-time Japanese country doctor that a friend loaned me.

Hekate

the government will run a pipe to their house, and a sewer pipe away from it, and charge for water going in, and sewage going out.

Can't afford it? Too bad.

This is an old, old, old idea. Not the biodegradable bag part, but the part about using human waste as fertilizer. The chapter, as I recall, begins: "Each year, France throws five millions into the sea..."

In more of an industrialized way, though. :) I just purchased a Biolet composting toilet for my second bathroom downstairs -- it uses no water and produces composte that I can just put in my backyard when it is processed! I am so incredibly excited about this. I think the water waste and treatment needed for regular toilets is obscene, which is why I went this way. I was reading composting toilets is the new wave in Europe and being required for new residential buldings in some areas.

I think this is a fantastic idea this man has come up with!

On edit:

The last time I looked into composting toilets, based on the user complaints it looked like they were not quite ready for prime time. One reallly common complaint was excess liquid. I'd sure be interested to hear how it goes for you.

I have an electric model that uses a heating element and fan to take care of the liquid issue. There is a completely manual model that had that problem as well as odor issues.

I am installing ti this weekend -- I'll let you know how things go! :hi:

I had a friend who had a composting toilet that "had issues" (good ventilation is absolutely critical). I've had positive experiences with buckets and sawdust however. Lived in community for awhile and got to see how several backwoods-type communes dealt with the issue, a couple that made use of the humanure. Not too many people talk about it, and often enough it was just one or two people who coordinated the "shit details". At the time (late '90s) the mechanical options for composting toilets were still somewhat rudimentary... excepting perhaps some very high priced Euro-models.

Good luck!

:)

and could be used in rural areas of our country as well.