So, Can You Tell me Why we are Flushing our Freshwater?

For many years, the developed world has used toilets as a means to dispose of our what we think of as our waste products (human feces and urine for the most part, though prescription drugs and other chemicals find their way down the same watery path). In the words of the author of the Humanure Handbook: "You take your dump into a large bowl of drinking water, then flush it." Why do humans do this when no other land animal will purposely dispose of their waste in water, much less in their drinking water? Remember, 97.2% of the Earth's water is saltwater and only 2.8% is freshwater. So.... Why do we take a dump in our drinking water and flush it away when 2/3 of that 2.8% is ice and much of the remaining 1/3 is otherwise unavailable to us?

And what if the entire population of the world took a dump in their drinking water supplies? Well, if the whole world took a dump in their water and then treated that water to make it "safe" again...well...it just plain couldn't be done. Older toilets (those installed before 1996), use about 5 gallons of water for every time you flush the toilet. If you have a leaky toilet, then you are using even more. Newer toilets have gotten better with this, but they still use 1.6-3 gallons of water per flush. The average person flushes the toilet 5 to 8 times a day. That means that each person uses between 8 and 40 gallons of water every day just to use the toilet. That means that each person uses between 2,920 and 14,600 gallons of water every year just to flush the toilet. And, "it takes between 1,000 and 2,000 tons of water at various stages in the process to flush one ton of humanure. In a world of just five billion people producing a conservative estimate of one million metric tons of human excrement daily, the amount of water required to flush it all would not be obtainable." (Humanure Handbook: Chapter 5: Global Sewers and Pet Turds)

Discarded human feces and urine allows for the transmission of diseases, is largely responsible for the world's water pollution and deprives us of much needed soil fertility. So...why don't we put our human waste to good use? Discarded, it is nothing more than waste and a dangerous pollutant to ourselves, our fellow cohabitants of Earth and to the Earth itself. However, if these by-products of our digestive system were recycled instead of thrown away, we would have a wonderful organic resource material that is rich in soil nutrients. It came from the soil, so why not give it back to the soil? This is something that can be done quite easily and readily, not to mention safely, through the process of composting.

Let's leave the title of human waste where it belongs: With the cigarette butts, the plastic six-pack rings from beer and soda cans, the un-recycled beer and soda cans, the tubes of toothpaste, the Styrofoam burger boxes, the disposable diapers, the worn out appliances, the old car tires, the old cars, the spent batteries, the nuclear contamination, all manner of food packaging and the plastic bags used to carry it all home from the store, the exhaust emissions, the toxic chemical dumps.... Most of us recycle our aluminum cans, tin cans, glass bottles and jars, the plastic containers that have been labeled as recyclable (which are turned into such things as park benches and fleece jackets). Some of us have started turning in our used major appliances, old television sets, old computers, tires, car batteries, and used motor oil, but these things are still largely thrown away, as are newspapers, magazines, corrugated cardboard, junk mail, yard wastes and kitchen scraps. So let's eliminate wasted office paper, newspapers, cardboard and junk mail from the list. Let's also remove the millions of tons of organic material we discard into the environment every year and the 5 billion gallons of drinking water we flush down our toilets every day from the list of human waste.

Composted human manure, as well as raw human manure, has been used throughout Asia for thousands of years. While raw human manure is not hygienically safe, it still succeeds in killing many human pathogens and is at least using a valuable organic resource rather than throwing it away as waste and polluting valuable freshwater supplies in the process. "Cities in China, South Korea, and Japan recycle night soil around their perimeters in greenbelts where vegetables are grown." (Humanure Handbook: Chapter 2: Waste vs. Manure) "Humanure can also be used to feed algae which can, in turn, feed fish for aquacultural enterprises. In Calcutta, such an aquaculture system produces 20, 000 kilograms of fresh fish daily. The city of Tainan, Taiwan, is well known for its fish, which are farmed in over 6, 000 hectares of fish farms fertilized by humanure."(Humanure Handbook: Chapter 2: Waste vs. Manure) Sadly, however, Asians are turning more and more to Western methods, using synthetic fertilisers on their fields and polluting their water with conventional flush toilets, sewage systems and sewage treatment plants. This is especially true in Japan.

Anything on the Earth's surface that was once alive, or that came from a living thing should be considered as material with which to make compost and not as trash that needs to be thrown away to be sealed and buried in a large hole. This means manure, urine, food scraps, animal carcasses, plants, leaves, sawdust, peat, straw, grass clippings, cotton clothing, wool rugs, rags, paper, cardboard, etc. Basically, anything that will rot can be composted and turned into humus (a brown or black substance resulting from the decay of organic refuse) to be used to nourish the soil. Humus doesn't attract pests and can be easily stored for future use if necessary.

While beneficial to the soil, human excrement should not be applied to the ground without being composted. Raw human manure does carry a significant potential for danger through disease pathogens, such as intestinal parasites, hepatitis, cholera and typhoid. These pathogens are destroyed through composting. This not only leaves you with a rich soil-building material, but it gives you rich humus that smells pleasant, not at all like the offending odour of sewage. To be considered safe, human excrement should be processed either in a composting pile of low temperature for two years, or in a much more timely fashion through a composting process that generates internal, biological heat.

Low temperature composting eliminates most disease organisms in a matter of months and eventually should eliminate human pathogens, creating a soil additive that is safe, at the very least, for ornamental gardens. Thermophilic composting, on the other hand, involves the cultivation of heat-loving micro-organisms in the composting process. This can create an environment which effectively destroys all pathogenic organisms and creates a soil additive that is safe for your food gardens. Adding in other organic materials such as food scraps, grass clippings, leaves, garden refuse, paper products and sawdust is necessary for proper composting and will give you a soil additive that is suitable for agricultural use as well as for use in personal food gardens.

Composting your manure and organic garbage eliminates the potential for danger through disease pathogens with the biological heat generated by the compost micro-organisms. But such isn't the sole factor in making your compost safe for use in food gardens. These pathogens need to compete for food with the compost micro-organisms who tend to produce an environment that inhibit the pathogenic organisms. Compost micro-organisms also produce antibiotics against pathogens and even consume some of these pathogens directly. This is achieved with a large and diverse microbial population; something that is best achieved by temperatures below 60°C (140°F), with a significant reduction in pathogen numbers occurring in temperatures that have not gone over 40°C (104°F).

As mentioned earlier, the best way to ensure the death of possible pathogens is with thermophilic composting conditions. A low-temperature compost will still kill most pathogens if given enough time as pathogens have a limited time in which they can survive outside of a human host, but thermophilic conditions will achieve this faster and with better success if the temperature is allowed to rise significantly above the temperature of the human body. Most commercial and homemade composting toilets are designed for low-temperature composting, usually dehydrating the material collecting in the composting chamber in order to limit the frequency with which they need to be emptied. Low-temperature composting, as mentioned, will kill most pathogens in a few months time. However, the roundworm egg, being the most resilient, is estimated to live in soil from a couple of weeks up to ten years under certain conditions and soil types, which is why low-temperature composting is not recommended for use in food gardens. If you wish to ensure safety for use in food gardens, thermophilic composting is recommended as it will readily destroy roundworm eggs. That being said, the risks you face in using compost made from your own manure in a food garden is limited to the health of you and your family, or of anyone else using your toilet. For example, if you know you don't have roundworm and you know no one who uses/has used your toilet has roundworm, then you really don't have to worry about roundworm eggs surviving the composting process, if you catch my drift.

Furthermore, a protected compost pile keeps the material from drying out or prematurely cooling down. Whereas a pit may become waterlogged, which will rob your compost pile of oxygen and run the risk of leaching harmfully into the ground and any nearby supplies of groundwater unless the pit is lined with plastic or something similar. A pile, or compost bin, also makes it easier to cover the raw refuse you dump on it with a layer of clean organic material in order to eliminate any unpleasant stench and trap oxygen within the pile. Constructing a bin can be made from recycled wood, cement blocks, or even bales of straw. Wood would insulate the pile and prevent heat loss and frost in cooler temperatures. Leaching of liquids into the groundwater is not so real a problem in composting as many people fear, but covering the pile will prevent any leaching from a heavy rain.