Unglamorous as it is (no matter if you put a cute name on a toilet like Lovable Loo does), waste management has got to be done wherever there are people .
Some people are more full of waste than others!
Doing it badly is a best unpleasant, at worst a source of killer epidemics.
Ask Haiti what happens when just one person with cholera has no good way to dispose of their waste after a disaster. A composting toilet can be a good answer.
Some time ago, I wrote a review on the virtues of the Loveable Loo composting toilet system. You can find the review here (clicky). It’s basically a very significant upgrade on the old bucket toilet system. My review was based on both principles and the practicality of using the Loo at The Place. It works great for that, but we don’t stay at the cabin full time. Here’s what I learned spending some days visiting a friend who uses it as the sole waste management system.
The Process
First, you build (or buy) a good, sturdy support box to hold the seat above the bucket. This is no time to feel wobbly or insecure. The seat support needs a hinged side or top to make it easy to swap buckets. It can have a standard toilet seat on top. These people (clicky) will give you plans for free or sell you a ready to use box. (We at 3BY have no financial relationships with any sellers, including these people, beyond buying their products as normal customers.)
The green bucket is cover material; the collection bucket is hidden by the sturdy box topped with the toilet seat.
Waste collection is done in a five gallon bucket that sits inside the support. Lining the bucket with a compostable bag is optional but makes emptying nicer. Lots of people sell such things; here (clicky) is one seller if you want to get an idea of what you’re looking for.
After every use, you add a handful of compostable cover material. It needs to be somewhat absorbent and fine textured enough to discourage air movement down to the contents of the toilet. My friend used pine shavings or kitty clay and I use the output of a paper shredder, but there are lots of other choices.
When the bucket’s about ¾ full, you take it outside and empty it into a compost bin, then put more cover material on top.
Low odor depends using cover material properly
Those of us familiar with outdoor privies don’t associate ‘no flush’ with ‘smells nice’. This system doesn’t smell nice either, but it smelled surprisingly little at all. Key to this is the cover material. By reducing airflow to the waste in the toilet, it keeps the odors down there where they belong.
Dry cover material, but not too dry, is best. My friend uses pine shavings a lot, because they’re easy, cheap, and nice to handle. When there’s a lot of fluid, she’ll add a cup of kitty litter or kaolinite (powdered clay) instead. The Loveable Loo people (who will also sell you a book on the composting toilet, or let you download it for free) warn that shavings or sawdust of kiln-dried wood can be a little too dry for efficient absorption. I do use shredded paper, but I moisten it just a bit first to prime its ability to absorb.
Here’s a nice tip that my friend found lowers the odor even further: Run window stripping both around the underside of the lid and the underside of the rim of the seat to reduce airflow from the air into the box. The pic shows the underside of her lid.
The weatherstripping is the right height to air seal the gap between lid and seat. Another ring on the underside of the seat seals that gap, and the scent drops quite low.
Composting toilet waste
As it emerges from the bucket, the waste could potentially transmit disease. This threat is neutralized by proper composting. A good compost pile gets hot enough to kill the microbes. The (freely downloadable) book from the Loveable Loo people gives all the details, but I found it’s not rocket science.
The bags (or unbagged waste) get added to a bin. Both my friend and just used packing pallets to make bins. Add cover material on top of every waste addition. You can use the same material as in the toilet room, or go with soil, grass clippings, sawdust, finely chopped hay or straw, or basically anything else compostable that’s fine enough to reduce air movement. It doesn’t have to be dry; in fact fresh grass clippings are especially good at odor neutralization. Everything else compostable from the household can go in the same bin. No meat or cheese scraps please; those attract scavengers.
A quick and cheap compost bin, four pallets wired together. It holds material well while allowing air movement.
My friend finds one of these bins collects about a year’s worth. Then she starts a new bin and lets the old one sit for a year or two until it looks like rich dirt. I toss a few sticks from the yard into mine to give it some aeration without me having to turn the pile; she doesn’t bother. The compost should be safe for any use after aging in this way, but if you want to be extra careful you can use it on trees, flowers, and berries rather than on vegetables.
Tips from a full time user
- Bags are worth it. It makes bucket emptying no more unpleasant than emptying other trash. We still carry the bucket with the bag in it all the way to the compost bin though. Leaks are *possible* and potentially nasty. A quick wipe of the toilet seat and bucket with pine cleaner or whatever and you’re good to put in a new bag, no contact with waste required. With no bag, you have to use a toilet brush and some water with a couple drops of dishwashing liquid to clean the bucket after each empty.
- Bags do slow composting. Without bags, one year maturation was enough; with bags it took two – so she has three bins; current collections, last year, two years ago. The oldest bin gets put on the flowers each fall. I suspect poking the pile with a sharp stick just after adding the last cover material layer would speed the process.
- This system is much less water using than flush toilets. That’s important when water means more than just turning a tap, as it does at her place and would in an emergency situation.
- Insects are not a problem when you’re covering appropriately after each use and each bin addition. Odor control is also control of insect attraction.
- She empties once a week, getting two half full buckets from two adults living there full time. I find I have to empty every 2-3 days at The Place, but then I haven’t started using her weather-stripping tip yet and don’t have air conditioning in the cabin.
The composting toilet system in comparison
I’ve used lots of privies. Privies, done well, are safe and so are a great improvement over careless waste disposal. You can find out how to build one here (clicky). Composting toilets are far nicer. They smell much better (the bins didn’t stink from ten feet away even in summer heat and the inside toilet had very little odor) and you don’t have to go outside in all weathers. Plus, wasps aren’t trying to nest in your toilet all the time.
Composting toilets are very resource-friendly. You waste little of your precious water and you do get compost out of it. People trying to grow their own food value compost.
Composting toilets are a giant safety upgrade to bucket toilets that don’t do the composting step, due to the heat of the compost bin killing the microbes. They’re also a big step up esthetically, due to the effective odor control.
In Sum:
Disasters are often followed by disease epidemics, and poor waste handling is one main reason why. Preppers should have a good option. Composting toilets can serve a BOL, or you can set up a compost bin and stock a bit of material so you have good waste handling available if your sewer fails for any reason; so long as you have enough space to put the bin just a bit away from the house.