BCAG Monthly Public Meeting
Alternative Toilet Systems - and Other Ways to Reduce Your Water Footprint
Speaker: Bob Sneyd, Centre for Sustainable Watersheds
Most of us just flush our waste away and never think much more about it. Maybe it's time we did.
A recent report by Environmental Defence, Down the Drain: Water Conservation in the Great Lakes Basin, outlines how much water could be saved in bathrooms, kitchens, laundry rooms and gardens across the Great Lakes. It urges people to switch to low-flow toilets and water-efficient clothes washers, as well as use technologies for capturing and re-using water.
At our next meeting, Bob Sneyd, co-founder and President of the Centre for Sustainable Watersheds, will discuss innovative ways that homeowners, cottage owners and others concerned about their impact on the environment can reduce their water footprint and put their wastes to work.
One of the systems he will describe is a composting toilet ideal for locations that are near watercourses or are sensitive to groundwater contamination. It's excellent for sites with shallow soil, poor drainage, or a high water table and can be readily installed over impervious bedrock or clay soils. This closed loop system, which works in winter as well as summer, circulates effluent and grey water in a bed in which microorganisms convert the material into nutrients for plant growth. Rather than wasting their wastewater, people can use it to grow beautiful plants, shrubs and flowers - or valuable biomass.
For sale at the meeting, The Composting Toilet System Book - learn all you need to know about constructing, buying and living with a composting toilet and graywater system
