Transition Brockville              

Peak Moment TV / 30 May 2010

Laura Allen gives an intimate tour of a home-built composting toilet in her Bay Area urban home. The nutrient-rich composted "humanure" is used to enrich the lush, edible landscape, and doesn't waste precious drinking water like flush toilets. The co-founder of Greywater Action shows the throne-like toilet compartment whose distinctive feature is a urine diverter. Pee and poop are collected in separate containers beneath the toilet, and are accessed outside the house. Sterile pee is watered in at the base of plants, while poop is collected in barrels and aged for a year or more until it has composted fully. What a way to go! (www.greywateraction.org).

[ ORIGINAL ARTICLE HERE ]

American Scientist / Catherine Clabby / July-August 2010

Today it seems too easy to name environmental hazards with potentially global implications. Climate change, finite fossil-fuel reserves and the risk of water scarcity quickly come to mind.

Now some scientists want concern for the world’s dwindling phosphorus (P) supply tacked onto that short list.

 
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.

Environmental Defence / Press Release / 02 July 2010

More than 580 billion litres of drinking water, the equivalent of 236,000 Olympic swimming pools, are being wasted every year by homeowners in the Great Lakes region of Ontario and Quebec, according to a report released today 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.

Natural Building Colloquium / Ron Sutcliffe

This paper is intended as an introduction to composting toilets. Be forewarned of the commitment needed to maintain a healthy composting toilet. Remember that you are dealing with and responsible for a living system. It needs care to survive just like a house plant or a garden. An unhappy composting toilet will let you know of problems in potentially unpleasant ways. Hopefully this paper will help you prepare for, and help you deal with some problems that are typically encountered.

Compost Toilet Justification

Americans are gradually confronting environmental realities and looking into alternatives for processing our excreta. Traditional sewer treatment facilities are expensive to build and often create many environmental problems. Small communities do not have the population base to make centralized treatment facilities economically feasible. Some community areas are geologically and environmentally unfit for the traditional septic tank technology. Regulatory agencies are beginning to refuse to issue permits, thus creating a de facto building moratorium.

Ottawa Citizen / Laura Robin / 14 June 2008

I've got to admit I was skeptical. I guess I've gone on too many press trips where something billed as an "eco hike" turns out to basically a walk in the park (I packed hiking boots for this?) or a "green resort" is just one where they do a bit of composting and urge guests to hang up their towels if they don't need washing every day.