So with a flush toilet basically you
take really nice clean drinking water
and our poo and mix the two together both
wonderful resources when you mix them
together you create a toxic problem.
So with a compost toilet system you're able to
capture that amazing resource and take
care of it and treat it in a way
that removes any pathogens or problems
and create a wonderful resource you know
why would you buy in manure when you've
got this resource right here.
We basically use the style of toilet
described by Joe Jenkins and his
Humanure Handbook which is essentially just
doing your business into buckets and
covering it with a nice cover material usually
sawdust and then we hot compost it in a
pallet framed compost.
Composting toilets
like composting your own poo processing
your own toilet waste is a real
basic fundamental thing that we should
all practice. It's a
a simple way of being of demonstrating
self responsibility it took us a long
It took us a long time to lose our shitphobia our phobia
of fecal matter we've lost that now not that we
handle it we don't have to handle it.
So welcome to our toilet for a start it's
composting toilet bucket batch system.
We've got cover material which we use
old sawdust from the mill it's already got
bacteria and a bit of fungus in it it's good.
Our toilet is here it's full it needs emptying so
I'll put a little bit more cover
material on the top just to top it off
and that will just get lided and then placed
over here until we have about 10 of them
and then we'll make a compost and so we
put a bit of cover material into
the bottom of the bucket and then back
in here and it's that easy.
So you make your deposit put but a bit of
cover material on and leave it. And then when we've
got a certain amount of buckets we go to
the compost and add straw and garden
waste and kitchen waste and we make it, build it.
And this is one I did maybe a week
ago and we'll put the compost thermometer
in here and see what we're looking at
we're still looking at 50 degrees, it's going
up. It got up to 65 degrees the
other day I recorded it at that.
You know there are pathogens you have to consider
there's roundworm eggs and all these
different kinds of worms eggs that you
that can exist in your manure
and if you do a hot compost that's the
safest way because you can nuke all
those things within hours. If you can't
heat it up if you don't get to that hot
temperature then you can just let time
and microbial competition do it's
magic so you have to leave it for an
extra year rather than nine months
has to be left for two years if you don't get it hot.
So you build a dish
under there you build a dish so any
juice that goes on here goes into the
middle rather than out the sides because
you want to keep it clean then you build
I go over to the willow trees and get
some sticks and put a network of
sticks underneath to keep it up off the
ground and then I use straw or grass dry
grass over the summer I cut grass and
dry it out and make a pile and use straw
when I haven't got enough of it and then
make a nest and then put the humanure
into the nest in the middle and then layer
of grass or a bit more
straw and I usually chuck a little bit of
old compost in there too to sort of seed it
and you don't need to do that but I do that
and then more buckets more
of a nest more buckets and then cap it
off with weeds and
straw and stuff and then I put the
thermometer in it because that gives us
an accurate reading as to whether
it's fired or not. So we've got 52 degrees
after a week so that's going to start to
move down now and over here is what you get.
I put it in a bag but you don't
need to. That there is about a year old
it's got lots of worms in it. We put all
our garden waste and all our kitchen
waste in here but the worms are a good sign
if you've got worms that means it's not
too acidic. Mmm yum, good stuff.
And that goes straight on the garden and the
plants love it and we love the plants.
So we've been sort of doing this style
of composting for about four years and
yeah it creates a wonderful resource
that we use on our garden. I mean when it's
finished composting it doesn't look like
or smell like anything like poo it's just
beautiful black compost.
Okay so I'm just adding humanure compost to our lower
bed and I just dug that garden up
and I'm just going to sprinkle it
around like that and then I'll dig it in
and we'll just dig that in and it
should be ready to plant, it'll be perfect.
We can use it on our garden because we've
monitored it closely, we've watched the
temperature we know all the pathogens
have been nuked and we feel confident in our
process and so we feel safe to use it in our garden.
Composting toilets are integral to a
closed-loop system where waste is
captured and reused rather than being
sent away for someone else to deal with
through expensive, polluting, and
energy-intensive processing.
A well-managed composting toilet does not
smell or attract flies and many people
have them inside their homes. The first
step in composting humanure is
overcoming our socially conditioned
fear of poo and viewing it as a resource
rather than as a waste product.
It's for everyone. Anyone who wants to take more
responsibility for themselves
and not pass it off.
Everyone who values their poo.
Anyone can can do this
it's just really a matter of being
engaged and wanting to do it and getting
the knowledge it's a knowledge based system.
Love it. Wouldn't go back. Once you start
composting you don't go back.
I value my poo.
I value your poo too so you're
welcome to leave a deposit before you go
it's sort of expected actually, no pressure.
You don't get stage fright do ya?
Hey guys thanks so much watching this shitty film
I hope you all enjoyed it. If you want to be
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special thanks to Mike Davey and Patrick
Mckinney for their generous donations to
Happen Films. So thanks again for
watching guys and I'll see you all in
the next film.