Composting toilets have been around since the invention of pooping, but modern conventions have dictated public opinion about how we dispose of human waste. Conventions dating back to the renaissance, when, in an attempt to mitigate the medieval plagues caused by poorly managed poo, the modern toilet was conceived of. Since then we have grown accustomed to pooping in shiny white bowls of water and flushing it “away” out of sight and out of mind. Because flush toilets involve plumbing, we put them in the bathroom, the place where we groom and clean ourselves, every flush mixing clean, life giving water with the poo that we dread. Strides have been taken in recent years to reduce the amount of water used by toilets, but they still use significant portions of water, especially when our dumps are so mighty, and we have to flush again and again in order to conquer the beast.
But before the invention of indoor plumbing, and common sense, we did things a little different.
If you were lucky enough to live in a castle, or large building, you had one of these “toilets” illustrated above. The rich got to lord over the poor in many ways, including sometimes (and I’ll refrain from using the appropriate expletive here) defecating directly onto them. It was a good deal for the rich, they got to deposit their BM’s into a long shaft, and hear the satisfying “splat” and subsequent groan of the lowly servant tasked with scooping the dung. In exchange for scooping the poop of the rich, the peasants got to poop wherever they wanted, which they did, leading to illness and the aforementioned plagues. It turns out that people DO actually care about human life, so we figured out a way to transport our poop using pipes and water. It’s very safe and effective, and it’s currently the ONLY approved method of disposing of human waste on private property in California. California, a state I might add, that is currently in the grips of the worst drought in living memory.
It turns out that flushing our brown butt offerings away with water is not the ONLY proven safe method of disposal.
The thing that made the poop in medieval times so deadly wasn’t the lack of proper infrastructure. It was the lack of knowledge and education. People didn’t know about microbiology. The fact that the poop was alive with bacteria that can kill a person was not common knowledge, and so people pooped all over the place! Dung was literally flung (that still happens today, but not nearly as often). Furthermore, when someone got sick, they had no scientific knowledge of why. They blamed God, Satan, and unbalanced humors. Unbalanced humors, it turns out can make a person sick, my research is spotty when it comes to God and Satan though.
By sheer dint of humanity’s preference to not SMELL poop, we centralized our pooping spots as much as possible, avoided getting the stinky stuff on our skin, and somehow managed to survive as a species whilst this deadly killer consistently gooshed out of our anuses.
Then the scientific revolution occurred, and with the invention of the microscope in the mid-to-late 1500’s (I googled it) we discovered a whole cosmos inside the smelly goo. And with that, we decided to get very serious about managing and relegating our poop to designated areas.
Enter the porcelain throne, also known as a toilet. Over decades of innovation we have settled more or less on a standard design for a toilet. The standard flush toilet is nothing short of a mirical. We poop into a basin filled with water which immediately traps the stench, and contains the bacteria. Then we flush it “away” and it’s gone. It’s a great system and it works so well that it is the standard for all residential facilities in the USA. This brings up an intersting point.
throne Thank you for reading this far. Suffice to say, this is not the real “Compost Toilet Manifesto” by KDL. This is just a preamble. Stay tuned, follow me online, and eventually it will be published. Thanks again!
KDL
RadicallyPeaceful 