I plan on composting my poop when i am on land. after reading jenkins' book i am pretty much sold that proper composting is a lot safer than septic. we had a septic system in the northeast for like 30 years and it always smelled off, not quite like poop but the smell was not right around the house.
concerning parasites...
it is a very complex issue, and even in the story about the girl who passed the worm it may not have been that she picked up the worm from your compost. parasite eggs are pretty much omnipresent in our food supply, or even on a speck of dust. the whole notion that you can only pick certain parasites up from foreign travel is way off base. i have had in depth discussions with colon therapists whose job day in day out is looking through a little glass windows at people's old poop. most of them will tell you that it doesn't matter if you are a vegan, most people are infested whether you are aware of it or not. parasites have been with humanity from the beginning and have developed insanely complicated survival strategies. their main job is to remain undetected.
some people may know that up until the turn of the 20th century, deworming was a big part of life and every community had their own methods, be it garlic, wormwood, onions, or whatever the local potion was. much or all of this practice disappeared at the same time as the rise of the AMA. Amish communitues still practice deworming as do many 'uncivilized' cultures throughout the world.
some forward thinking alternative health people have proposed that certain species of parasite serve beneficial purposes by sequestering toxic metals like uranium, copper, lead, mercury, etc.
there was a science article i read two years ago where they did in fact identify a radioactive element eating worm.
i think there are no easy answers and people just have to choose their lifestyle.
a lot of the raw foodists start to pass worms after a certain amount of time going raw. you can say that they picked it up from their raw food or that they were just cleaning out things already inside them which is where i lean.
there is a youtube video of a british woman who does anaerobic composting. basically she just has like 50 plastic buckets to defecate in. when one is filled she lets it sit outside for 2 years and it is fully composted. this way there is no handling of the waste. i would like to verify that this method works.
jenkins is now selling biodegradable plastic liners for the buckets. this is another good way to go and avoids the issue of having to handle the waste and transfer to a bin, you just close the bag, dump in the bin and it's done.
i am in the same boat as paul though, i don't want to be handling my waste once it's in the bucket, and these two ideas are the best i have come up with.
