"Composting" toilet material

The Humanure Handbook says sawdust vs water is not technically composting; nevertheless, I want to see if anyone has tried using animal bedding (cedar shavings) in place of sawdust for their compost toilet.
I wonder because the former is easily acquired where I live and fairly inexpensive. The surface area and/or particle size may matter but, since it's not technically composting, I have no idea.

I guess theoretically it will work, however, cedar shavings takes longer to decompose than sawdust. We've used peat moss for a hunting cabin outhouse and  by August it is completely  broken down.

I agree, cedar will likely take longer to break down. I've often seen aspen and/or pine animal bedding. Don't recall if it's more expensive than cedar, but I imagine it would break down a little faster. I know we used one of the two for our bucket toilet when we couldn't find other material. It worked okay and broke down reasonably fast.

I would look for sawmills around you or possibly folks that do woodworking. They would be likely to have sawdust and/or shavings that they'd give you, quite possibly for free. It took us awhile to find a mill, but sure beats buying shavings from the pet store.

Thank you both for sharing your experiences.  Since I live remotely and in a desert, the only materials I can reliably acquire without resorting to Amazon/online are the cedar shavings.  I have heard from several developers/contractors that cedar lasts longer in this environment, but perhaps the moisture and bacteria will help it break down faster.  My plan is to dig a pit and put the outhouse structure on 2x4s I can tow when the pit is full.  Then I'll plant an ornamental shade tree in the pit to make use of the nutrients/moisture there.  

Agree with above, I have used pine bedding and sawdust, both work well.  I strongly recommend adding charcoal as well.  It completely takes care of any smells and as it composts, you create biochar that is a great additon wherever you use it.  Once I tried it, I wouldn't do it any other way.

I have used cedar shaving. Takes longer but they do compost. But i often use wood pellets for wood stoves. They are compressed sawdust afterall . Works great but less is more as they expand. If you have to buy that's what I'd recommend.

We've used cedar shavings for about five years now. It's worked very well for us and I recommend it.

The smell is wonderful
Hardly any odor in the toilet...we also have a black solar air chimney flue.

We have two outdoor compost areas both about 2m square.
Bins are 60litre, and we have a urine diversion funnel. Some of our urine gets poured into the humanure heap once it's outside

We swap between each compost area each year and we use the resulting compost after three years, just around trees.

We switched to Poplar shavings about a month ago, because of a supply issue, but suddenly we have lots of smell and an uncontrolled infestation of compost flies inside the bins before they're full.

We also have the same flies problem in our food compost bin, where there's the same sawdust in smaller quantities.

We're going back to cedar to check this is the issue

I'll try to remember to post results here.

Hi Jo,

We have a commercial composting toilet.  We have always mixed in diatomaceous earth and have never had an insect issue.

John F Dean wrote:Hi Jo,

We have a commercial composting toilet.  We have always mixed in diatomaceous earth and have never had an insect issue.

Hello John thanks so much for the tip.

I read in the humanure handbook
https://weblife.org/images/humanure/chapter8_2.html
that "kiln dried sawdust" is too dry, and the poplar wood we have sourced ours from is very very dry. I think that's our issue so I've fetched a load of cedar sawdust and we'll be seeing how that goes.

I should know in a week

But the diachotamus earth sounds like a good store cupboard thing to keep handy if you have a dry toilet.