The compost toilet that grows trees (And Doesn’t Complicate Your Life)

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Why does everyone try to turn compost toilets into space stations?

All you really need is:

A hole (30x30x30 cm is enough)

Some dry organic matter: shredded coconut husk, rice hulls, leaves, old mulch…

3 stacked car tires

A seat (or just a wooden plank with a hole)

No urine separation.
No daily stirring.
No buckets to empty.

Just you, gravity, and a hungry tree

Every time you go:

Drop your gift.
Sprinkle a bit of dry matter.
That’s it.

I’ve used this system for 7 months now in a food forest in tropical Asia.
No smell. No flies. No mess.
And the banana trees are THRIVING.
Before banana, it was a coffee tree, lemon tree and bamboo.
All of them in incredible good health.

Bonus:

No need to "manage" it.
Each toilet is also a tree feeder.

If your compost toilet doesn't feed an actual tree, ask yourself:
Are you composting - or just storing poop?

Let nature do the work. Stop reinventing the flush. What is one of the worst stupid over polluting invention made by "civilised smart people".

NIK

I would be concerned of the risk of it contaminating the ground water with pathogens. It's the sort of thing that you can get away with for years, until you don't.

The beauty of the willow feeder is that the poop is stored for two years until the pathogen level is pretty much zero, and then it's safe to feed to whatever tree you choose.

Burra Maluca wrote:I would be concerned of the risk of it contaminating the ground water with pathogens. It's the sort of thing that you can get away with for years, until you don't.

The beauty of the willow feeder is that the poop is stored for two years until the pathogen level is pretty much zero, and then it's safe to feed to whatever tree you choose.

I agree, poop stored for two years ...

That system is more like an outhouse, not even a composting toilet.

They were very common in rural areas where I lived as a kid, and occasionally I would hear of entire families who had been born and raised on the same bit of land and then had all died when pathogens from the tŷ bach seeped as far as the well. Not a risk I'd be willing to take any more!

It might not complicate your life, but it could end it!

Efficient and a clever reuse of difficult waste I must admit...

...and you haven't got venomous spiders where you live, do you? For them it must be a 5 Star hideout.

just as an add as most people don't know the difference:

You bite it and you give up your ghost = Poisonous
It bites you and you give up you ghost = venomous

That idea sounds similar to the dry outhouse concept

I've seen similar in Spain. A little movable wig-wam and a couple of small holes lined up to be filled by woofers. They left it for over a year and then planted trees in it. I don't know if they drank from a well. Anybody have the name of the bacterium that can kill humans like Burra describes?
I'm not advocating at all for using humanure at veggies, i think it is gross, i know a market gardener who uses it on the lettuces he sells to clients here. I told him it's reckless and will give other bio farmers a bad name if found out. He got really mad with me, said i was narrowminded and that people must know it's the same as animal manure... and threatened to buy up my source of cow manure. I dropped him as a friend since. Some people are just crazily unreasonable.
Others i know keep it in a cut off IBC tote for two years and then drop the soil at the bottom of trees.
Guess i'm a bit of a square flushing all that 'good' water and poo into a septic system, but i can't help to be upset we cannot dam off the stream to create a lake up-hill of the village and have our own water that way. I don't have a feeling that i'm guilty of destroying the planet using the governments crazily wasteful forced water cycle. But i'm going off topic here...

How many people were using that toilet? If there was a big group, I assume there would need to be several?

At very low population densities, with no visitors, in warm climates, all sorts of things can work.
But cholera, hepatitis, shigella, typhoid, haemmorhagic E coli etc etc are real risks.
Cholera reemerged in Haiti from improper latrines used by Nepalese troops.
Walkerton Ontario had haemmorhagic E coli in the water from contaminated wells.
I dislike wasteful sewage systems, but they were mandated for a reason.