Aren’t compost toilets taking humanity back to the Dark Ages?
Not at all! Way back (well actually, just over a hundred years ago), people were only just beginning to understand the relationship between diseases and sanitation, hence the streets were often open sewers and preventable disease was rife.
Modern compost toilets are a world away from open sewers! And whilst the Victorians may have pioneered the flushing toilet, it’s now clear that when you flush, you just move the problem somewhere else.
In the UK, like many other parts of the world, we use clean, drinking-quality water, to flush our ‘business’ down the sewers, only to find it popping up in rivers and seas as our treatment systems are unable to cope. With increasing populations, pressure on farmland to produce more food, and climate change, we increasingly find water scarcity issues in the summer, together with flooding in the winter. Our absurd use of high-quality water as a ‘flush’ should be questioned more and more.
A compost or composting toilet provides a clean and sanitary solution to our toilet requirements, whilst the whole process retains many of the nutrients that would otherwise be lost. This not only decreases our reliance on fossil-fuel based fertilisers but can create business opportunities within local, circular economies to collect and safely process the otherwise lost nutrients.
We believe that compost toilets are a step forwards towards a better future for everyone and the environment at large. It’s a win-win for everyone!
