Bulimia cure no. 456: The Composting Toilet

(The tank looks a bit like this)

There's one last thing I forgot to mention about the research station. All the toilets are composting toilets. The upside of the composting toilet is that they are self servicing, you don't flush them. The downside, is of course, that they are self servicing and you don't flush them. Bulimics, form an orderly queue.

I like this composting business a lot. Water seems like the last thing people should add to sewerage, it only motivates it to shoot off in mysterious and troubling ways. The composting toilet basically dehydrates the poos-and-wees, the excess liquid flowing through to a soak pit or absorption trench, leaving the rest to break down into a black crumbly mixture. Think chocolate gateaux. Actually, it's probably best if you don't.

You poo on a normal loo. The poo drops into a chamber, which is one of five chambers that are progressively decomposing. The chamber is rotated periodically. The entire chamber sits under the house and looks like a water tank, or a petrie dish divided into five segments filled with poos. This is where trivial pursuit came from. Only the crumbliest, flakiest mixture gets dug out and buried. There's not much of it left - just a few shovelfuls. Pretty impressive given that each toilet services about six people most of the year.

But what about the STINK? I hear you gasp! Normally poo-stink reaches paint-stripping proportions in the tropics. But, these toilets have a fan that constantly blows air through the system. This aids in the dehydration and eliminates the smell. The downside is that it is a little like poo-ing into a wind tunnel (this explains all those signs at NASA Ames).

In short, I like the idea, and I think everyone should have one.