After nearly a month of simply having a 5 gallon bucket and some sawdust, I finally built my own proper compost toilet!
It cost me a total of about $20 and two hours of work to get it done…well worth it. This lives in my basement, but I brought it outside to snap a well-lit photo in front of its “sewer system” (the compost pile).
I simply followed the instructions in Joseph Jenkins’ Humanure Handbook …I strongly suggest picking this up. Even if you have no interest in humanure composting, it’s still a very critical read for learning the history of human waste and how we’ve broken the human nutrient cycle.
For the fecophobes out there: read about thermal kill times and how compost has been used to fully bioremediate contaminated lands of compounds as harsh as TNT. I’m not worried about pathogens. My pile is going to be actively added to for about a year. Then I’m going to let it sit for a year while I build a second one for a year.
Therefore, my compost pile breaks down and cures for a span of two years. This is plenty of time for nature to do what it has done for zillions of years.
Anyway, more updates to come. This has been really fun and I have had some serious reflections thus far on the process and its benefits to the Earth.