Image Source: Me.

As the war for resources wage on, I'd like to take a moment to discuss a resource that we throw away every single day: human excreta.

Now, I bet most of you are suffering from fecophobia, as I was until very recently. No one wants to think about their own "business" but we are forced to confront it every day anyway, multiple times per day. Well, have you heard about humanure before? If you use flush toilets, you probably have never heard of it. I only heard about it starting in 2012.

"Humanure (human manure) is human fecal material and urine recycled for agricultural purposes via thermophilic composting. Humanure contains valuable soil nutrients that enhance plant growth. For these reasons, humanure should be recycled whenever possible. Human excrement could be a major source of soil fertility if properly recycled. When discarded into the environment as a waste material, it creates pollution and threatens public health. When recycled by composting, the pollution and health threats can be eliminated. " -Humanure Handbook by Joseph Jenkins

At this point, you're probably thinking, gross, right?

Well, I did too, until I experienced it. Unbelievably the composting toilet at Dancing Rabbit did not smell bad at all. That is because each time someone does their business, they cover it up with carbon-rich sawdust which accomplishes three things: soaks up moisture, creates a covering that prevents odor from escaping and creates a cover that prevents flies from being attracted to it. Additionally, each bucket has a wooden cover so insects cannot get into it.

Here's a video I made during my visit to Dancing Rabbit for the first time, and this documents my first experience with the composting toilet:

Now getting to the stage where I could deal with the concept of humanure took a lot of thinking and deprogramming because I grew up in a germaphobic household.

Image Source: Pixabay

My parents were both in the medical field and they made it very clear that fecal material is to be regarded with fear, loathing and disgust.

I had never questioned this belief system until 2012 when I visited the Dancing Rabbit ecovillage and was finally forced to confront the dreaded human waste issue. At Dancing Rabbit, all human waste is composted in such a way that it is recycled, over a two year period, using methods that organically destroy all pathogens contained within it. The toilets at DR don't have any water in them. Instead, they have sawdust. Each toilet has a seat and lid just like conventional toilets. But instead of a water-filled bowl, there is a bucket filled with excreta and covered with sawdust. When the bucket gets full, it's removed and put into a quarantined area where it sits and is mixed with more straw, hay and the like. It is heated naturally, and reaches over 120 F, which kills the pathogens contained in it. Then during the span of more than a year, microorganisms, worms and other bacteria break down the waste. It turns into dirt after a two year process. At this point, the pathogens are gone and it is able to be used as soil fertilizer.

Image Source: Pixabay

The first person to write extensively about the humanure system was Joseph Jenkins in the United States in 1994.

But humans have been using this holistic recycling system for thousands of years.

He wrote the Humanure Handbook and a condensed version is here. According to Wikipedia, the word, humanure is only used in the United States, as the rest of the world doesn't recognize this as a mainstream system of recycling.

Here's an excerpt of Joseph Jenkins' book:

I well remember in early 1979 when I first informed a friend that I intended to compost my own manure and grow my own food with it.

“Oh my God, you can’t do that!”
she cried.

“Why not?”

“Worms and disease!”

Of course.

A young English couple was visiting me one summer after I had been composting humanure for about six years. One evening, as dinner was being prepared, the couple suddenly understood the horrible reality of their situation: the food they were about to eat was recycled human shit. When this fact abruptly dawned upon them, it seemed to set off an instinctive alarm, possibly inherited directly from Queen Victoria. “We don’t want to eat shit!” they informed me, rather distressed (that’s an exact quote), as if in preparing dinner I had simply set a steaming turd on a plate in front of them with a knife, fork and napkin.

Fecophobia is alive and well and running rampant. One common misconception is that fecal material, when composted, remains fecal material. It does not. Humanure comes from the earth, and through the miraculous process of composting, is converted back into earth. When the composting process is finished, the end product is humus, not crap, and it is useful in growing food. My friends didn’t understand this and despite my attempts to clarify the matter for their benefit, they chose to cling to their misconceptions. Apparently, some fecophobes will always remain fecophobes. -Humanure Handbook

To be clear, I don't use the humanure system, but at our community, we have a system that uses nature to break down our waste. We have flush toilets whose waste is directed to three small ponds which are situated far away from our houses. Remarkably, these ponds do not have any foul odor. The water and waste sit there over time and the waste is broken down by organic processes. This water does not enter our drinking water system, so it's not cleaned and sterilized with chemicals the way that regular sewage treatment plants operate. It is designed to handle a small amount of people and just sit there undisturbed and unused.

I do think the humanure system is actually better because it's part of a holistic life cycle but I'm not ready for it.

Because sewage is not generated, it has advantages with regard to water quality and conservation. I could see how small villages could do this but when it comes to cities, I think it would be difficult. Also, this system heavily relies on individual responsibility. If you had a group of humans who didn't abide by the strict quarantine and composting system, then there would be disease issues.

But a guy in San Diego is doing the humanure system, so I'll leave you with that:

I am curious what sort of gifs might emerge in the comment sections below..........

There are currently two people on Steemit who live at Dancing Rabbit who could answer more questions about the humanure system, @nathanbrown and @dolphindigest.