Toilet worms ‘traumatised’
Save the worms!
A New Zealand inventor with a new kind of anaerobic toilet has had some trouble with the thought police. He was told to get an expert’s report on the mental impact of his “wormorator” on the tiger worms being used in the composting toilet he has developed. City officials became concerned that the creatures might become traumatised by the procedure.
Coll Bell from Auckland says the official felt the worms were being unfairly treated and that it could affect them in a psychological way. Mr Bell was told he had to get someone with the necessary qualifications to say the worms were happy.
Patricia Naidu, a vermiculture consultant was called in and found the worms were in excellent health and breeding happily.
A composting toilet converts human waste into an organic compost and usable soil, through the natural breakdown of organic matter into its essential minerals. Aerobic microbes do this by oxidizing the carbon in the organic material to carbon dioxide gas, and converting hydrogen atoms to water vapour.
It can be hazardous to come into contact with improperly or incompletely composted human faeces, because it may contain bacteria associated with human disease. For this reason, human waste should not be used as fertilizer without ensuring that it is composted thoroughly.
Ecologically this is still the best option to dispose human waste, since water-flush toilets cause substantial pollution, excessive energy consumption, and the unsustainable loss of vital nutrients.
Once they received the report, the Auckland City officials approved the wormorator.
December 22nd, 2007 @ 8:39 pm
[...] The trauma worms experience in a composting toilet is nonexistent according to a vermicomposting expert. This was enough to satisfy the people holding up development of the fantastic energy and water saving technology. To even suggest that worms, which have no brains to speak of, could become upset by having human waste given to them regularly as food, is absurd. [...]
December 24th, 2007 @ 5:30 am
You people in New Zealand are mad.. but no madder than any other place . Most laws have little to with health but keeping an income stream coming in to the government.
do they worry about worms when fertizer is put into the ground or if they add salt to melt ice? What about golf carts on the golf course.. they must kill or mame a few too.
please publish the names and addresses of these nut cases.
January 3rd, 2008 @ 6:02 pm
[...] Anyway, there I was, innocently traipsing around the ‘net, minding my own business, when I found this ridiculous news story from New Zealand. I thought this kind of idiotic, pussified extremism only came from the People’s Republik of Kalifornia. [...]
March 12th, 2008 @ 11:04 pm
When I first read this I thought it was an early April Fool joke. I bet the worms have more intelligence than the city officials!!!