I love my composting loo

DIY Water activists The Greywater Guerillas have a book out. Its called Dam Nation: Dispatches from the Water Underground and its damn good.

One section deals with the practicalities of the composting loo in an urban area – risks include the “post traumatic neighbor” who reports the author to the authorities for creating insanitary conditions. But undeterred she says “I love my composting loo,” and she is never going back.

Dam Nation is a look at the underside of the water debate – the people who are actually doing something about it in their own homes – no film stars in here having 5 minute showers – just just ordinary folks who tell us how to divert the waste-pipe from the bath into the garden or help in a water crisis such as post Katrina. Dennis Martinez has a short piece on the “gift of foresight” as the Indian lore calls our ability to predict the damage we do when we change a water course or over-farm an area.

These voices are preferable to the passages on “the commodification of water” or Bolivia’s water wars. When the collective are explaining why there is salt-crusted sand in the San Joaquin Valley, they are on stronger ground.

The point of the book’s punny title is that our use of water is completely unnnatural. “IF all the dams in America came down today there would be millions without water and power,” the authors remind us. “Dam removal is very difficult, and life with out dams is uncharted territory. None of that should stop us from fighting to make Dams a thing of the past.

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In other news, a student from the Royal College of Art is developing a waterless urban toilet she hopes will improve world sanitation and save water.

James Dyson Foundation bursary winner Virginia Gardner is developing the Urban Composting Loo to combat sanitation problems in developing countries and heavily populated urban areas.

The GCH4 toilet uses biodegradable lining material to transfer excrement into an odourless sealed cartridge. The toilet can be wheeled to an outdoor biodigester and emptied hygienically.

Communities deprived of toilets will often not maintain new dry toilets. However, one of the by-products of the process is a fertilizer that can be used by the community – encouraging them to maintain the new system.