Humanure

A couple of months ago my toilet got all blocked up and I couldn't afford the plumbers fees. Dunno about your part of the world but in my part plumbers charge about the equivalent of three weeks worth of foods costs plus an arm and a leg just to visit to diagnose your problem.

Such a situation as this really placed me in a difficult situation. I remembered that I had bought a composting toilet bucket from an online Canadian camping store a couple of years back so I went hunting for it.

I then went researching how to best compost human toilet wastes. Amazing what poverty can drive us into.

I have known friends who own compost toilets for decades now and in the absence of having a useful husband to build one for me they are very expensive. Well - not as expensive as installing a septic system; but still expensive by my books. So off I went 'googling' the construction of inexpensive composting toilets.

I came across a fella by the name of Joseph Jenkins who has been composting, processing and using what he aptly calls humanure for decades now. I duly ordered his book.

Joseph Jenkins is very enthusiastic about humanure and to him it just about constitutes the salvation of our planet. Humanure is apparently capable of solving more human problems that I'm sure you could possibly dream up.

His book that has 255 pages, 42 tables and charts, 55 drawings, 19 photos, glossary, index, and along with a few bad jokes makes for extremely fascinating reading.

I have always held that flushing water down our toilets is an environmental sin of a very high order, and I perpetrate such sins as rarely as possible. In fact a photo of my humble farm 'thunderbox' has sparked quite an interesting comment stream on my Facebook pages.

And now at my city abode I now sport my Canadian compost bin toilet, a bucket of suitable sawdust and a suitable garden compost bin.

By now I'm sure many of you may be gagging at such thoughts. But I implore you to read Joseph Jenkins book. In fact both my home and my garden neither smells or looks any worse for having this humble toileting arrangement in it's midst.

Flushing valuable water down our toilets is, I suspect, a vestige of so called civilization that our wasteful society will long hang onto. The fact that many of us are now drinking purified and recycled toilet water may just be irrelevant.

Suffice to say that it is indeed possible to hygienically dispose of such wastes.

Though I have not yet read all the way through the book I am fascinated by something almost inexplicable and, I'm sure, very profound;

Mr. Jenkins claims that just about half of all the living organisms on our Earth are thermophillic bacteria, or other thermophillic organisms that are inert at temperatures that do not often occur naturally on our planet.

Being one that has always found Nature knows best and is our wisest teacher I found this fact very interesting indeed.

Apparently there isn't much, given enough time that these thermophillic organisms can't handle. They can chew their way through PCBs, petroleum based compounds, nuclear waste and a whole host of other heavy metals and man-made toxins returning them to more inert and much less dangerous life-forms.

Might it just mean that Mother Nature knows that Man might be about to cook itself and our planet? And has put in place suitable contingent remediation measures?

So if you want to save our planet get humanuring.