All toilets used to be composting toilets, such as this outhouse.
A serious waste of fresh water occurs with the continual use of flush toilets all over the world. We are essentially directly excreting our waste into drinking water. Not only is fresh, clean water wasted with flush toilets, but valuable human manure is wasted as well: dumped in an anaerobic environment, treated with tons of synthetic and hazardous chemicals and dumped back into the planet's water supply. Composting toilets are one solution to this waste problem because they eliminate the idea that our excrement is waste at all. They are easy to set up and if done right, they will emit little foul odor and will be easy to manage. Does this Spark an idea?
Instructions
1. Drill the edges of three plywood boards together at right angles to make a c-shape.
2. Screw two hinges on one edge of another board. Screw the other side of the hinges onto the c-shaped boards to make a box.
3. Measure the opening of the five-gallon bucket. Cut a hole of the same size in the center of the fifth board with the jig saw.
4. Screw the fifth board on top of the plywood box.
5. Along the inside of the joints between the box top and sides, screw in two 22-inch 1 x 1 posts and two 24-inch 1 x 1 posts so that each joint is supported and lined.
6. Along the inside of each joint connecting the box sides, screw in a 3-foot 1 x 1 post. More than one foot of each post should stick out.
7. Drive the box, hole-side up, into the ground with a sledgehammer so that each protruding post is submerged in the ground.
8. Screw on the toilet seat over the box-top hole.
9. For fecal excrement, pour one cup of sawdust or straw and one cup of wood ash into the bucket.
Tags: Along inside, each joint, fifth board, flush toilets, sides screw, that each