Decades ago, I had bought a used copy of The Humanure Handbook by Joe Jenkins. Flipping through my highlights now, I seemed to be considering the SunMar composting toilet. However, I never could convince my partner about storing months of poop inside the house despite claims of no odor! He has lived through my experiments with worm bins (and fruit flies) in the dining room! 

image credit: pdfprof.com

Recently, I read about an NGO (non-governmental organization) in India installing pit latrines to convince people to stop openly defecating. Pit latrines certainly offer privacy when compared to open defecation.

image credit: pitvidura.com

However, I sense that there is rarely funding to empty pits when full, and that people swiftly revert to the affordable option of open defecation in the great outdoors.

The solution needs to be at a scale that a family can maintain. I remembered my own experiences with large scale food waste composting, and that the 5 gallon (20 liter) container was an optimal size for almost anyone to move about. 

This time when I dusted off The Humanure Handbook from my shelf, I went straight to the section titled “Simple Low-Tech Humanure Composting”, and learned about the Lovable Loo — a wood structure atop a 5 gallon plastic bucket. So modular, so affordable, so low-tech and yet so smart! This toilet can be placed anywhere, with no plumbing or electricity requirement. It can be made locally. And the filled bucket can be emptied into an outdoor compost bin by almost anyone, without waiting for a truck to pump out a pit latrine. All that’s needed is adequate cover material for both the indoor dry compost toilet and the outdoor bin where the composting actually happens.

Soon, The Compost Toilet Handbook was on order, and many videos devoured on JoeJenkins‘ channel. Before the book even arrived, I had read it online. Since I still prefer print copies to bookmark and highlight, I read this book again, this time with a pen. And this time I was ready — I had learned the difference between a composting toilet (the SunMar I had dreamt about) and a dry compost toilet with an outside bin for the actual composting. A dry compost toilet that collected in a 5 gallon bucket meant only one partially filled bucket in the house, at any one time. I could, and did, convince my partner! And I was presented with his version of the Lovable Loo to paint and test out, made from scrap wood.  

In addition to a dry toilet and a compost bin, the book also explained the need for cover material and human management of the process. Very different from the “use it and forget it” model of the flush toilet. 

The photo examples from several countries were an eye opener for me; especially to learn that a Lovable Loo was the first indoor toilet for some elders. Sadly, not many examples from India, which was my initial quest and ultimate interest for this appropriate technology. Perhaps this is work waiting for me to show up! 

While Part One of the handbook spoke to all my concerns about the actual design and operation of a compost toilet, Part Two was chock full of examples of the Lovable Loo in Uganda, Mongolia, Haiti, Nicaragua, even a US ecovillage and the extreme weather emergency where thousands showed up for the Standing Rock protests in 2018. The examples showed that this can be used anywhere humans go without the need for plumbed water or electricity. The modularity meant it could be scaled up swiftly for large numbers of people. 

I was sold, nay, inspired, to experience this in my suburban American home. We already compost all our kitchen scraps and enjoy spreading the finished compost around the garden when I crack open the compost bin each spring. I’ve already written about how little trash we put out (one bag each month) because we compost, reuse & recycle so much from our “waste” stream.

A month into this journey, the outdoor composting bin in our backyard remains odor free. Even though we haven’t lived through a year’s cycle to use the finished humanure in our garden, I am a confident spokesperson for this type of compost toilet. All because I have The Compost Toilet Handbook!