Sustainable Shizzle: Humanure part 2

Some of my favourite things about Humanure composting are:

· The pile never needs to be turned!- The use of straw traps pockets of air which aids aerobic digestion of the pile, plus turning the pile would destroy the helpful bacteria

· The collection of urine means the pile is not in danger of drying out. A waterwise compost pile is an asset to gardeners in dry climates like mine

· The compost pile is not fussy and will digest everything from the kitchen and nothing needs to be done to the scraps, just chuck em on and cover ‘em up

· Its low cost to start and maintain

· It is resource recovery as opposed to the current thinking of poos as waste that needs disposal

· It’s off grid living baby!

· I can’t think of anymore just now

From a permacultural or systems perspective this system closes an otherwise very open-ended nutrient cycle. Energy comes onto the site via food, exits through you, is captured by the compost and returned to the soil where more food is created. This ‘closed’ cycle is sustainable and resilient as it consumes less energy and resources than an ‘open’ cycle by keeping energy and resources cycling through the system and by making use of renewable resources like trees and straw. An ‘open’ system in comparison relies on constant, expensive, unsustainable inputs (fossil fuels for sewage treatment and water purifying, off-site food, infrastructure and water to carry poos and wees from site, etc…) to construct maintain it.

Bearing all these benefits in mind it is still important to remember that ecological solutions and designs need to be aware of context. For example, adoption of this method would not be appropriate for people living on flood plains because the risk of raw faecal matter coming into contact with freshwater would be very high- the solution does not fit the context.

The need for composting humanure could be eliminated entirely if a new house is being built. Homeowners could design systems that take all the manual labour and work out of dealing with the poo’s a la Earthship style septics and treatment cells. Composting humanure works for me as I am a renter with a long term lease in a suburban area who thinks and cares about the effect my life has on old mate Mother Earth. I seek to adopt sustainable living strategies that are low-cost, effective, efficient and also high yielding so this method works for me. The small amount of infrastructure I have put in is easy to remove. The downside is that I if we decide to leave we need a year to let the compost decompose to make moving easier. Ways to transport partially composted fecal matter could be conceived but my guess is it would expensive, risky and unpleasant.