Why compost toilets are a good idea! / Mariella

Now that we’ve gotten to know each other better, I’d like to tell you about my toilet! When my husband and I spoke about the design for our house, we felt very strongly about not having a flush toilet. If you take into consideration that the average toilet uses about six litres per flush and the average family member may use the bathroom five times a day. That comes to ten thousand, nine hundred and fifty litres of water down the drain per annum. In a water strapped South Africa, this is possibly going to become a problem! Toilets use more water than anything else in the home, including washing machines.

We took this very seriously and opted for a compost toilet. We built a temporary structure for it while we decide on the final design of the out house and because we couldn't find a locally produced complete unit which had good reviews, we made our own! It’s basic, you have two boxes, made from plywood, same size, ours are roughly one meter square, with a toilet seat on top, which we made so that it seals nicely and a hooded chimney pipe for ventilation. It’s only for number two and you tip a couple cups of saw dust in after every use. Toilet paper goes in too. Every couple of months we throw some good bacteria in and once the box is full, we seal it up and use the other one. Once box number two is full, box number one should be completely worked through and benign. It takes about a year to fill a box and once it’s ready, you throw it out into a corner of the garden and leave it there for another six months and then it can be used in your flower beds. I was terrified to see what would come out of that box, but once we tipped it out, it didn’t look any different from the soil around it. One square meter of fuss to deal with per year, instead of ten thousand, nine hundred and fifty litres of water which needs cleaning! 

And it’s outside with a great view of the sunset and the birds that fly overhead to and from the coast every day!

So, what to do if you live in a built up area and can’t realistically consider a compost toilet overlooking your neighbours’ kids’ jungle gym?

If you want to save water and you haven’t replaced your toilet with a dual-flush model yet, do it now! By doing this you can reduce water consumption by a whopping 20% or more. But something that you can do today would be to take an old 2 litre plastic bottle, fill it with water and put it inside the cistern of your toilet and save 2 liters per flush.

Another water tip: This is the easiest and cheapest way to reduce water loss. Turn the taps off when brushing your teeth! This will save you about fifteen litres for every single minute the tap is turned off.

All very serious stuff I know, but these are little ways in which we can actively take nature conservation into our own hands and it’s a great opportunity to inform our children about water saving.