BRATTLEBORO — A Sept. 4 Commons article [“Can towns without infrastructure still attract growth?”] boldly tackled an often-overlooked topic: toilets and the wastewater they produce.
Inadequate and aging septic systems throughout Windham County are stifling the region's economic development, the article explains, because lack of public toilets and limited wastewater disposal capacity prevent businesses from expanding. The stock solution to this problem is a sewer system, but for small towns the cost can be prohibitive.
But let's step back and untangle the issue of toilets from the related issue of wastewater.
Standard toilets take pure drinking water and mix it with human waste, producing large quantities of highly polluted wastewater that must be disposed of carefully.
At the Rich Earth Institute, we reject the idea that human “waste” is, in fact, a waste at all and that transforming it into wastewater by flushing it down the drain is the best approach.
Working in partnership with Best Septic Service in Westminster and Fair Winds Farm in Brattleboro, we are now in our second year of a pilot project demonstrating a new method of managing human waste.
Participating families are using specially engineered toilets and urinals that collect and store urine in a holding tank without using any flush water. A septic truck then transports the urine to the farm, where it is sanitized and used as fertilizer on hay fields.
These urine-diverting toilets produce 80 to 100 percent less wastewater than standard flush toilets. They take many forms, including waterless urinals, composting toilets, and urine-diverting flush toilets (which have a divided toilet bowl that flushes number two but diverts number one to a storage tank).
This approach solves wastewater problems in two ways. First, it greatly reduces or even eliminates the wastewater produced by toilets. Second, it keeps human waste out of septic systems and sewers, reducing the load on treatment systems and resulting in cleaner groundwater and rivers.
As business owners strive to offer public toilets or expand seating, and as homeowners look for ways to get more life from their septic systems, we hope everyone will consider these new technologies.
Maintaining healthy water systems in harmony with the landscape is the task of humans in this 21st century, and it doesn't have to break the bank. There are affordable answers right in front of us.
It is excellent that this conversation is occurring in our communities, and the Rich Earth Institute is eager to offer additional solutions to the problem.
For more information on our project, visit us at www.richearthinstitute.org. To see (or even try out) a urine-diverting toilet, call us at 802-579-9263 to arrange a visit.