How No-Flush Toilets Can Help Make a Healthier World | Hacker News Reader

How No-Flush Toilets Can Help Make a Healthier World

e360.yale.edu

56 pointsceeK12 comments

This is my thought on the modern flush toilette:

http://makeameme.org/media/created/skeptical-third-world-kid...

I lived in what was essentially a rural cabin for 5 years. We had no indoor plumbing and stored water for cooking and bathing in barrels. We used a composting toilette (see "The Humanuer Handbook"). After moving back to a "real" modern house in the city, I am daily reminded of the tragic waste of potable water that modern plumbing endorses.

There is not a global shortage of potable water, in most areas flushing a toilet uses well under 1 cent of water and if it was not flushed it would simply end up in the ocean anyway. There are regional shortages, but in the vast majority of cases that's a corruption and infrastructure problem.

PS: Now sewage treatment is often far more expensive than the water it's self, but that's really a separate issue.

> There are regional shortages, but in the vast majority of cases that's a corruption and infrastructure problem.

This can also be said for most things which the globe has major problems with: Food, Education, Electricity etc...

Don't forget, that 1C of potable water also took quite a bit of electricity and infrastructure to make clean (assuming we are discussing most modern western water systems based on water treatment and not pure well water).

It is worthwhile, to examine how necessary aspects of our consumption are, in order to be more efficient and use fewer resources.

The Paris water system contains pairs of pipes -- potable for drinking, and non-potable for cleaning. (I'm not sure if the non-potable is just for street cleaning, or if it's used for toilets too.)

It seems so much more obviously cost-effective, I wonder why that never took off anywhere in the US, as far as I know?

http://parisianfields.wordpress.com/2012/03/11/a-most-unusua...

http://www.iwaponline.com/ws/00303/ws003030193.htm

I know of at least one sub-division where non-potable water is connected to yard irrigation systems, so the concept is not totally unheard of. Nothing as sensible as the system you outline in Paris, though.

One of my professors, the late David Crane, FAIA, had a rule of thumb for determining the suitability of sanitary systems for poor communities on a global scale - suitability is inversely proportional to pipes.

http://img.nux.ro/3rF-refilling_bowls_of_water.png !

The conventional flush toilet requires a massive water treatment system with pumps every few miles to push the wastewater through the pipe. But the costs are hidden from the payer, which makes everyone happy.

I like the way the world (seems) to be turning - towards putting effort into solving the worlds problems based on evidence and rational thought as opposed to bureaucratic incentives or popular votes.

One can hope

The only problem I have with these things is it teaches me that I don't need to flush. I've stepped away from many flush toilets only to be reminded moments later that I need to depress the handle.

Outfitting flush toilets with automatic flush devices is a decent stopgap ... unless the one on the sit toilet is misaligned and causes flushing every time I lean a little - then my butt cheeks get wet :-(

I would like to point out the subtle but present contradiction between the two statements endorsed by the article, namely Everyone needs a toilet! and Decentralized waste treatment is superior!

In addition, this article didn't mention the long-recognized composting principle that separating urine and feces largely removes any bad smell.

Who would have thought? The human mind seems to unbounded in both directions!

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