Imagine that you had a tall bottle of drinking water and I came up to you, took it out of your hand and urinated in it. What would your response be? Probably more than a little indignant. Suppose better yet, I defecated in it? Well every day we take drinking water and urinate and defecate in it. Then we flush it away into either a septic system or into our municipal waste system where it is then collected and treated so the water can be released back into the environment. In some places the solids are buried and in some they are composted by the municipality. In either case there is significant energy and resources going into the process.
Joseph Jenkins, the author of The Humanure Handbook, thinks this is ridiculous and I agree. We waste a ridiculous amount of drinking water disposing of our excrement. In a world where we increasingly worry about energy, access to water and soil condition we contribute to those problems each and every time we step up to the commode.
The book is located online if you're interested in perusing it. Its a collection of thoughts, practices and well cited data. The author as of the time of the second edition I read had been composting his family's manure for about 20 years. He has a two bin system and it takes him one year to finish a bin and he lets it 'cure' for one year while he's filling the other bin. So two years after starting, his first pile is ready for use.
He's had it tested and there are no pathogens of any sort. There's actually been a fair amount of research on the destruction of pathogens in composting and I couldn't possibly do justice to it here. However there's something that really hit me in the reading of this book. I was reading another book on home composting about a month ago. It had confirmed what I had suspected for a while, that it is hard for a home composter to experience the 'thermophilic stage' of composting you always hear about. Certainly on my less than a tenth of an acre its hard to produce much matter. So I had contented myself with simple piling up my compost and going the slow route which would take longer and would certainly happen, but I would no longer be dissapointed by a lack of steam rising from my pile of leaves, grass cuttings and vegetable scraps.
Shit! That's the key, we DO produce plenty of compostable material that would easily create thermophilic conditions in our compost piles which would destroy weeds and pathogens, it comes straight from our bottoms! I should add a disclaimer here that I'm not going to start composting my own or my family's manure at this point. The world (heck...my family) has a lot of opinions on human scat which Jenkins refers to as fecaphobia. I certainly wouldn't want to run amok of local ordinances and get into trouble either. But it stands observing that we spend a lot of energy to rid ourselves of material that could easily be turned into very useful compost for use in the garden.
What? Use shit in the garden?! That's gross!! No, Jenkins isn't talking about using crap on your tomato plants...he's talking about using composted crap. Just like we use cow, chicken, pig, horse and rabbit manure on our crops. Hell, we BUY composted animal manure. That's right, we drive to the store and give people money for bags of composted crap. Which helps create the wonderful salads, jams, pies etc that we make with our home gardens.
Yeah, but there's disease and stuff in human poop! Jenkins acknowledges this in several ways. First he makes the distinction between 'nightsoil', the direct application of raw humanure to crops (as done in Asia traditionally), and the use of composted humanure. In the many studies done on composting humanure, you consitently find no disease. Moreover, if you're only using your own composted humanure, you'll only catch what you already have.
Yeah, but I don't want my house or my yard smelling like crap! It won't, the author assures us if you use a material like sawdust (he recommends sawdust from a lumber mill not the sawdust from a carpentry shop because of moisture). Each time you defecate (into a cleverly disguised five gallon bucket) you generously cover the excrement with a layer of sawdust (or similar material). This prevents the laying of fly eggs and it prevents odor. He describes a light earthy smell, but no smell of feces, which would be unpleasant. When he adds the bucket to the existing pile he covers it with another layer of sawdust. Keeping it covered at all times. The sawdust is more than just odor control. Its providing a source of carbon to balance out the nitrogen rich excrement. Compost needs to maintain a balance between nitrogen and carbon otherwise it will either stink or won't break down.
This probably seems extreme to many. But I suppose it depends on how much exposure you've had to compost and in particular composted animal manure. I've long been a fan of composted cow manure. You can take a handful and bring it up to your nose and smell it, you won't smell anything resembling a cow. It will smell earthy, it will crumble nicely in your fingers. It's no longer manure, its soil's best friend.
Another way of wrapping your head around this is looking up the use of urine in organic gardening. I'd be willing to bet that most folks feel a bit better about urine than feces. For example, your girlfriend will be upset with you if you stray while urinating (standing up of course). But see what happens if you drop a load and miss the bowl....its a-whole-nother story! Likewise there's the old debate about whether its okay to pee in the shower. Lots of folks on both sides of that issue. But ask someone if they think its okay to cut a few logs in the tub and see what happens.
Urine is rich in nitrogen and is good for compost and for gardens (usually diluted). Urine is essentially sterile (there are some qualifications there) and so most folks aren't too worried about it. If you can get your head around the use of urine in the garden and compost and feel okay using composted cow manure without a haz-mat suit on, then you're well on your way to thoughtfully considering the use of composted humanure.
The book is certainly something to read and think about. It offers a practical way of saving energy and reducing waste and reducing our insane use of clean water. It also provides us with a steady stream of matter for our small compost piles that will reward us with nutrient rich hummus to use in our gardens. Otherwise we end up driving (using gas) to the store to buy bags (plastic) of compost (driven in from somewhere else) to bring home (more driving).
What are your thoughts?
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