From: "Scott Willing" Subject: Re: composting toilet/ manufactured, self-contained -> compost for your veggies Date: Fri, 1 Jun 2001 10:04:45 -0500 Newsgroups: alt.permaculture > Composters otoh ARE odorless when operated and maintained to mfr's > specs. And you can grow the biggest flowers in town if you spread the > finished compost on the garden. Not to mention great veggies. One of the great myths of composting is that the finished material is unsuitable for food crops. Scares the hell out of people, they're dead sure you might as well put a gun to your head and get it over with. Well, if you do a proper job of it (get a good book like The Humanure Handbook, a compost thermometer and let compost age at least a season, if not two) the material is not *just* safe, it is black gold. You are completing the nutrient cycle and building soil health, instead of depleting the soil and / or further polluting the planet with chemical fertilizers. For all the folks who think this is disgusting or dangerous, consider two wee factoids: 1. "Night soil" is the reason that China has been able to farm the same fields for thousands of years without petro-chemical garbage. Meanwhile in North America, with our clever technology, fertilizers and pesticides, in less than a hundred years we have lost a huge percentage of topsoil and fouled both surface and ground water with nitrates and heavy metals. Not many people realize just how critical the situation is becoming. Night soil is spread directly on the fields in many cultures, which certainly is risky from the standpoint of spreading pathogens. But proper composting retains all the nutrients and benefits of the material, while eliminating pathogens completely. It happens naturally and needs very little assistance (not even the constant turning that many "authorities" demand). 2. Although even in North America we continue to dump raw sewage into the ocean, *some* sewage treatment plants are actually quite good at releasing fairly clean water back into the environment. But even in these cases, toxic sewage sludge remains. And we are running out of places to bury it, and finding more and more cases where (duh) buried sludge has leaked into aquifers and polluted them anyway. So a common application of human sewage sludge today is - (ready?) - to fertilize food crops. Not common knowledge, but common practice. It is often sold cheap or even given free to farmers - a great idea if we were talking about clean composted crap, but this stuff is scary. We aren't talkin' good clean poop and pee, properly composted with bulk carbon materials and thus transformed into a nutrient rich, perfectly safe soil amendment and conditioner. This is sewage sludge that has been fouled with all the nasty chemicals, heavy metals, paint leftovers and all that other stuff that people fire into their sinks and drains thinking they'll never see them again. A recent interview with rural residents in Ontario, Canada, turned up cases in which folks followed their noses to stinking fields and found whole condoms and the like lying right on the freshly-sprayed fields. And a few months later... strawberries! Think about it next time you're at the grocery store. Mmmm.... sludge. And if you possibly can, learn to compost your own humanure safely, have it tested for pathogens by a reliable lab to make sure, then grow your own food with it. No pollution, superb food without chemicals, and a completed nutrient cycle, more or less as mom nature intended.