At the world Dry Toilet Summit, only sanity gets flushed

Union Leader ^ | 1/19/04 | MICHAEL FUMENTO

[kattracks]

I ADMIT I am an occasional fan of "potty humor," at least to the extent that I enjoy the series "South Park" featuring four foul-mouthed little boys. But in many parts of the world, potties are no joke but rather literally a matter of life and death.

Over 2.4 billion people, or 40 percent of the world's population, lack proper sanitation. As a result, diarrhea alone kills about three million children under the age of five each year. Horrible parasites add to the butcher's bill.

But supposedly the last idea we should be considering for these poor folks are the flush-toilet systems that have made waterborne illness virtually non-existent in the West. That would be an "environmental disaster," one speaker at the International Dry Toilet Conference last year in Finland told Cybercast News Service reporter Marc Morano. Why isn't entirely clear. Yes, parts of the underdeveloped world have severe water shortages but have you been to Arizona lately? Word has it they have some mighty fine flush toilets there.

Meanwhile some underdeveloped countries like Bangladesh are more deluged than Venice. For Bangladeshis, not drowning is practically the national pastime.

Further, while water is a natural resource it's not something that you can actually use up like ore or fossil fuels. Water always remains water; reusing it is just a matter of cleaning it.

Descriptions of "dry toilets" often make them sound quite sophisticated, but basically they're little more than indoor outhouses that sell for anything from four to eight times what a flush toilet at Home Depot or Sears goes for.

Dry toilets do allow you to read People magazine in the comfort of your own home, and you can "walk (to) the privies in the rain and never wet your feet!" as the song from "Oklahoma!" goes. But they also have disadvantages over outhouses, such as having to be emptied and giving a wide variety of disease-carrying insects and vermin a home within YOUR home.

One former user of "a dry toilet" chronicled his negative experiences in an Internet-posted essay. "No matter what I tried over the years there were always times when one could not lift the lid without several flies lifting off and heading for the kitchen," wrote Dave Keenan. "The flies were of two main kinds, the tiny drosophila or fruit fly and some larger wasp-like black flies."

"Don't get me wrong, it's fine to have all kinds of worms, flies, spiders, cockroaches, a whole mini-ecosystem," Keenan wrote. "But you don't really want them coming out . . . and into your house. Even if I was to be convinced that there was little health danger from flies coming out of the toilet and landing on food, how would I convince my guests that it was OK?" What's needed in the underdeveloped world is what we already have in the industrialized countries: better — if cheaper — sewage treatments. And cheaper alternatives do exist. A single report at the 2001 World Toilet Summit in Singapore detailed five different technologies that are as safe as those used in North America and Europe yet can cost less than a fourth of what we pay per household.

No matter, for the hatred of flush toilets is pathological. "Here I was at a conference in Johannesburg, (South Africa), listening agape while these people complained that the flush toilet was one of the greatest environmental disasters of all time," Competitive Enterprise Institute Senior Fellow Chris Horner told me.

In contrast, dry toilets play no role in the World Health Organization's "Toilets and Taps for All" program, with a goal year of 2025. WHO says the program can be funded by the underdeveloped countries themselves if, as one Toilet Summit paper noted, they free up the trillions of dollars they have in capital by being given "legal title to the land and the housing" to those who occupy it.

In other words, what's needed is not dry toilets but free markets.

"But the position of the intellectual elite is, 'There's been enough wealth created now that I've got mine,'" says Horner. "They figure if they can't force these people not to procreate, at least they can keep them from prospering." Having worked feverishly to deny citizens of developing nations cars, coal-fired plants, insecticides, and biotech crops that have made lives in the industrialized world so much safer and comfortable, they're now even demanding control of the Third World's bowels and bladders.

But Third World residents have the same right to anything they can afford that we do. They should tell the toilet Trotskyites that how and where they do their "business" is nobody's business but their own.

Michael Fumento (fumento@pobox.org) is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute.

[cspackler]

There is actually such a thing as a "dry toilet conference"? Don't get too silly, though. Any lib worth their salt could eventually extend the crapola argument for our current "reduced flow" toilets (the ones we flush twice) to try to make a logical argument for forcing dry toilets on us.

[jimtorr]

They'll pry my high-flow water using toilet from my cold, dead......

Well, ahem, they'll have a hard time convincing me to install an "inhouse".

It's doubtful that Eastern Maryland or Western Oregon would ever get dry enough to worry about it.

[herkbird]

We should export are modern flush toilets that are modified to save water. The great design fails in flushing most excrement, in the meantime requiring many more water wasting flushes, a nasty plunger and many foul words. After using such a modern toilet in a recently built home. I'm so thankful that I still have the older model. Which I believe saves much more water than these useless water saver's, which just don't work. Place more than two sheets of toilet paper in them and they become plugged and very frustrating.

A dry toilet full of bugs, forget it. Most bathrooms are filthy enough no matter how well cleaned, that having the thought of bugs coming from a dry toilet, reminds me too much of the outhouses that used to be called rest areas in this country at one time. Todays children have missed a great part of the biggest technology change that ever took place in the United States of America. Although the overflowing Porta-Potties used at certain Venues may give them a vision of the past.

I find it insane for people to say that the flush toilet coupled to a well designed and maintained sewer system is a poor system. I remember the waterways in this country when sewer systems were in their infancy. Many waterways were cloudy and stunk to high heaven nearby any city. I have been back to places of my childhood where the water once was foul. It now looks extremely clean and no longer smells like diluted human sewage.

To each his own, but I'll take the 20 year old toilet that flushes, over anything else currently on the market. It's as close to perfection as most things I use on a daily basis.

[mewzilla]

So what do you do with the dried waste?

[Jimmy Valentine]

"crapola argument"

An unintentional salute on your part to Sir Thomas Crapper, Chief Administrator of the London water and sewer system and inventor of the flush toilet.

After flush toilet sanitation systems were installed in London, death from Cholera and Typhoid dropped by huge numbers.

These two hardy perennials among diseases always show up at third world disasters.

Regards,

[mewzilla]

A link for the 2003 Dry Toilet Conference. I'm still waiting to hear how one disposes of the dry waste, which I'm sure is not sanitary.

[Nataku X]

It's basically in a pail, I believe... they may add some sort of chemical/sponge to consolidate it all into a solid gel. A couple of links suggest that there are companies who have set up "waste disposal" services much like diaper services.

But, you're right, there is no way it's more sanitary than flush tiolets. The water that the sewage treatment plants pump back out is cleaner than the bottled water you buy.

[rockprof]

You put it in your organic garden silly. (How come these tomatoes smell funny?)

[17th Miss Regt]

I think you have hit upon an important point. The ones who will suffer from dry toilets being used instead of flush toilets are 'minorities'. Because liberals have such abject contempt and hatred for them, they are happy to encourage anything that makes these folks die faster. See how they encourage abortion as a preferred means of birth control, particularly among 'minorities'.

[cspackler]

An unintentional salute on your part

Not completely...

[Libertarianize the GOP]

ping

[mikegi]

We should export are modern flush toilets that are modified to save water. The great design fails in flushing most excrement, in the meantime requiring many more water wasting flushes, a nasty plunger and many foul words.

I call them "Al Gore" toilets. When we first moved into our new house, in 1996, I was talking to a neighbor. He said that after he moved into his house, he went to Home Depot to buy a bunch of plungers. The guy at HD commented, "Guess you bought a new house, eh?". It's well known that these wondertoilets don't work yet the Lefties continue to deny it.

I wonder how many of these "water saving" toilets Al Gore has in his mansion?

[crv16]

To each his own, but I'll take the 20 year old toilet that flushes, over anything else currently on the market. It's as close to perfection as most things I use on a daily basis.

We installed an American Standard power-assisted flush toilet after becoming frustrated with frequent clogs with our low-flow toilet. It works great. Had it about 2 years now, and have never clogged it, and very rarely does it require 2 flushes. The only downside is the noise.

[DoctorMichael]

BTTT

[mewzilla]

You put it in your organic garden silly. (How come these tomatoes smell funny?)

LOL. If you read the manuals for these things, even the manufacturers state that the waste is a bio hazard.

[wildbill]

At the risk of being derided or flamed, I'll give Y'all some information on the "dry" or "composting" toilet. I've actually done some research on it, looking for a solution to building an indoor toilet on a remote desert mountainside where flushing is simply not an alternative.

It's not at all a simple "two-holer" like I knew at my grandma's. I believe the original concept and patent is Swedish and was given to the Clivus Multrum company.

The reason these toilets are more expensive is that they require some lateral space--a chute that has a slope in it--and should have a vertical pipe chimney that carries odors (and bugs) outside, using the venturi effect. They also have to have a door at the end of the chute for removal after the period needed for composting. However, the initial higher cost may be offset by the fact that water is not necessary or used in great amounts forever.

Human and other household waste slides down the chute and becomes part of a compost pile full of enzymes that reaches high temperatures, high enough to sanitize the waste material. This usually takes about 4-6 months, depending on the average outside temperatures.

Properly built there is no danger from disease and this type of system provides the only sanitary method to dispose of human waste in areas where water or infrastructure are not available. That's why there was a Third World conference.

[farmfriend]

Rights, farms, environment ping.

Let me know if you wish to be added or removed from this list.
I don't get offended if you want to be removed.

---

If this is taxes with reprsentation
Give me taxes without representation
I much prefer a tax on tea!
Instead of everything else.

[E.G.C.]

BTTT!!!!!!

[B4Ranch]

Yes, parts of the underdeveloped world have severe water shortages but have you been to Arizona lately? Word has it they have some mighty fine flush toilets there.

Soon it will be parts of the developed world have severe water shortages , most notably the United States. The increase in immigration has caused many unmentionable difficulties that were not discussed during President Bush's 2004 "Temporary Worker Plan".