The Adventures of Building a Composting Toilet

How to build a composting toilet:

1. Find a suitable site

2. Get the help of a Mother's Club (they are super strong!)

3. Have faith

How a composting toilet works: there are two chambers where the solids (poo) go and the urine is diverted with a special toilet seat into an infiltration pit. After a person uses the composting toilet, they put a handful of dry soil, ash, or leaves into the chamber to help keep the solids really really dry. As long as the solids in the chamber stay really dry, there will be less odors and the solids can decompose into fertilizer over time. The idea is that a family can use one of the chambers until it is full (designed to fill in about a year for a family of 5), then they can use the other chamber for a second year while the first chamber sits and decomposes. Once the second chamber is full (about another year later) the family is able to remove the solids from the first chamber (now a soil-like fertilizer) and spread around for use on plants, and they can re-use the first chamber again. The design reduces the need to build a whole latrine every time it gets filled up, and has significantly less odors than traditional pit latrines.