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Originally Posted by Mohoender
That works of course but that is also why toilets were located far away from the house, outside and at the other end of the garden. At least, outside. I would think that the most interesting picture is the one of the outside toilet box.
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Actually they say that as long as you use sufficient covering material the composting toilet doesn't smell - not having used one of these things I'm not sure if I entirely believe them. But those homemade loos were pretty small and could easily be put in a cutained off corner of the room - and in mid-Winter that might seem like a pretty good option (I have a dog and taking him out first thing when I'm in my dressing gown can be no fun at all some days). Some people might choose to just use them on cold days or at night.
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Originally Posted by Mohoender
If you are unlucky to still live in a city, you'll certainly be using any kind of small container that you throw out of the window in the morning. Cities will smell nice again and you'll better walk in the center of the streets  . |
Unless the city has some organised government that imposes rules that people need to use the composting toilet or it's equivalent - you only need to look at Harare in Zimbabwe today to see what happens just a few days after the water purification plant goes down, water stops flowing and people are reduced to collecting water from dirty rivers.
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Originally Posted by Mohoender
About alternatives, there is another very good one invented by a German. Just take the water you use to wash youself, the dishes and your clothes, put it into a tank and then use it for your toilet. After all what is the point of using clean drinkable water to flush the toilets (no chance you'll do that in T2K).
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Hmm yes, that is certainly an alternative for house dwellers - until leaks in the water pipes kill the water pressure (or lack of energy kills the pumping stations) and then the apartment dweller will need to carry litre upon litre of water from whatever source they can find up the stairs to their flat. I think any option you can find to minimise those trips up and down would be pretty popular.
My wife is Lebanese and lived in Beruit right through the civil war - she is 50 now and her back was ruined because she was the only person at the time under 50 in her block of flats. When the power went out, which it did often, she had to carry fuel for the generator that each flat had (the generators used to sit out on the balconies, you can imagine what the noise in that street was like when the power was off) and gas for the cookers for each flat - 12 flats over six floors. Lugging a 15kg gas cylinder up a flight of stairs is no fun - imagine if you are a 4'11" tall female trying it over six flights.
I can see how blocks of flats would have advantages and disadvantages in T2K - anyone trying to break in would have limited choice of routes if you lived in the upper floors, if you were in a low rise area you could have better observation of the surrounding area, and the flat roof could mean you could do limited gardening there without you crop getting ripped off. But you'd have to lug an awful lot of stuff up those staircases (and down again with the "humanure").
Actually it occurs to me that one medieval job that would return in T2K in organised settlements of any size would be the "night soil" man. 20 Litres of "humanure" per person per week would add up to a pretty big pile of poo for just a small family unit over the course of a year (over 4000 litres). A lot of people aren't going to have immediate access to open space where they can store a personal compost heap so it would make sense for the government to organise removal to a central location where they can run a sequence of compost heaps. This would have both health benefits removing the actual waste from the residential area, and in ensuring that the compost is allowed time to finish the process safely before being used in the fields ("jumping the gun" can allow micro-organisms back into the food chain with poor health results).
Given human nature to be lazy in the short term even when knowing the possible long term consequences of taking the short cut I can see local militiamen being obliged to keep an eye out for people tossing their shit rather than disposing of it properly. An opportunity for a ref to insert some "local colour" (presumably brown in this case) into his description of the town?