Compost Toilets

Learn all about composting – reusing natures human resource!

At St.Clara Lake – Alentejo, Portugal 17 – 24 Oct. 2008

Associação para a vida sustentável

Experience low-impact living * enjoy a beautiful environment

Join us in one of Portugal´s most enchanting Lakeside locations to learn and construct a new composting loo – the basic essential for low-impact ecological and self-reliant living.

We will:

• õ Understand composting basics and design for location and use
• õ Choose a practical location for access + garden
• õ Design and build a twin-composting loo !

This is a practical and fun experience for anyone wanting to live more sustainably and experience self-reliant low-impact living.

Pete+Helen live by St.Clara Lake in a remote “away from it all” location. Their simple well-founded lifestyle plus super home cooking and lakeside recreation will truly inspire.

Cost: €35 a day – Workshop 7 days (inc. beach day). Total €225 or day rate. Concession +1 week work exchange option. Early booking recommended.

Our Itinerary will cover theory and practical, including the following topics:

• * Basics of composting theory and practise
• * Choices of design plus practical imiting factors
• * Use of natural materials
• * Hand tools and machines
• * Arranging materials and preparation of work site environment
• * Constructional team work + team building

We will enjoy evening social activities and take time out on th lake. We will share good vegetarian food. Please bring working clothes and basic first aid.
Please state special needs. Basic facilities are simple and provided.
Travel to Quinta Arco-Iris, Odemira + for accomodation options – please ask for details.

More Information.

www.rainbowcommunities.org

We have just found a photo of our first ever compost toilet.

It’s not a great photo, but you can just about see that the loo is simply a wooden box over a hole in the ground. Under a tree, that gets to ‘eat’ our waste!

a box over a hole

We’ve just added a new gallery of a simple compost toilet that we helped build some years ago.
It is basically a hole in the ground, being very careful not to contaminate water sources, with 4 posts stuck in the ground around it, and wooden slats nailed on. Then a wooden seat box over the hole.

A group of friends built it in a day, while the owner of the land was away, and it is still being used now.

Welcome to the world of compost toilets.

We regularly receive enquiries about composting toilets, so I thought I’d make a website to tell the world about compost loos, ours in particular, and hopefully so other people who have built and use compost toilets can share their ideas, information and photos here.

Our compost toilets are pretty grand. Brick built, and not much different to a conventional toilet room in any home (but standing alone away from the house). But compost toilets come in many shapes and sizes, from very basic to deluxe.

The basic idea is that it is stupid to mix the valuable resource of humanure with water, as happens in conventional flush loos. It makes far more sense to view the humanure as a resource and compost it dry to make very very nutritious compost to grow your vegetables.

The photo in the top of the sidebar is of our compost toilet block, and here is another one:

deluxe model!

We’ve been using this toilet now for 18 months, and before that our toilet was a simple system, of a seat over a hole, under a fruit tree. Compost toilets can be very very simple.