Reviving the Yellow Bucket Project – kind of…

Well, after a long hiatus I am back on track for composting my waste.

My original idea was a mobile composting toilet, but it was just too challenging to keep up with.  I had to carry around this bucket at school and then take it to the bathroom with me every time.  It was just a bit silly.  Actually, it wasn’t that silly.  It was a great idea.  It was just hard to keep up with.

So now I am back focusing on humanure composting at home.  I am still just working with urine as it is much less complicated and, I believe, holds more nutrient value than feces. Further, it is much easier to manage – both in the home and in the garden.

The way I have been doing this at home is with a sawdust bucket, with some bokashi added.  This is a good model but is designed to handle feces as well, thus making it more than is necessary. With the sawdust it results in a greater volume of material to compost and I just do not have the space.

So I am switching to the bottle method.  Basically, pee directly into a bottle, put the lid on, and when it is full, dilute it with water and use it in the garden.   This will be way more manageable and will allow for immediate use.  It is the middle of winter right now so I won’t get maximum benefit, but I think I will still see results from winter additions in the spring.  I will use the fertilizer mostly at home, but also at a few other sites around town.  I will probably use a dilution rate of about 10 parts water to one part urine before applying.

I wish I had been keeping up with this a bit better.  I feel strongly that humanure is one of the missing components of today’s sustainability talk. Nobody wants to talk about shit and piss. But that won’t make it go away.  And you can ;t significantly reduce your C footprint by dumping your feces and urine into the ocean.