Bad news for the squeamish: our water-based flush-and-forget toilets are not sustainable over the long run.

Little glimmers of that realization are starting to come through in Baltimore, but it was up the road in Philadelphia, at the recent 10th Annual World Toilet Summit, that this message was issued loud and clear.

The Summit, held from Nov. 1 through Nov. 3 (this year for the first time in the U.S.) is the brainchild of Jack Sim, a businessman from Singapore and founder of the World Toilet Organization (WTO).

((An interview with Jack Sim about this year’s World Toilet Summit.))

The summit was hosted by the American Society of Plumbing Engineers (ASPE), a trade organization for designers of plumbing systems, and the International Code Council (ICC) which seeks uniform guidelines, standards, and codes for plumbing and many other building  components throughout the US and around the globe.

Reflecting the growing interest in sustainability, incoming ASPE President William F. Hughes, Jr., is LEEDS trained and certified. Jay Peters, executive director of plumbing, mechanical and fuel gas for the ICC, has been working with the WTO to develop “Global Guidelines for Practical Toilet Design” in an attempt to standardize the design and installation of public toilets anywhere in the world.

Sim and others are convinced that we need instead to think much more in terms of waterless or so-called “dry toilets,” especially in parts of the world where water shortages are common.  That goes for our cities and towns  – not just rural areas – as well.

Baltimore’s smartest toilets

Though we may not have come very far yet, Baltimore is showing the first signs of jumping onto the eco-friendly toilet bandwagon.

Composting toilets are currently used in public facilities such as the new Visitor and Education Center at the Cylburn Arboretum and the Herring Run Watershed Center on Belair Road.

The new toilets in the Arboretum, which re-opened in May 1st of this year, are Baltimore’s first composting toilets.  According to the Urbanite, the Watershed Center’s composting toilets use waste to fertilize its green roof.

Someday, these devices may be more the norm than a green novelty. Baltimore has a deeply aging sewer infrastructure and is under a massive consent decree to get some of it up to par. Anything to reduce the waste volume would ease the problem.

As Sim stated at this year’s Summit: “Shortage of water will help us” to achieve sustainability.  Beyond the availability of water is the increasingly questionable practice of industrialized nations incurring the unnecessary expense of treating raw water up to a standard of drink-ability only to flush it right down the toilet.

How does a dry toilet work?

Dry toilets are designed to use human excreta as resources, not waste.  First off, urine is diverted into a separate chamber from feces.  The urine, which is full of nitrogen compounds is generally sterile (that is, without pathogens), and can be used right away in diluted liquid form on plants to enhance growth.  It can also be dried to produce a phosphorus-based fertilizer called “struvite.”

Feces must be composted over a substantial period of time to become free of pathogenic organisms, at which time it can be applied as a fertilizer.  Methane or biogas can also be produced from human excreta as a fuel for cooking and other uses.  These possibilities are all part of an approach called ecological sanitation, or “ecosan,” which builds on the concept of total re-cycling rather than disposal.

Resistance to non-water toilets

According to sources in a local green architecture firm, there are substantial efforts underway to obtain official approval of toilets that flush using (gray water recycled from household drains) and rainwater, which is then directed into the sanitary sewer system.  However, it is the opinion of one local architect that “99% of the American population is hostile” to the idea of composting toilets.  Which raises the question:  What will it take to change that mindset?

Better toilet design is an essential part of getting people to open their minds to new ways of disposing of our human waste.  One reason for slow adoption of such ways, according to Sim, is that “architects are not toilet-trained.”

Why now?

At the age of 40, Sim decided to become a crusader for sanitation for all because he was appalled that two of every five people on earth lived with the ill health – not to mention indignity- caused by inadequate sanitation.

In the countries where the toilets and disposal methods that we’re used to don’t exist, the people included in the statistic above resort to open defecation on roads, near or in waterways, and in the case of women and girls, under the cover of night because of the dangers such public practices presented.  Millions of girls in developing nations were and still are routinely leaving their schools around the age of first menstruation because of their schools’ lack of proper sanitation.

One of the meeting’s more engaging speakers at this year’s Toilet Summit, the geologist Trevor Mulaudzi from South Africa, has made it his life’s mission to bring sanitation and active janitorial services to that country’s public schools.  Out of both respect and affection, the schoolchildren have dubbed him “Dr. Shit.”

Check out the Brew reader’s comment on Art Cohen’s previous article, “Whatever happened to public toilets?” The reader, “Usha Nellore,” describes her experience with toilets where she is from in India, “the kingdom of public urination.”

Will it work?

It would be reasonable to ask whether this ecological sanitation has a place in homes here in the United States.  It is already used in some rural settings and state parks. In those parts of the developed world where there are regular water shortages or lack of piped water – parts of the US Southwest, and Spain – this kind of sanitation can make a good deal of sense.  In Europe, the Finns, Swedes, and Germans all use variations of this toilet in special applications, such as summer homes.  [Global Dry Toilet Association of Finland].

There is growing use of ecological sanitation in developing nations all around the globe – China, India, Sri Lanka, several nations in Africa, Mexico, Colombia, and Argentina.

According to Professor Jan-Olof Drangert from Linköping University, Sweden and the World Toilet College, “Development for ecosan will come from the developing countries, not from the US [which is] too hidebound in [its] ways.”

When asked what he considered the most significant achievements of the WTO, Sim said:

“We broke the taboo, and made the world talk about toilets.”  The WTO, which has members from 58 countries and 235 organizations, has succeeded by using a “unique mix of humor first, then serious facts.”  Sim sees himself as a broker who brings interested parties together to explore and develop ecological sanitation and provide toilets for all those who need them.

For more information about waterless toilets:

“A Community Guide to Environmental Health”

“Fighting for the Right to Flush,” Time Magazine, July 31, 2007,

The Last Taboo—Opening the Door on the Global Sanitation Crisis, by Maggie Black and Ben Fawcett (2007)

The Big Necessity—The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why it Matters, by Rose George (2008)

Compendium of Sanitation Systems and Technologies by Elizabeth Tilley, Christoph Lüthi, et al.