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Disposable Toilet To Change the World
captn ecks writes "A biodegradable and self-sterilizing bag for people of the toilet-disenfranchised world (40% of humankind) to dispose of their bodily waste and turn it into safe fertilizer has been created by a Swedish entrepreneur. It's a dead simple and brilliant solution to a vexing problem. From the article: 'Once used, the bag can be knotted and buried, and a layer of urea crystals breaks down the waste into fertilizer, killing off disease-producing pathogens found in feces. The bag, called the Peepoo, is the brainchild of Anders Wilhelmson, an architect and professor in Stockholm. “Not only is it sanitary,” said Mr. Wilhelmson, who has patented the bag, “they can reuse this to grow crops.”'"
You'll sh*t bricks!
If you're a poor peasant living in some place where they don't even have toilets, can you really afford bags to poo in? Chances are food and fuel are more important to you.
...and goes on to give it a name that five-year-olds everywhere can laugh at until they piss themselves. Presumably that's how he'll collect the urea crystals.
Nothing lasts forever but the certainty of change.
Hell, these things would come in quite handy during Mardi Gras when you're on parts of the parade route with no porta-johns.....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Too bad for Nintendo as I hear Peepoo was supposed to be the name of their next gen console. It actually works with their current naming scheme too. Wii (We) Peepoo (People).
and here I am using a Mountain Dew bottle like a chump.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Joseph Jenkins --author of the Humanure Handbook-- has been doing this for close to thirty years. His concept also has the benefit of being patent free and simpler. Look see here:http://www.jenkinspublishing.com/humanure.html
All you need is a 5 gallon bucket, some cover material (rice hulls, sawdust, shredded newspaper, or coffee grounds), and teensy bit of brain power.
You can get the book on Amazon or download it for free from his site: http://humanurehandbook.com/downloads/Humanure_Handbook_all.pdf
A recurring cost revenue model for using the toilet is not exactly what I would call a "simple solution." Especially not for people who can't even afford a toilet today.
Now proper fecal composting, THAT'S a simple solution... and damned near free, too. Hell, if you do it right, it's not even supposed to smell.
If I had a nickel for every time I had a nickel, I'd be richcursive!
It would be interesting to see a corporate model that allows these items to be sold to the hiker/camper crowd in the first world with revenue for those sales being used to donate the bags to places with a need. For example, I could easily see the Seattle area yuppie hiker crowd paying $10 for three bags at REI. Let's say it costs $5 to produce, package, import, market, and retail these bags. $4 of the remaining $5 could be used to produce more bags and donate them to international aid organizations.
It doesn't have to be free, it just has to pay for itself.
See my above post. I was in a hurry to write before, but now I have a few minutes to elaborate.
Using Mr. Jenkin's humanure method, one only needs a small bucket and clean cover material; all things that should be available locally. The humanure toilet can be kept indoors with no smell or chance of spreading any disease. After one year you will have a nice small compost pile that you can use on your food crops. No need to ship in bags or pay any patent royalties.
I don't know why, but in many parts of India, the government needs to pay people to use a toilet. Even when the government supplies a deluxe porta-potty, the likes of which you can only find at a multi-millionaire rapper's BBQ, the people simply won't use it. I don't know if it's a cultural taboo, or that squatting on the side of the street is believed to be cleaner or easier, but the people just won't use them. I wonder if this bag would be useful in that kind of situation, or if the people just wouldn't use it either.
Remember, we live in a world where many Africans believe that having intercourse with a virgin will cure HIV. Then there are some cultures that punish women with floggings, execution, or even immolation, for having the audacity to be raped. Men are killed for wearing shorts, and lesbians are raped in an effort to cure them. Some people even believe that the moon landing was faked, and that the U.S. government caused the 2001 WTC attacks.
Even if people own a shovel, many simply won't use it because they're too lazy, or too stupid.
You're just not looking at the problem the right way. This is a simple solution to the problem of "how to get paid every time a poor person takes a dump". It's the pinnacle of capitalist science, really.. a major achievement. It's all downhill from here, folks. This man has successfully applied the razor and blades model to human existence: free human, $0.02 per poop for the rest of his life. Let no one claim that western civilization never accomplished anything.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
What I don't get is, why doesn't Kenya and all these other 3rd world countries build a real sewer system?
Corruption.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
e.g.
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=methane+digester
You get methane which can be burned as fuel and the digestate is high in nitrogen, phosphorus and calcium.
Alternatively, lower tech without the gas tight fittings, drop the methane capture idea and use a dry toilet. It's more a matter of education and organisation than anything else.
I'll just point out that by not doing this in the west, we are effectively extracting phosphorus, nitrogen and calcium from our fields and pumping it into rivers and oceans. We then burn a load of fuel to dig up more phosphorus and calcium elsewhere and burn natural gas to produce nitrates to put back on the fields. It's dumb.
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