Slashdot Mirror
Why Worms In the Toilet Might Be a Good Idea
derekmead writes "Billions worldwide still don't have access to proper sanitation, and those that do still require a ton of water and electricity to keep waste flowing. A French company is offering one solution: Use turd-eating worms to compost waste right at the source. Ecosphere Technologies has developed an outhouse that, rather than relying on chemicals like a port-a-john, relies on about a pound of red wiggler worms. A new installation in Quebec uses imported worms, placed inside of a mixture of dung and straw underneath to toilet, to devour feces delivered to them by a conveyor belt system. (When someone uses the toilet, pee filters through sand to wash away, while a pedal allows the user to transport their poo to the worm space.) The whole system uses no water or electricity, and a series of passive vents allegedly keeps the toilet smelling great. The company claims it can be used 10,000 times without servicing, which is far better than what a port-a-potty can boast, although with a current price tag of $40k for the worm system, port-a-potties are still a lot cheaper."
first worm!
This is not a signature.
worm a potty sounds so gross!
But the last thing the world needs is more toilet humor.
It's a fascinating science idea, but there's no way I can see it marketed to take off. Starting with the fact that people have reasonable levels of phobias of living things where they poo; see prevalent folk tales of squirrels and snakes in toilets, etc.
It's just simply more economical to dig a hole in the ground, and provide hand sanitizer.
There's a spot in User Info for World of Warcraft account names? Really?
I already have worms in my poop.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
It doesn't just vanish, you know?
Do the kids get training wheels?
4$ per flush. That's pretty steep!
And $40K for a pound of warms, sand, and a conveyer system? Must be the new Millionaire tax that France is enacting that is raising the prices.
...and it's just a matter of time before mutant giant worms will devour unsuspecting toilet visitors!
Surprised that wasn't said first. I signed up just for this bad pun. Well, not a lurker any more. :-)
Perhaps this is too expensive to replace the portable restrooms in developing countries, but perhaps this could be used in larger-scale applications to help deal with the solid waste in waste treatment facilities? Instead of using harsher chemicals, we could augment it with more biological processes such as this to increase the efficiency of the treatment. Just a thought anyway.
Bubba: Hey, where you goin'?
Hank: I'm goin' fishin'.
Bubba: Got worms?
Hank: Yeah, but I'm goin' anyway.
"...and the worms, ate, in, to, his brain."
Forward! -- Emperor Norton, 2012
were is the news? the news is that a small portion of the world flushes their waste away with drinking quality water and that there are billions of others that don't. There are many systems that don't require a 'flushing toilet', the post is about just one, so it's more like an advert than a story, oh, crap.
There was an unknown error in the submission.
they flush
Just a matter of time before the worms feed on enough blood-infested stool from anal fissures and hemorrhoids to turn carnivorous. Queue real-life Ghoulies II re-enactment..
The article referenced by TFA says the worms are "... Eisenia fetida or red wiggler worms native to Europe imported from France and raised locally by Helene Beaumont ..." I'm currently being invaded by stink bugs imported from China, so I'm not particularly fond of folks proposing solutions that require importing non-native critters. Can't they find an indigenous turd-eating worm?
Worms that are there for the purpose of sanitation? Good idea.
Worms that are there because of something you ate? See a doctor...
/* No Comment */
Oops. Wrong worm.
... worm poop on YOU!
This sig is not paradoxical or ironic.
There are actually several models of these out already. Some of the folks up here have them instead of an outhouse. http://www.envirolet.com/ The funny part is that you have to turn a handle on the toilet to mix the, uh, contents around after you go. I think you can put other wastes in them (like kitchen scraps) and they will be composted as well...
I wish this joke was original with me... Slashdot: News for turds, Stuff that splatters. Saw it when we were last fascinated with Japanese toilets.
Really? Poop and pee?
Urine and feces. There, I said it. Or excrement if you like. Take your pick, but I don't see why we can't just try to use adult words.
Imagine a summary talking about "nuts cancer".
The Romans loved something called "lickerfish", probably a catfish, that hung out at the Rome sewer outflows into the Tiber river. In other words, these fish got fat eating human shit, and the Romans considered them a delicacy.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
In Australia we already use composting toilets on country roads for rest stops etc. They don't smell and are cheap to produce and maintain and the ventilation fan runs off a solar cell on the roof. Why should someone pay 40k for old tech?
sudo mount --milk --sugar
Red wrigglers? They're the Cadillac of worms.
What do you know: the Cadillac of Worms really exist. Who'd have thunk it?
Good, inexpensive web hosting
Stilgar, do we have wormsign? Usul, we have wormsign the likes of which even God has never seen!
The alternative to these worms isn't port-a-pots, it's composting toilets, which you might find in remote cabins. They're expensive, but certainly not 40k.
And people have worked-out much cheaper DIY options which do the same thing. You just need a seat, a bucket, a vent (preferably with a small electric exhaust fan) and a handful of microbes to throw in to get started. All of the above are very inexpensive in the 1st world. In the 3rd world, local potters could make all of it, except the microbes, and that's surely much easier to transport than live worms...
http://www.composting-toilet-store.com/Microbe_Mix_p/microbe_mix.htm
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Why Worms In the Toilet Might Be a Good Idea
Better out than in, eh?
Fuck just use laser beams, dammit!
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Actually, a worm septic tank. It seems similar in usage to a normal septic tank, but with worms in it. It does require a pump in order to pump the treated water out, into our lawn (which we never need to water). Apparently the treated water is safe enough to drink but we haven't tried. All our grey and black water feeds into it, and we have a normal toilet. Cost about $12,000 installed. Just like other septic tanks, we have it checked twice a year, but maintenance is essentially nil apart from that. Not allowed to use bleach though!
However, if we go away for a month or two, we would need to ask our neighbours to pop by and feed our worms ... by using the toilet. Easier than feeding the dog I guess.
Sorry, I stopped reading the submission at the word "turd-eating".
If you're not going to take yourself (or your publication) seriously, neither am I. Talk like a grown up; not a four year old.
When I was a kid we used an outhouse, you could shine a flashlight down into the stench of the toilet (a very small structure with a wooden bench supported above a hole in the ground about 12 feet deep or so). What you saw, was a writhing mass of brown mass of feces being composted at breakneck speed. After looking at it for awhile (we were kids at the time ;) you realized all the writhing was being done by a massive number of maggots just a few feet beneath the toilet bench where you sat, and they were composting those feces as fast as they could eat. Today the soil underneath that outhouse would probably be almost ideal fertilizer.
9/11 Eyewitnesses to Explosive WTC Demolition 1 of 2
When someone uses the toilet, pee filters through sand to wash away, while a pedal allows the user to transport their poo to the worm space.
Awwwww, damn. Who forgot to pedal? Would you look at that! There's no TP in there -- They didn't even wipe!
( $_ ~= s/pedal/flush/ ) == Actually said this last week.
The kid is 18 for fuck's sake. Damn SmartPhones & the ADD teens who use them!
Most people don't realize it, but the humble, ubiquitous earthworm is an invasive species in North America. Though you might think of it as useful and beneficial to the soil, in the forests of north America, the earthworm is causing a lot of damage. So I get a bit concerned when they start talking about throwing in "imported worms."
Who will feed the worms when on vacation? I suppose they starve, and as of that point, the toilet can be used exactly once more, before servicing ;)
CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
Did you know that Minnesota has 15 non-native species of earthworms in its forest?
http://www.dnr.state.mn.us/invasives/terrestrialanimals/earthworms/index.html
"All of the terrestrial earthworms in Minnesota are non-native...at least seven species are invading our hardwood forests and causing the loss of tree seedlings, wildflowers, and ferns."
I've seen before/after photos of forests where earthworms moved in and the undergrowth just disappeared. I don't think that increasing the use of non-native worms is a good idea.
https://www.facebook.com/digitizeicm -- Show your support for the digitization of the Iron County Miner newspaper archiv
...a strong sense of humus.
$40K for a bucket? Wow. Great marketing!
The worms that come out are fat and stout.
Not the best place to ask I imagine but... Does anyone know which Pouges song these lyrics were from? (it might have been more of an intro to the song rather than actual lyrics as they have never come up on a search)
Errr, the toilet isn't the "source".
Although that would be an innovation worth posting on Slashdot: parasitic intestinal worms engineered to turn faeces into compost in vivo.
Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
We're all grownups, many of us are nerds, technically literate and so are completely used to the idea of using reasonably long words for the precision they offer.
Can we please ban "pee" and "poo"? Always and forever.
So why stop at the toilet? Push those worms up our butts and be done with it.
No toilets, but they are actively using Facebook?
Carol vs. Ghost
Was the submission written by a 6 year-old?
Why is it that in a nerdy site like Slashdot, expressly dedicated to smart people, an article is written with childish words like "pee," "turd," and "poo"?
I'm in no way offended by the language, but by the lazy, crude, and idiotic way of using it. There are so many more intelligent ways to express oneself than using school-yard slang.
-dZ.
Carol vs. Ghost
The worm looks up and shrugs "Eh, it's a living!"
.
Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
That many people in places with no water, too much poop, and not enough food so that everything they need has to be brought in by non-profits in the interest of "helping" them.... it's time to move to more hospitable places.
(only slightly joking here)
This problem has been solved before - In Ye Olden Dayes a common technique was to have your outhouse in the center of a copse of coppiced trees (willow being one of the preferred species due to it's particularly "hungry" roots), which would then convert your waste into firewood while cleaning out the pit for you. Unfortunately then as now mixing liquid and solid wastes produces a fairly toxic mass that's harmful to most life. So what was the solution? Some contrived conveyor system? No - they just put a catchment basin just beneath the front of the seat to catch liquids and redirect them under the trees at the surface. Sure, women had to pay a bit more attention to their aim, but the system was nice and simple with no moving parts to go wrong, and the trees were perfectly capable of dealing with both kinds of waste as long as it wasn't mixed together.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
As a Quebecer, I've always hate when people just call us "french". It just sound too much "France" in my ear.
Is "French Canadian company" or at worst "Quebec company" that hard to use?
I camp at a place that has pit/vault toilets, there's a several feet deep concrete circle that someone empties out occasionally (one of the worst jobs in the world if you ask me, the guy wears a full body plastic suit and a respirator).
I was thinking "venting" at the bottom (to the outside) with a screen of some sort, then a couple of feet of sand. This is the urine path.
Then a fine mesh layer on top of the sand and some arranged organic material with microbes to get things going.
How much use is necessary to keep it functional? What happens during the winter, it's cold and usage may drop to zero for months at a time?
Pros:
1. Less need for cleaning.
2. Creates compost, probably acceptable for straw fields for cow feed.
Cons, big ones
1. Cleaning it, how to separate compost from recent "droppings".
2. Is the urine an issue, into the ground, maybe 7-10 feet down?
3. What if the vent seals up and the urine collects? Nasty.
BlameBillCosby.com
Haven't composting toilets been around for quite a long time now?
The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny - Aesop