I live off-grid in the deep woods of Sweden with no neighbors; I heat my 125 year old timber house with firewood.
For two decades I lived in a fancy flat with all the amenities in a large city.
Now I do it in two 100L plastic barrels in my stables that also have an outhouse, each barrel corresponds to one of my needs.
I neutralize number 1 with Corega tabs in the warmer months, I neutralize number 2 with a scoop of peat or sawdust.
I also wash myself (in number 1) after number 2 using soap and a 10L-bidon with a shower hose attachment that I carry with me like a briefcase from the house during the colder months.
The barrels are emptied regularly in a hole in the woods, in summer the dung beetles take care of everything. There's virtually no smell, actually less than in a modern bathroom with mechanical ventilation. It's always drafty in the outhouse and I usually leave the door open anyway.
I can wax poetic about sitting in the outhouse on a sunny day with the door open watching the blue sky and hearing the wind in the trees with the birds chirping vis-à-vis doing it a concrete box surrounded by high-tech plumbing and equipment, but ironically it just feels better not having any nastiness inside or anywhere near the house I sleep and eat in.
Just think about that for a second.
I've been to Japan and I actually prefer my way.
I think technical (smart?) toilets are nasty, nasty to clean and even nastier to repair if they break.
Less is more, if given the choice I'd much prefer a simple (dumb?) toilet with a shower hose next to it.
This is pretty common in most bathrooms in Sweden.
I wonder if there is a way to do this with a regular composting toilet. The type that has a separate pee compartment in the bowl to separate liquids from "dry" material. I'd imagine it's quite hard to aim during the washing process and getting the solids wet defeats the purpose of a composting toilet.
I love my bidet and usually carry a travel bidet. For campervan camping I looked at composting toilets but this one problem has ruled them out for me so far.
Not "in the ground" in the strict sense, but I'm pretty sure that composting toilets would scale to population density. Same basic idea as shitting in a hole (and probably more useful than water-based toilets).
Scaling is not something intuitive to end user. Hard to say "pretty sure it scales" when your usage is so low scale, secondary effects are invisible to you
Of course sewers are amazing but they are used for a lot more than toilets. My point was: Composting toilets do not need to take up much more space than water-based toilets and it's entirely feasible to use them in many living settings. It's also possible to make use of the "waste" by composting it further, using urine as fertilizer and so on.
For two decades I lived in a fancy flat with all the amenities in a large city.
Now I do it in two 100L plastic barrels in my stables that also have an outhouse, each barrel corresponds to one of my needs.
I neutralize number 1 with Corega tabs in the warmer months, I neutralize number 2 with a scoop of peat or sawdust.
I also wash myself (in number 1) after number 2 using soap and a 10L-bidon with a shower hose attachment that I carry with me like a briefcase from the house during the colder months.
The barrels are emptied regularly in a hole in the woods, in summer the dung beetles take care of everything. There's virtually no smell, actually less than in a modern bathroom with mechanical ventilation. It's always drafty in the outhouse and I usually leave the door open anyway.
I can wax poetic about sitting in the outhouse on a sunny day with the door open watching the blue sky and hearing the wind in the trees with the birds chirping vis-à-vis doing it a concrete box surrounded by high-tech plumbing and equipment, but ironically it just feels better not having any nastiness inside or anywhere near the house I sleep and eat in.
Just think about that for a second.
I've been to Japan and I actually prefer my way.
I think technical (smart?) toilets are nasty, nasty to clean and even nastier to repair if they break.
Less is more, if given the choice I'd much prefer a simple (dumb?) toilet with a shower hose next to it.
This is pretty common in most bathrooms in Sweden.
P.S.
Rimfree toilets are the shit.