SUSTAINABLE
Is it not strange, absurd really, that toilets that do not deliberately mix drinkingwater with feces and urine on a large scale, are not taken
seriously, neither by users nor the "experts" in the field? You would think differently when seeing the serious crisis
the world faces with both drinking water shortage and shortage of clean broad spectrum fertilizers containing the
crucial micronutrients in the right proportions to give food crops their good taste and good nutrition ?
Long-Term Composting Toilets with a purpose to return those nutrients to agriculture is actually the only
technology we can call SUSTAINABLE!
The flush toilet or water closet (WC) with sewers to "get rid of the sewage" is actually the least sustainable technology
there is when it comes to deal with our human excreta.
-WC pollutes yours and your neighbors drinking water
-WC spreads the nutrients that over-fertilize our lakes, river, estuaries and oceans
-WC uses about 1/3 of your precious drinking water
-WC spreads virus, bacteria, parasites and lately concerns for concentrated hyper-infectious human prions through waste
water and sludge
-WC can also clog, freeze, break, flood and leak water as well as break mechanically.
...in other words, as necessary as the yearly flu
The final product from the long-term composting is an odorfree, safe to use liquid, which can be used
as a fertilizer.
The solids remains in the processing tanks as it shrinks and can remain in the tank for several decades. This is how human
pathogens are isolated and given a chance to degrade over a long period of time. New threats to our health seems to
continueously appear, come to our attention and they are best dealt with stayin isolation whilst subjected to decay. The
longer the retention time the better.
Baserad på 45 års erfarenheter
Background
Carl Lindström is a civ. egineer from KTH Stockholm and MIT Cambridge MA. He is the co-founder along with
his parents of the first commercial composting toilet Clivus AB, which later became Clivus Multrum AB. There
was an early assumtion that the system would produce solid compost. Over the years a new process has emerged
called Long-Term Composting (see video on the left) where the end-product is liquid and the solids is left
for several decades. Based on decades of observations, a next generation process-tanks have been developed,
taking less space and working with less maintenance and service than the older Clivus tanks. Carl was in
the 1970ies working for the Swedish Environ-mental Protection Board and later served as environmental attché
in Wash. DC. He works now as earlier with the US corporation Clivus Multrum USA Inc. In 2007 Carl founded
CompostEra AB in Sweden with sights set on solving waste problems in the Swedish archipelago, replacing
the older latrine-collection systems. The new tanks are dimensioned to go for 30-50 years without solids-removal.
Long-Term Composting has found great support in countries where ground water is vulnerable to pollution
from toilet-systems that do not stop disease organisms from spreading into the environent.
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