talk to Orion

1 - It's a cultural thing. Women can learn to pee standing up -- even really round women.

Anyone can learn to not pee where they poop, lowering the amount of smell and mess in general. Unless you have a bladder or kidney infection pee is sterile -- you can have a separate seat for peeing or use a separating toilet.
http://www.ecovita.net/products.html

Bring a small spray bottle with you -- it's really not that big a deal.
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2 - i really didnt care! all i wanted to know was when the stupid toilet paper was invented!!!! (Comment this)

3 - Great article - well written about various options that many of us don't know a thing about... Thanks! (Comment this)

4 - Hi. Thanks for a fun article.

How different cultures excrete and manage excreta varies almost as much as diet.

What's most interesting is not the how, but the where and then what of excreting. Urinating in well aerated soil allows for aerobic bacteria to transform the nitrite (via our urine's urea, creatine, etc.) to nitrate, a form of nitrogen that plants can use. So you might say that our unused protein can be used for growing plants.

Check out:
http://www.liquidgoldbook.com (Comment this)

5 - Thank you for a well-written article about something many of us take for granted. I enjoyed both the information and the personal touches. My first trip to Europe, my mother INSISTED that I pack toilet paper. When my parents travelled in 1957, all the toilet paper they encountered was very similar to wax paper. To enlighten my mother, I brought back a sampling from my trip in the the early '80. It included some of the wax papery material she remembered so fondly, a few of what we take to be standard paper, and many other variations. Good luck on your house to be. (Comment this)

6 - We live in the country; equipment-wise, we have an Elgin end-drain type drainfield (low profile, high eco-performance), dual flush toilets, low-flow faucets, and a 5 gallon bucket into which we pee (Carol - my spouse gave me Liquid Gold book for Christmas last year). Our bucket is customized - a screw-top lid for $10 - and it goes to our compost piles to add nitrogen (it's too strong for direct application to most vegetables). Our neighbors laugh at us but they love our vegetables. Kayakers in our area call these buckets "groovers" - something to do with the pattern they leave on one's behunkus... :) (Comment this)

7 - I loved this article. It really points up our Western culture's 'out of sight/out of mind' attitude to excretion.
In our 50s, my partner and bought 30 acres of clapped-out grazing land in rural Australia and homesteaded. There was nothing there but grass and trees, so we had to create everything from scratch.(I've written about this in my book on simple living - see www.lilypadlist.com) We made our own composting toilet system - a vastly simplified version of the bake-it-in-the-sun method we had seen used in the Sierras in California. It worked really well and we used the resulting fertilizer in the orchard. I loved the freedom to be able to pee anywhere I happened to be, and our visiting friends and family enjoyed it too, just as we all enjoyed showering outdoors in the sun and breeze, using solar camping showers hung from a branch. When we eventually completed our mud-brick house it had an indoor bathroom (and a septic tank the local council made us put in) but we couldn't bring ourselves to use it.
Oh and by the way, we grew lots of mullein (verbascum thapsus), the tall plant with the large, soft, furry leaves. Known in Permaculture as 'the toilet paper plant' it is, as its name suggests, a perfect solution to the paper problem.
Thanks again for a great article.
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8 - In a hurry to get somewhere, you are pedaling your trusty Flying Pigeon bicycle along a back street of a north China city, and then you glance ahead and see him: the Chinese farmer, on his old bike, casually threading his way through bicycle traffic. Encrusted black 10-gallon kegs are attached, one on either side of his rear wheel, and threaded through cords beneath the seat, his giant spoon with its 10-ft. handle sticking out like a balancing pole of a tightrope walker. Instantly you begin to doubt your expertise as a steady bicyclist, and for a panicky second you wonder what diplomatic nightmare might ensue if you brushed against the spoon and cause the farmer with his 20 gallons of liquid shit to tip over?

Or you are taking the day train into Beijing—an all day ride—and you feel the impulse to relieve yourself in the squalid cesuo. It has a squatty potty—a porcelain receptacle shaped like a lozenge--with a more than adequate hole that goes straight through to the gravel beneath the rails. As you look into the opening the quickly passing crossties below make you dizzy, and you have to brace yourself against the wall. What if you drop your keys…your passport…your cache of renminbi…or worse, your foreign currency into that hole?

My observations in Taiyuan, China 1987-1994 (Comment this)

9 - When an air pump passes bubbles of air up through a bucket containing garden grade urea or urine concentrate, ash, lime, phosphates, and some organic matter such as lawn clippings or even manure,and enough water to form a liquid flowable slurry/sludge, so that maximum aeration occurs, and a aquarium heater or other heat source is used to keep the temeperature at around 30 degrees celsius, then rapid nitrification will occur and the slurry/sludge will become ripe in less than one month, this will produce potassium and/or calcium nitrate in abundance. The sludge needs to be topped up with water regularly to prevent it from drying out. Then the liquid needs to be separated from the solids, which is done by using some finely woven cloth in the bottom of another bucket with a hole in it, with the cloth over the hole, then the ripe sludge should be poured into the bucket filter and the filtrate collected undernieth. Then the filtrate must be boiled down till crystals begin to form, then add a little water till it redissolves, then add a amount of ethanol or methylated spirits or ethyl alcohol that is equal in volume to the nitrified filtrate. Then what should occur is that the nitrates, being insoluble in solutions of alcohol crystalize out of the solution. Then simply decant or pass through coffee filter paper , leaving behind the precious saltpeter/nitrate in the filter paper which are then scraped off and put out in the sun to dry. And there you have it, reasonably pure nitrate/saltpeter. (Comment this)

10 - I don't flush pee down the toilet and usually pee while having a shower. (Comment this)