Are you considering a compost toilet for your tiny house? Today's episode is for you!

Joe Jenkins has become a household name in the tiny house movement, because he's the author of the Humanure Handbook, which is literally the Bible of composting human excrement. I read the Humanure Handbook while I was designing and planning my tiny house, and although I knew I needed a compost toilet for practical reasons, reading the book made me want to use a compost toilet for ethical and environmental reasons. In this wide ranging interview, Joe talks about the forthcoming edition of the Humanure Handbook, what has changed in composting over the years and general tips on how to make it work the best in your home.

In This Episode:

Don’t call it waste: Why Joe says you shouldn’t call what goes in the toilet what most people call it.
Why Joe thinks that we should all have more toilets in our homes
The “flush toilet culture” and our misconceptions about human waste
The beneficial microorganisms in our poop, and what happens when we compost
Should we be separating urine from solid waste?
Why there’s no such thing as a “composting” toilet
Most of the toilets we think of as “composting” toilets are actually just “dry” toilets.
Is it possible to use a compost toilet when you don’t have the space for a compost pile?
How to find and select the best cover material for your compost toilet
How to set up compost toilets for large groups of people and events
What’s wrong with calling it a bucket toilet?
Can you create a compost toilet system where the receptacle is the compost pile?
How to keep your compost pile from freezing in the winter

Links and Resources:

Here are some of my favorite videos from Joe Jenkins' youtube channel:

About the Guest

Joe Jenkins

humanurehandbook.com

The Humanure Handbook was something of an accidental literary phenomenon. Joe Jenkins began writing the book as a Master of Science in Sustainable Systems thesis in the early 90s. Not content with academic convention, but fascinated with the topic of humanure composting, Jenkins decided to convert the book’s language into a popular format and self-publish the thesis as a book.