Humanure discussion at evaluation.

The second part of this second session breakout group discussed Humanure, composting our own waste. There is a small group of faire family that are starting Humanure projects. Jenkins, the author of “The Humanure Handbook” sent the Fair 14 copies of his book, some of which may be available at the office.

The goal is to limit our use of the blue water toilets and replace some of them with a Humanure toilet. Paxton thinks this would be good for in the middle of the faire where booths could share the toilet. It would also give exposure as they would be demonstration projects, in the start up phase.

We spend a lot of money to haul off and dispose of our poo, and it is a commodity full of valuable nutrients. And we throw it away, in fact pay $$ to have it hauled off. Humanure is an idea to compost and reclaim those nutrients.

A Humanure toilet is designed around a 5 gallon bucket with a seat on it. You pee or poop in it and immediately cover the pee or poo with a cover of fresh sawdust or peat moss. This keeps the odor down and provides carbon for the future composting part of the operation.

The buckets then get emptied into a specially constructed hot compost pile. Once the high heat composting action (important to breakdown bad bacteria) is finished the compost then sits for a year before it can be used as compost.

This technology is used in 60 countries around the world. Jenkins himself has been using it for 30 years. The healthiest culture in the world, the Hunzas, compost everything including their own and their animals poo.

The carbon to nitrogen ratio is one of the important parts of composting, 30 to 1 is close to ideal. Adding Poo to our carbon rich paper plates will add a large source of nitrogen which will make the compost heap work better.

The idea is to start a couple of demonstration projects and establish a start up compost pile. Andy is building his own Humanure toilet on his farm.

Then as we develop the technology the idea is to expand it into the Fair. Mambo’s goal is to do the entire fair for the 50th anniversary.

There was quite a bit of discussion and interest in how Humanure works.