I suppose my actual belief is that flush toilets are a mistake outside of urban areas, I don’t have much experience with urban living or what other poop strategies could work with it.
Advantages, flush toilets:
Provide easy long distance transport of human waste in urban environments.
Exchanges weekly-to-yearly chores for purchased services.
Disadvantages, flush toilets:
Create additional dependency on water (and by extension outside water districts, electricity).
Turn (vast amounts of) drinking water into black water.
Create a waste product from human manure, which is a valuable resource (fertile soil) when dealt with properly.
Adds significantly to the cost of housing (especially outside sewer districts).
I still think you’re overconfident, so upvoting, but the justification is convincing enough to make me update from near-zero to something noticeably above zero. I never thought of it quite that way.
Translate it to “In x% of new non-urban houses, there are options better than flush toilets.” My confidence in my confidence assignment isn’t very high yet though, so I am quite open to being overconfident.
And obviously both lists are non-exhaustive.
Flush toilets handle large numbers of people for a long time fairly easily.
The running water revolution came around the same time as the sanitation revolution. I’m not 100% sure you necessarily HAVE to have one to have the benefits of the other, though it helps. Modern composting toilets and hot-composting of human manure is quite safe if done properly. Flush toilets definitely get the sanitation thing done, but perhaps rather than ‘mistake’ we could call them an ‘inefficient first draft that still works well’.
That’s the thing—it’s basically an issue of idiot-proofing. Many things are “safe if done properly” and still are not a good idea because people in general are pretty bad at doing things properly.
Flush toilets are idiot-proof to a remarkable degree. Composting human manure, I have my doubts.
Flush toilets are idiot-proof to a remarkable degree.
Almost all of them are, but I’ve seen a couple of them which are very easy to accidentally flush improperly in such a way that water will keep on running until someone notices and fixes it.
That clears things up a lot, and I changed my downvote to an upvote. EDIT: To be clear, I disagree with you.
My thoughts on your disadvantages list:
Flush toilets do create additional dependency on water, however if one already has running water and depends on it for drinking and washing, how significant is the additional water dependency for flush toilets?
The reason flush toilets use potable water is an economic one. It is simply cheaper to use one unified water system instead of two, when someplace already has running water. The cost of the wasted drinking water is negligible compared to the cost of building a second plumbing system.
This point is the most interesting to me. I have no information on the usefulness of human manure, and would be interested to know if human manure would have a comparable market value to cattle manure or synthetic fertilizer. I am skeptical because of the tendency for human waste to carry human diseases.
I have no disagreements with this disadvantage, but simply feel that the vast, vast majority of people would be willing to pay for the extra cost in housing if they already had indoor plumbing.
I expect this is too expensive to be worth it. but instead of a whole second water system, it’s theoretically possible to use gray water from bathing and showering for flushing.
On second thought, this might actually make sense for apartment buildings and hotels, since some gray water could be stored and sent downhill for flushing—you wouldn’t need a pump in the bathroom.
Austin’s “Dillo Dirt” is made from yard waste and treated human sewage. Less-treated sewage gets used to fertilize ranchland. As you suspected, there’s more than a little controversy over whether the result is well-composted enough for health and aesthetics, but it’s mixed up with concern over the standards for various non-fecal pollutants. Presumably whatever closed loop fertilization trist is advocating wouldn’t have to worry so much about the various kinds of industrial and medical waste people dump down their drains.
I do disagree. Did you read the rest of my comment? I originally downvoted because the rules also say to downvote if someone expresses a preference disguised as a belief.
I suppose my actual belief is that flush toilets are a mistake outside of urban areas, I don’t have much experience with urban living or what other poop strategies could work with it.
Advantages, flush toilets:
Provide easy long distance transport of human waste in urban environments.
Exchanges weekly-to-yearly chores for purchased services.
Disadvantages, flush toilets:
Create additional dependency on water (and by extension outside water districts, electricity).
Turn (vast amounts of) drinking water into black water.
Create a waste product from human manure, which is a valuable resource (fertile soil) when dealt with properly.
Adds significantly to the cost of housing (especially outside sewer districts).
I still think you’re overconfident, so upvoting, but the justification is convincing enough to make me update from near-zero to something noticeably above zero. I never thought of it quite that way.
Translate it to “In x% of new non-urban houses, there are options better than flush toilets.” My confidence in my confidence assignment isn’t very high yet though, so I am quite open to being overconfident.
And obviously both lists are non-exhaustive.
Flush toilets handle large numbers of people for a long time fairly easily.
Flush toilets get clogged.
You forgot the “not having the whole village die from a cholera outbreak” part :-/
The running water revolution came around the same time as the sanitation revolution. I’m not 100% sure you necessarily HAVE to have one to have the benefits of the other, though it helps. Modern composting toilets and hot-composting of human manure is quite safe if done properly. Flush toilets definitely get the sanitation thing done, but perhaps rather than ‘mistake’ we could call them an ‘inefficient first draft that still works well’.
That’s the thing—it’s basically an issue of idiot-proofing. Many things are “safe if done properly” and still are not a good idea because people in general are pretty bad at doing things properly.
Flush toilets are idiot-proof to a remarkable degree. Composting human manure, I have my doubts.
Almost all of them are, but I’ve seen a couple of them which are very easy to accidentally flush improperly in such a way that water will keep on running until someone notices and fixes it.
That clears things up a lot, and I changed my downvote to an upvote. EDIT: To be clear, I disagree with you.
My thoughts on your disadvantages list:
Flush toilets do create additional dependency on water, however if one already has running water and depends on it for drinking and washing, how significant is the additional water dependency for flush toilets?
The reason flush toilets use potable water is an economic one. It is simply cheaper to use one unified water system instead of two, when someplace already has running water. The cost of the wasted drinking water is negligible compared to the cost of building a second plumbing system.
This point is the most interesting to me. I have no information on the usefulness of human manure, and would be interested to know if human manure would have a comparable market value to cattle manure or synthetic fertilizer. I am skeptical because of the tendency for human waste to carry human diseases.
I have no disagreements with this disadvantage, but simply feel that the vast, vast majority of people would be willing to pay for the extra cost in housing if they already had indoor plumbing.
I expect this is too expensive to be worth it. but instead of a whole second water system, it’s theoretically possible to use gray water from bathing and showering for flushing.
On second thought, this might actually make sense for apartment buildings and hotels, since some gray water could be stored and sent downhill for flushing—you wouldn’t need a pump in the bathroom.
Austin’s “Dillo Dirt” is made from yard waste and treated human sewage. Less-treated sewage gets used to fertilize ranchland. As you suspected, there’s more than a little controversy over whether the result is well-composted enough for health and aesthetics, but it’s mixed up with concern over the standards for various non-fecal pollutants. Presumably whatever closed loop fertilization trist is advocating wouldn’t have to worry so much about the various kinds of industrial and medical waste people dump down their drains.
I think you’re playing it wrong? You upvote if you disagree.
I do disagree. Did you read the rest of my comment? I originally downvoted because the rules also say to downvote if someone expresses a preference disguised as a belief.