Believe it or not, eco-friendly toilets are all around us, and you might not even be aware of their presence. Their rise in popularity can be traced back to 2014, when the organizers of the Glastonbury festival decided to use them, and they’ve become increasingly common ever since.
Not only are they now very common, but they’re also very different from what you might’ve imagined. Also, the ‘eco’ in eco-friendly doesn’t just mean they’re easy on the environment, but also on the budget (as in ‘economically friendly’), saving water and even power.
All about eco-toilets
Want to know all about eco toilets? Here’s a start. There are several different types of eco-friendly toilets, including:
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Low-flow
Providing the same power and flushing experience as the ‘standard’ toilets, but with a fraction of usage, wasting only 1.6 gallons of water compared to the ‘standard’ six gallons per flush;
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Dual-flush
Toilets with two flushing options – one button for liquid waste (up to 1.6 gallons per flush) and the other for solid waste (up to 8 gallons per flush);
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Water Sense
Toilets that are 20% more effective than standard 1.6 gallons toilets, reducing water usage by up to 60%;
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Composting toilets
Waterless eco-toilets that dissolve waste through the process of evaporation and natural decomposition.
Advantages of eco-toilets
Eco-toilets have many advantages, some more obvious, others not so much. These include:
- Being much more environmentally friendly than standard toilets;
- Improved sanitation, especially in areas without any traditional sewage infrastructure;
- The ability to redirect the run-off through other areas to provide natural fertilizer;
- Saving a significant amount of water, reducing water usage, and, as a result, water bills;
- Composting toilets provide complete independence of any water or sewage connections;
- In case of composting toilets, being odorless or at least odor-neutral, thanks to a separate exhaust air system;
- Composting toilets don’t involve any chemicals, which means waste put into them is broken down naturally, free from any environmentally harmful substances.
Disadvantages of eco-toilets
As with all things in life, eco-toilets also have their downsides, including:
- Composting intervals can take a long time, even up to two years, before fully turning solid waste into mature compost soil;
- They can take up a lot of space, especially if their capacity is up to several hundred liters;
- Some of them might require electricity to run, which means you’ll experience electricity charges even though you’ll offset some of the traditional costs at the same time.
What the future holds for eco-toilets?
As eco-toilets continue to grow in popularity even more, their usefulness has the potential to expand further than just saving money and reducing the damaging effect on the environment. The waste produced in eco-toilets can be used as a safer, quicker, and more environmentally-friendly alternative to coal and wood.
On top of that, it will allow you to live a more sustainable lifestyle, without having to rely on other, typically non-renewable, unsafe, and more expensive sources of energy. This is achieved by turning the natural waste into biogas through the natural process of anaerobic digestion.
Conclusion
To make this happen, you only need a biogas generator and some natural waste, of which there’s plenty all around us, including produced in eco-toilets. When biogas is derived from these sources, it can be used to power households, cook food, and even run cars.
