Day 10 of 11: The Obilgatory Toilet Post

You didn’t think I could make it through an entire vacation without devoting at least one post to the local toilets. And it turns out I can’t.

The Finnish summer cottages have a unique toilet system. I have to say it borders on genius – they are very close to solving all our agriculture, energy, and terrorism problems. Toilets, is there anything they cant do?

The answer is “no”.

So the way it works is that it’s like a standard Canadian outhouse with no running water except the area for the… deposits, is not a hole in the ground. The structure is built up so that the… leavings, end up in a pile exposed to air but still shielded from the elements. After finishing with your… expulsion, you simply sprinkle some sawdust-like substance through the hole to help reduce the odor.

Note the vent to help the methane escape.

In addition the human food garbage is mixed with the composting pile. There’s even a nice separate chamber for easy access.

Step one

Step two

Step three

Step four (or zero) – they’re basically interchangeable.

This mixture of food waste and… numbers two, produces a rather high-quality fertilizer (good luck making a bomb out of this stuff Osama!) that one can use to grow food in the aftermath of the upcoming nuclear winter.

Also, the byproduct of this chemical process is methane. And you know what this means: cheap, low-cost, renewable energy to run Bartertown! If you don’t like the concept of Bartertown, talk to the one percent. When we eventually get there, the blame for our predicament will fall squarely on their shoulders.

The worst feature of this particular outhouse was the picture of Peter Mansbridge watching each time I went potty.

So in conclusion, Finnish compost toilets can solve our food shortage problem (fertilizer to grow food), our energy problem (methane to run Bartertown) and our terrorism problem (by eliminating the need for nitrate-based fertilizers – a terrorist staple). Everybody wins!

Except the terrorists.