COMPOSTING TOILET: DID IT WORK?

A recap of our first trip in the campervan

Review #1

I’ve had some time to think about our first camping trip in the Paddy Wagon a few weeks ago, which, overall, was a wonderful adventure. But now I want to devote a few blog posts to review in detail some of the systems and products we used to give context to what our first campervan experience was really like and to ask the question: DID IT WORK?

As I mentioned in my previous blog, we wanted to use this first trip to “test drive” the major systems in the van, even though Pat isn’t finished building it. I also hinted that we tested just about everything… except for one item that, personally, I just couldn’t bring myself to try…and it was NOT the composting toilet.

So I’m going to start there, because, based on the angst I experienced contemplating the use of a van toilet, I bet you thought I wouldn’t have the nerve.

WRONG!

I was not the first to use it. During our first night camping, Pat got up in the middle of the night and made an executive decision to take it for a whirl… or a whiz, so to speak. Since my bladder and I were now fully awake, I followed soon thereafter, and I admit the tension and uncertainty of the moment caused an unceremonious and probably unladylike giggle to erupt from my mouth.

But no joke, it was pretty awesome.

We had a choice. We could have put on shoes, grabbed a flashlight, and scurried over to the campground’s modern restroom just a few strides away. But the whole point in having a composting toilet was to be able to use it, especially in the middle of the night, so what were we waiting for?

Seize the day. Or perhaps the toilet paper.

Let me explain how our composting toilet works, which is easy enough to describe in kitchen terms. It consists of a big wooden box containing a “lemonade” bottle, a “brownie bucket” (lined with a biodegradable plastic bag), and a plastic funnel, which does the very important job of diverting the “lemonade” away from the “brownies.”

I initially did not have a lot of faith in the plastic funnel, because I couldn’t figure out how this low-tech contraption could accommodate the full range of bottoms in size, scope, and aim, to consistently and successfully divert the lemonade into the appropriate container. I didn’t know how to express my doubts about the diverter without sounding ridiculous, so I just blurted out “but how does it know?”

“It just does,” Pat replied.

Moving on…

When you bake a “batch,” you cover it with a handful of “coffee grounds” (aka peat moss or coconut husks) that quickly dry and deodorize the brownie.

That’s it. Every morning, we opened the wooden box, screwed the plastic cap on the lemonade bottle and emptied it in an appropriate place, like the bathroom toilet.

Obviously it takes a leap of faith to bake brownies in a campervan, but one person, who shall remain nameless, made THAT leap. (Side note: there were only three of us in the van, and it wasn’t Maya.)

It could not be helped. We were in the midst of a violent storm that made warning sirens blare from our cell phones. Unfortunately, as we were hunkering down in the van, an unexpected and unwelcome Brownie Troop surprised one of us by knocking at the door.

I’m not going into more detail, but I will say that those miraculous coffee grounds really do the trick. This experience wasn’t nearly as bad as I feared it would be … for neither Pat nor me… although I can’t speak for Maya.

The best thing was that in the morning we simply tied up the bag and took it out to the trash, which is a perfectly acceptable receptacle to throw out a fully compostable and environmentally-friendly bag of brownies.

In my opinion, the reward of having composting toilet in the van greatly outweighed the risk.

IT WORKED!