Interfaces, Spaces Between
My presentation at the Dry Toilet conference in Tampere, Finland on 24 August 2018. Other notes on the conference are collected on the huussi post.
Toilets in #dayZero: The surge in popularity of dry toilets in Cape Town’s water crisis
Continue reading “Future for sanitation in cities? Presentation at Dry toilet conference, Finland”
Off-grid is a ‘laager’ mentality. It’s isolationist, protectionist. It’s not cool.
Being resilient, sustainable and liveable means building community.
Still getting confused by experts and their opinions on flush toilets until Neil Macleod weighs in …
This is the presentation (pdf, 5MB) given at the Collaborative African Budget Reform Initiative (CABRI) workshop on policy and funding strategies to improve WASH service delivery, held 6 to 8 June 2018.
It was also the first time I formally co-presented with Joshua Palfreman. Continue reading “Give dry toilets a fighting chance – Masterclass at CABRI”
* totes clickbait title. No fights were had.
I had the privilege of presenting my dry toilet love at UnSchool. Bravely, I allowed half the session for the participants to debate dry vs flush (aka trash my ideas). I expected them to struggle with the dry toilet thing (aka totally trash my idea irretrievably) but it was about a 50/50 split for or against without any what I would consider fatal flaws. Win!
This post was developed as a submission for The Conversation. I have to rework it because “the article covers a huge amount of ground, and that there isn’t immediately a ‘golden thread’ that can be easily identified.” I like it, so it’s going to live here in its current form 🙂
When the probability of Day Zero was first announced in January 2018, the realisation that the extreme drought in Cape Town may affect the functioning of the sewer systems became apparent to everyday people. Through my work in [resource recovery from wastewaters](http://www.futurewater.uct.ac.za/FW-WWBR) and particularly how [sanitation can contribute to the circular economy](http://www.toiletboard.org/media/17-Sanitation_in_the_Circular_Economy.pdf) I have been thinking about the benefits of dry sanitation. I am intrigued by the potential of biological means to recover value from diffuse pollution. But could they ever be introduced at large scale?
Presentation at the UCT Summer School, the pdf is available on the Future Water Institute website.
Kevin asked me to present on Innovations in Urban Water Management, through talking about my house. Instead I wanted to talk about systems, and took a term from the start-up scene ‘keeping the end in mind’, as in, keep your goal in mind, what you want to achieve, or what you want to sell it for. But really, we’re working with systems, and I want to focus on where these systems, these loops come full circle.
Why? We’re in drought, so we don’t have water to flush toilets. The nutrients in shit should be re-used, and that is difficult when we dilute it with loads of water and mix it with god knows what else to be shipped off somewhere to be so-called ‘treated’. Also, flushing toilets mean we are flushing nutrients into receiving water bodies (even with excellent wastewater treatment, we’re still not doing well enough). So flushing is just a stupid idea. More about this in a presentation (pdf, 5MB) I recently gave. Continue reading “Jouissance toilet 2.0 – the foam flush”
(who got the movie reference?)
Cape Town is in the worst drought ever, and asides from all the panic this is generating some lovely publicity for the dry toilet. I’m getting a lot of emails.
Here’s the short version of my replies:
My house was featured in Earthworks. Obviously I’m thrilled, but also a tad apprehensive. While I have a dry toilet in an affluent (medium density) urban environment, I am not suggesting that people at large use this; the practitioners (specifically Richard Holden) seem to agree that flush toilets remain the best default option – from a (rather centralised) waste management perspective. I don’t know how much of that is user psychology, I don’t think we’ve explored the options from the city planning, health, waste management and engineering sides… hence my interest. On the other hand, it’s worth taking a leap and seeing where it goes. So, one step at a time. Continue reading “Jouissance toilet”