Roadside Toilets: Gifts of “Valued Fertilizer”
Treehugger has a post of a picture from the great book, “A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction,” from 1970-80s rural China.
The premise is there are thatch, roadside huts for passers-by to use as toilets. The free deposits then fertilize nearby agriculture.
I thought that human excrement was not useful for fertilization. Something to do with too many fats and sugars in our diet? I would also think that people in undeveloped, rural contexts don’t drink as much water, so the water content of our waste would not be worth the trouble of, “shoveling shit,” so to speak.
Add to that the diseases carried in human excrement and the foreign bodies that enjoy revelling in it possibly covering your harvested food, and the typically elegant ideas that Alexander, et. al., in “A Pattern Language” propose house at least one flawed one.
Blogs, International, Low Technology | paul | 
August 31, 2006 2:30 pm
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