During the summer of 2022, Luxembourg, my country of birth, experienced a drought of eight weeks. Due to the drought my household had to switch to municipal water as our 5000 liter rainwater tank quickly emptied which we use for flushing the toilet and cleaning clothes.

The drought even depleted all the ground water in some regions of France, and they had to tap water from rivers and lakes in order to have access to water or even import water from elsewhere.

To make my household less dependable on municipal water during extended periods of drought I decided to make a compost toilet.

During personal use of the compost toilet I got to experience the benefits of this sanitation system:

- Save money on our water bill

- Lowering our water consumption by minimum 135liter for 2 people in one week
- Not creating polluted water that must be treated by a waste water treatment facility (that also costs: money, energy, fossil fuels and chemicals to treat the waste water

- Create a closed loop by turning human waste in fertile soil for cultivating food. Returning the nutrients from the food that we consume back to the earth where it originally came from.

Above you see the closed cycle of a compost toilet visualized on the left and the broken cycle of a flush toilet on the right.

As compost toilets are commonly used outside, as a clean alternative during natural disasters, or by people living in mobile homes, tiny houses and other alternative housing. The goal of my project was to make a compost toilet that could esthetically and functionally work in a regular one family home.

I started by mapping out the whole system of which the compost toilet is an element of to make sure I can successfully implement this alternative sanitation system in my home. Quickly I realized that having the space to stock sawdust, having a reliable source of sawdust and having the space to install a 3pile composting system would be crucial to implement a successful compost toilet system.

After the planning phase I started to design a simple design to house the 20 liter buckets for sawdust and human waste.

On the right hand side the bucket with saw dust is placed. After excreting a scoop of sawdust prevents the excreta to be in direct contact with the air, eliminating bad odder from entering the bathroom.

On the left hand side the excreta is collected. It is recommended with these 20 liter buckets to empty them daily or at least weekly.

Each part of the toilet can be removed and cleaned. All the screws are on the inside giving the outside a very clean look.

The excreta is emptied on the compost pile.

Garden waste and kitchen waste are also added to the compost pile.

The bucket is cleaned after emptying it.