IanD

I was going to say that, but IIRC getting to the museum from there on foot is a bit awkward if you want to visit it...

Even the trolls under the bridges enveloped in clouds of sweet-smelling smoke are usually happy and friendly if you say "Hi" to them... 😉

Having moored near sewage works and enjoyed the aromas, I don't have much desire to get any closer to vast quantities of other people's sh!t, mine's bad enough... 😞 (but I do respect the work that they do and its essential contribution to society)

I think what he's saying is perfectly correct -- composting toilets as taught in an agricultural architectural course are intended for use in remote habitations with proper multi-stage composting facilities, and for these they are an excellent -- probably the best -- solution. For boats on the canals that move around and don't have proper landside composting facilities run by the diligent owner (e.g. Peter), they're not.

I think by "traditional" he meant "what is done today and has been for many years in sewage works" as opposed to "new-fangled composting toilets on boats"... 😉

...and when people caught nasty diseases as a result. There are good reasons that doing this with untreated (or barely-treated) human waste is not allowed today 😉

I agree -- it also doesn't need several hundred bins to be made, installed, maintained, and emptied -- presumably by somebody driving a truck around. All of which is not very green... 😞 Composting toilets are great for something that doesn't move and can process and use the compost locally, such as isolated houses or Peter's boat. They make little or no sense for things that move around a lot (like RVs/motor-homes), and even less for ones that also can't quickly and easily drive to a disposal point (like boats). They might appear "green" (and cheap and convenient) when you just look at the boat from the owner's point of view. But this alters when you look at the bigger picture, including all the issues of disposing of the waste.

And there's the problem -- dedicated collection bins (not general waste or dog waste) are needed, and these have to be provided/emptied, and somehow other waste kept out of them, and then the result taken away and processed -- and somebody needs to make a profit out of this (or not lose money) or it won't happen. All of which costs a lot of money, to service a few hundred boaters today. In the last discussion the guesstimate costs per boater using them came out similar to (maybe higher than...) pump-outs, which immediately removes one of the attractions of these toilets. Bear in mind there are already two functioning methods of human waste disposal on the canals (cassettes/Elsan and pumpouts), both of which take advantage of an existing (paid-for) way of getting rid of the result (the sewage system), and probably each used by at least 10000 boaters. Cost to replace these just on the boats, at least £10M. Fast-forward to a time in the sunlit uplands where most boaters use composting toilets and everything is fine. The problem is, how do we get to there from here?

And there's nothing wrong with separating/dry/composting [choose your term] toilets, they're an excellent idea so long as the waste is actually composted -- which from the survey when all this blew up, about a quarter of boaters with them fitted (like Peter) did, having landside facilities to do so. The cost of providing extra "uncomposted compost" disposal facilities around the system is quite high -- the estimates were a 6-digit cost -- and this would also be fine if (for example) 20000 boaters (the majority) used these toilets at some green time in the future, the cost per boat would be reasonable. However the number was actually about 2% of boaters, and the other 98% don't see why they should pay extra to allow the 2% to use composting toilets... 😞 And it benefits millions of dog owners, and everyone else who doesn't want to tread in dogsh!t...

This is degenerating into "what-aboutery" -- just in case there's a tiny chance of an unforeseen negative outcome (even though this has been thought about by experts who actually understand the issues and risks) let's not do something which will almost certainly improve the situation. Emphasize the negative and ignore the positive, just like the Daily Wail 😞 On the same basis, we wouldn't have any Covid vaccines -- or indeed, *any* vaccines, or new drugs -- because there's always a (hopefully very small) risk that *something* might go wrong. And let's pick out a disaster like thalidomide to make the point, and ignore all the other successful drugs that have saved millions of lives since. Risk management is all about balancing out these factors, and making a decision based on this (including "unknown unknowns" and [possible disasters); without this, irrational "fear-of-the-new" would mean we could never find *any* new solutions to fix new problems.