C&RT say don't empty your compost toilet in our bins.

[Alan de Enfield]

Some time ago there was a Facebook survey of boaters with composting toilets ( I don't have facebook so cannot link, but it was posted somewhere on the forum) The results were informative :

 

It is interesting that if you look at the facebook dry toilet site, there is a survey going and only 70 out of 250 boater respondants are fully composting their solids. 

 

250 respondents said they had 'separating toilets' but only 70 said they were composting properly. (No definition of properly)

 

 

[Bargebuilder]

7 minutes ago, tree monkey said:

That's not composting that's desiccating, I understand how that happens, it's the practicalities of actually composting on a boat once the initial stage has happy 

Correct, the first step is dessication of the 'new deposit', then, once a little less sloppy and mixed with sawdust, composting really can't be stopped.

[Bargebuilder]

4 minutes ago, Alan de Enfield said:

250 respondents said they had 'separating toilets' but only 70 said they were composting properly. (No definition of properly)

 

 

The situation may well be worse than that, but the C&RT are at least in part to blame.

 

I'll bet there are lots of boaters who only made the change to separating loos because the C&RT offered a free and simple solution about what to do with the dessicated contents of their toilets.

[tree monkey]

2 hours ago, Bargebuilder said:

Correct, the first step is dessication of the 'new deposit', then, once a little less sloppy and mixed with sawdust, composting really can't be stopped.

The point I am unsuccessfully trying to make is I don't understand how it is possible to properly compost  toilet waste In a closed system on a boat.

The dessication bit I follow and understand, it's the next bit I don't quite get.

I understand land based compost systems and have an understanding of the process involved which is why I don't see how it can be replicated on a boat in a bucket/container.

 

[alias]

1 hour ago, tree monkey said:

The point I am unsuccessfully trying to make is I don't understand how it is possible to properly compost  toilet waste In a closed system on a boat.

The dessication bit I follow and understand, it's the next bit I don't quite get.

I understand land based compost systems and have an understanding of the process involved which is why I don't see how it can be replicated on a boat in a bucket/container.

 

 

I'm interested in this too. So in search of improving my mind, I went to look for some explanation online, and found an interesting article that explained about aeration and carbon/nitrogen mix and such. It distinguishes between pathogen control through desiccation or through composting. If there was a way to demonstrate that your output was pathogen free through desiccation, then the waste wouldn't be hazardous anymore, so a lot of the concern about disposal might go away, but I doubt this is a practical answer to the problem for boats.

 

 It has also explained to me why my garden composting bin stubbornly retains its annual layers of bone dry grass cuttings and anaerobic slime of autumnal leaves. But my main reason for posting this link is to make more widely known this magnificent observation contained in a semi-technical publication:

 

 "For dry desiccating toilets, significant log removal is expected."

 

https://www.waterpathogens.org/book/composting-and-dry-desiccating-toilets

Edited August 7, 2021 by alias

[Alan de Enfield]

8 minutes ago, alias said:

 

I'm interested in this too. So in search of improving my mind, I went to look for some explanation online, and found an interesting article that explained about aeration and carbon/nitrogen mix and such. It distinguishes between pathogen control through desiccation or through composting. If there was a way to demonstrate that your output was pathogen free through desiccation, then the waste wouldn't be hazardous anymore, so a lot of the concern about disposal might go away, but I doubt this is a practical answer to the problem.

 

 It has also explained to me why my garden composting bin stubbornly retains its annual layers of bone dry grass cuttings and anaerobic slime of autumnal leaves. But my main reason for posting this link is to make more widely known this magnificent observation contained in a semi-technical publication:

 

 "For dry desiccating toilets, significant log removal is expected."

 

https://www.waterpathogens.org/book/composting-and-dry-desiccating-toilets

 

 

A couple of relevant paragraphs :

 

HOW BIG ?

Most composting and dry desiccating toilets have a vault volume of at least 1 m³ and most likely a volume greater than that. Some desiccating toilets are designed to have a storage time as low as 60 days for situations where design modifications are made to enhance temperature; however, a minimum 18 month storage time is now recommended in most situations for both types of toilets.

 

HOW LONG ?
In a composting toilet, all pathogens are expected to be removed if thermophilic temperatures (>40ºC) are achieved and a contact time of at least 1.5 years is provided. However, this elevated temperature may be difficult to obtain in the field without consideration of how design and operation impact the composting process and resulting pathogen removal.

Composting latrine chambers were originally designed for a 6 month storage time to achieve adequate pathogen removal. However, it is now recommended to increase the storage time to 1.5 to 2 years (Berger, 2011) because composting chambers have been found in the field to not reach high enough temperatures for destruction of resistant pathogens such as helminths over lower storage times (Mehl et al., 2011).

 

It reads as if the work required (aeration, and stirring) is unlikely to be practical on a NB :

 

Aeration can also be achieved by turning the pile. Composting latrines usually have rear doors where this can be performed by a user. Opening a rear door and safely mixing the pile of excreta may not be easy and convenient for a toilet owner. Some rear doors are partially mortared, some are just planks of wood wedged into the open space, while doors with metal doors and hinges may be prohibitively expensive to beneficiaries. Others have proposed designs with corkscrew components to mix the waste. These mixing methods can expose the user to pathogens or are not performed regularly, if at all, by the users. Also, it is difficult to uniformly mix the compost and some areas may be left unmixed. Consideration of mixing is thus an important design consideration and consideration of the reality that contents might not be mixed is important to consider when thinking how operation of a composting toilet impacts environmental conditions within the pile of excreta and pathogen destruction.

 

 

 

An interesting article, thanks for posting

[Bargebuilder]

1 hour ago, tree monkey said:

The point I am unsuccessfully trying to make is I don't understand how it is possible to properly compost  toilet waste In a closed system on a boat.

The dessication bit I follow and understand, it's the next bit I don't quite get.

I understand land based compost systems and have an understanding of the process involved which is why I don't see how it can be replicated on a boat in a bucket/container.

 

Firstly, let's admit that very few people even try to compost to completion, but there is no doubt that it's possible.

 

There is a food source, the toilet waste and the sawdust plus kitchen waste too if you want to do it properly,  moisture, oxygen and warmth. It needs to be mixed once a week at a minimum to prevent anaerobic decomposition which would produce the slime and smell that has been mentioned.

 

The breakdown starts immediately, but really takes off when the bucket starts to fill as that's when things really and literally hot up.

 

The containers in many proprietary so called composting loos are a bit small and so although some composting does happen, it's very little and further storage/mixing is required in bigger buckets over many months to get near a product that is a sweet smelling and crumbly soil additive.

 

That's why, when the C&RT made its rash offer to take toilet waste, people not surprisingly jumped at it.

[Alan de Enfield]

11 minutes ago, Bargebuilder said:

That's why, when the C&RT made its rash offer to take toilet waste, people not surprisingly jumped at it.

 

With hindsight, it was a really crap idea.

[Bargebuilder]

Materials to be composted can heat up quite dramatically and quickly, even in small containers. Perhaps not enough to sterilise completely, but enough for the roses, if not for the runner beans.

 

At home we have a huge compost heap, some 7 metres long by 1.2m X 1.2m: it takes me some hours of backbreaking work to turn it. My brother brings round a quarter full bin bag full of contributions to the heap occasionally an although this can only amount to 20 or so litres, very often it's steaming when he tips it out, so a 20l bucket of material on a boat should 'cook' and compost very nicely, but take a bit longer to finish.

 

My compost heap in the garden reaches 60 centigrade in the middle, enough to scald your hand should you be foolish enough to plunge it in.

[Bargebuilder]

4 minutes ago, Alan de Enfield said:

 

With hindsight, it was a really crap idea.

Made in haste and regretted I'm sure, but having done so, they are risking fines from their waste carrier and pollution of their property if they don't soon identify an alternative.

[IanD]

19 minutes ago, Alan de Enfield said:

 

With hindsight, it was a really crap idea.

It was, and one they've now realised was wrong and are trying to correct -- against strong resistance from the people who installed composting toilets in the (mistaken) belief that bag'n'binning was a workable solution that would be permitted in the long term.

 

I still disagree with the people who keep saying that CART "encouraged" their use; their T&Cs clearly said that the waste should be composted, but unfortunately followed this up by saying that double-bag'n'binning was permitted if this was not possible. In my view the intention -- which wasn't made explicit --  was that this meant "in an emergency", but many people ignored the recommendation to compost and only read the following sentence.

 

Maybe you can't blame people for taking advantage of the fact that a CART loophole/wording error seemed to allow them to install a great new cheap toilet system where the waste was magically taken away for free. Equally, they can't then really complain when increasing numbers and misuse forced CART to change the rules, there was never any *right* to dispose of waste this way.

 

11 minutes ago, Bargebuilder said:

Made in haste and regretted I'm sure, but having done so, they are risking fines from their waste carrier and pollution of their property if they don't soon identify an alternative.

The point is that CART don't have to find an alternative, the toilet owners do...

Edited August 7, 2021 by IanD

[tree monkey]

12 minutes ago, Bargebuilder said:

Materials to be composted can heat up quite dramatically and quickly, even in small containers. Perhaps not enough to sterilise completely, but enough for the roses, if not for the runner beans.

 

At home we have a huge compost heap, some 7 metres long by 1.2m X 1.2m: it takes me some hours of backbreaking work to turn it. My brother brings round a quarter full bin bag full of contributions to the heap occasionally an although this can only amount to 20 or so litres, very often it's steaming when he tips it out, so a 20l bucket of material on a boat should 'cook' and compost very nicely, but take a bit longer to finish.

 

My compost heap in the garden reaches 60 centigrade in the middle, enough to scald your hand should you be foolish enough to plunge it in.

 

call that a compost heap, ages and ages ago I managed a site with 3 concrete sided bins 6m wide, 12 deep and 3 high, used to just reverse the tractor trailer in and tip, 1 to tip, one cooking and one being emptied on a rotation.

 

I also had a wood tip site all the local tree bods used to use and that was just massive, the heat in the middle was incredible 

[Bargebuilder]

7 minutes ago, IanD said:

 

The point is that CART don't have to find an alternative, the toilet owners do...

The C&RT certainly encouraged the proliferation of separating loos, simply by making it easy and cheap.

 

To say that owners of these loos have to find an alternative could be described as naïve.

5 minutes ago, tree monkey said:

 

call that a compost heap, ages and ages ago I managed a site with 3 concrete sided bins 6m wide, 12 deep and 3 high, used to just reverse the tractor trailer in and tip, 1 to tip, one cooking and one being emptied on a rotation.

 

I also had a wood tip site all the local tree bods used to use and that was just massive, the heat in the middle was incredible 

But you had a tractor, I've only got a shovel!

[IanD]

4 minutes ago, Bargebuilder said:

The C&RT certainly encouraged the proliferation of separating loos, simply by making it easy and cheap.

 

To say that owners of these loos have to find an alternative could be described as naïve.

Did you read what I wrote, or the CART advice to boaters that I referred to?

 

The owners of the loos have to find an alternative because CART have no duty to dispose of their waste, and have said that they won't do it after December.

 

CART have reasonably given them almost a year's grace to do this when they could have said "the ban starts tomorrow", but it's the owners problem to solve.

 

What part of this do you think is naive?

Edited August 7, 2021 by IanD

[Bargebuilder]

10 minutes ago, IanD said:

Did you read what I wrote, or the CART advice to boaters that I referred to?

 

The owners of the loos have to find an alternative because CART have no duty to dispose of their waste, and have said that they won't do it after December.

 

CART have reasonably given them almost a year's grace to do this when they could have said "the ban starts tomorrow", but it's the owners problem to solve.

I think you missed my point. How many, particularly continuous cruisers, who have ripped out whatever system they had in favour of a separating loo which is odour free, cost free to empty and a lot more pleasant than Elsans or pump-outs will change back? Much more likely that many will ignore the ban causing problems for the C&RT.

[IanD]

1 minute ago, Bargebuilder said:

I think you missed my point. How many, particularly continuous cruisers, who have ripped out whatever system they had in favour of a separating loo which is odour free, cost free to empty and a lot more pleasant than Elsans or pump-outs will change back? Much more likely that many will ignore the ban causing problems for the C&RT.

And if they do -- and peer pressure from other boaters doesn't  stop them -- CART will have to find a way to enforce the ban, for example refusing to grant a license because of failure to meet their T&Cs, or whatever other means are legally open to them.

[peterboat]

42 minutes ago, Bargebuilder said:

Materials to be composted can heat up quite dramatically and quickly, even in small containers. Perhaps not enough to sterilise completely, but enough for the roses, if not for the runner beans.

 

At home we have a huge compost heap, some 7 metres long by 1.2m X 1.2m: it takes me some hours of backbreaking work to turn it. My brother brings round a quarter full bin bag full of contributions to the heap occasionally an although this can only amount to 20 or so litres, very often it's steaming when he tips it out, so a 20l bucket of material on a boat should 'cook' and compost very nicely, but take a bit longer to finish.

 

My compost heap in the garden reaches 60 centigrade in the middle, enough to scald your hand should you be foolish enough to plunge it in.

I have been composting poo for years and using it for food production 3 year rule seems to work nicely 

[peterboat]

1 hour ago, alias said:

 

I'm interested in this too. So in search of improving my mind, I went to look for some explanation online, and found an interesting article that explained about aeration and carbon/nitrogen mix and such. It distinguishes between pathogen control through desiccation or through composting. If there was a way to demonstrate that your output was pathogen free through desiccation, then the waste wouldn't be hazardous anymore, so a lot of the concern about disposal might go away, but I doubt this is a practical answer to the problem for boats.

 

 It has also explained to me why my garden composting bin stubbornly retains its annual layers of bone dry grass cuttings and anaerobic slime of autumnal leaves. But my main reason for posting this link is to make more widely known this magnificent observation contained in a semi-technical publication:

 

 "For dry desiccating toilets, significant log removal is expected."

 

https://www.waterpathogens.org/book/composting-and-dry-desiccating-toilets

I read that article and it seems I am following the system well including adding wood ash to the mix! Seems that 3 years is excessive but better safe than sorry 

[Bargebuilder]

3 minutes ago, IanD said:

And if they do -- and peer pressure from other boaters doesn't  stop them -- CART will have to find a way to enforce the ban, for example refusing to grant a license because of failure to meet their T&Cs, or whatever other means are legally open to them.

Even if a sanction were to be legal and possible, how would anyone know what was in the rubbish sack that was being put in a bin. Not even CCTV would help.

 

Even if it were legal for the C&RT to force entry onto a boat, it would be easy to keep an Elsan on board to make it look as if the rules were being adhered to.

 

It wouldn't be fair to those who compost their 'toilet' ashore to ban these loos completely.

 

 

[Alan de Enfield]

1 minute ago, Bargebuilder said:

Even if a sanction were to be legal and possible, how would anyone know what was in the rubbish sack that was being put in a bin. Not even CCTV would help.

 

Simples :

 

A licence must be issued if the boat has :

Mooring (or CC)

A BSS

Insurance.

 

There is no legal requirement for what the BSS must cover, or cannot cover. The BSS is owned by and written by C&RT and the EA They regularly change it - the most recent being the addition of CO Alarms - no alarm no BSS

 

Simples :  The BSS is amended to state that Composting / waterless toilets are disallowed.

 

Any boat with a Composting / waterless toilet fails its BSS

 

Simples :

[IanD]

18 minutes ago, Bargebuilder said:

Even if a sanction were to be legal and possible, how would anyone know what was in the rubbish sack that was being put in a bin. Not even CCTV would help.

 

Even if it were legal for the C&RT to force entry onto a boat, it would be easy to keep an Elsan on board to make it look as if the rules were being adhered to.

 

It wouldn't be fair to those who compost their 'toilet' ashore to ban these loos completely.

 

 

Indeed it wouldn't be fair to those people (like Peter) who do it properly -- but they're outnumbered about 3:1 by those who don't. CART have to stop the bag'n'binners, if they can find a way to do this without impacting the "proper composters" I'm sure they'll do it, but if not they'll be unfortunate victims through no fault of their own. Being fair to everybody is a lower priority for CART than stopping bag'n'binning, which they *have* to do if they want their bins emptying in future.

 

Before anyone proposes some "I do it properly" certification, think how much this would cost to police and how easy it would be to fiddle -- I'm sure we'd see "rent-a-heap" happening just to get the bag'n'binners a license, which they then never use.

 

It's impossible to enforce a ban by checking bins or any kind of detection of non-composting because all they have to do is chuck a carrier bag into a bin, and this could have anything in it. So the only workable solution is to ban the fitting of composting toilets to boats, which is what marinas currently do -- they won't allow you a mooring if you have one fitted.

 

How this ban is policed and enforced would be the same way anything else is prohibited being fitted to boats, which probably means via the BSS.

 

 

Edited August 7, 2021 by IanD

[tree monkey]

19 minutes ago, peterboat said:

I read that article and it seems I am following the system well including adding wood ash to the mix! Seems that 3 years is excessive but better safe than sorry 

There's basically 2 types of composting hot and cold, hot done properly could likely work in 6 to 12 months, cold 3yrs is a reasonable timescale.

Hot is a lot of faff though, cold is a doddle 

52 minutes ago, Bargebuilder said:

The C&RT certainly encouraged the proliferation of separating loos, simply by making it easy and cheap.

 

To say that owners of these loos have to find an alternative could be described as naïve.

But you had a tractor, I've only got a shovel!

It was only a little tractor 

[IanD]

Just now, tree monkey said:

There's basically 2 types of composting hot and cold, hot done properly could likely work in 6 to 12 months, cold 3yrs is a reasonable timescale.

Hot is a lot of faff though, cold is a doddle 

2 or 3 weeks of not-really-composting-at-all (which is what some of the bag'n'binners have admitted to) is even easier though...

25 minutes ago, peterboat said:

I read that article and it seems I am following the system well including adding wood ash to the mix! Seems that 3 years is excessive but better safe than sorry 

I fear that you're going to be "collateral damage" in this battle... 😞

[Sea Dog]

So, it turns out that a "bag-o-shite" quickly (or perhaps not so quickly) becomes a "can-o-worms". Sounds like pretty advanced composting to me...

[peterboat]

2 minutes ago, IanD said:

2 or 3 weeks of not-really-composting-at-all (which is what some of the bag'n'binners have admitted to) is even easier though...

I fear that you're going to be "collateral damage" in this battle... 😞

Doubt it, no BSS guy has ever looked at my toilet 

5 minutes ago, tree monkey said:

There's basically 2 types of composting hot and cold, hot done properly could likely work in 6 to 12 months, cold 3yrs is a reasonable timescale.

Hot is a lot of faff though, cold is a doddle 

It was only a little tractor 

Mine gets warm and I have insulated 3 sides of the box, what amazes me is how long it takes to fill the heap, it just shrinks so fast