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Men should pee sitting down.
Now before you call me a strident feminist, let me say that I'm backed up on this one by male colleagues and the reasons aren't what you think. I'm not arguing for toilet equality here.
I'm talking about urine-separating toilets, which are much easier to use for men and women when sitting down. The bowl of these toilets takes urine in the front, feces in the back. It's hard enough to aim for the whole bowl (or so the evidence of many bathroom floors tells me), much less the front part of the bowl. One guy put a pee can in the corner, but that seems inefficient: pee in the can, then pour it down the toilet. Why not just pee in the toilet?
Why should you care? Because urine contains up to 90% of the nitrogen and 50% of the phosphorous in domestic wastewater. Those chemicals make for great fertilizer — stuff we have to use a lot of energy to produce artificially. In healthy populations, urine is sterile, and removing it from feces makes composting the solids easier and more effective.
Two models of these toilets are available in the U.S., both from Ecovita. But before you rush out to buy one and change your life, remember that composting solids and using urine to irrigate your tomatoes isn't legal in most places. You might be able to get special dispensation from the building code folks, but like most things involving wastewater treatment alternatives, it won't be easy.
Watch for the coming article in the September issue of EBN.
Update - the article is online (members only, though). Urine Separation: The Next Wave of Ecological Wastewater Treatment
Comments
(The auto-generated captcha text I need to enter to post this comment is - coincidentally, hilariously, and simply - "i p".)
ONE--hang a sign saying "setzen Sie sich bitte" (Sit yourself down, please) at 5-1/2 feet off the floor or so, right in front of the toilet. That way, even if males don't speak German, it'll hit them in the head as they try to pee. TWO--rig the lid so it won't stay up. Gluing a rubber duck plastic dinosaur or some such thing to either the top of the lid works pretty well.
Why? Spray. Splash. Dribble. And the occasional misfire, which we all know happens to even the best of us. And the gender equality argument that it is probably (still) mostly women who end up cleaning up messes that are mostly made by men.
A fascinating discussion of the dynamics of urination (and a great read in general) is Alexander Kira's "The Bathroom"-- if you can find a copy. Here's a review: http://www.chiprowe.com/bookrev/bathroom.html
Oh, and it's quieter, too. :)...
I don't believe that's true. There are restrictions for use on commercial produce, and even NOFA restricts use of composted humanure on organic farms to woody (rather than leafy) crops, such as fruit trees. And some states require that composted humanure be buried under 6" of soil.
Rather than buying an expensive indoor toilet, a bucket outhouse and a funnel works even better, and gets all the smell and mess out of the house. Several examples are described in this treatise: http://www.drytoilet.org/dt2009/pdf/Joseph_Jenkins...
And, with the indoor composting toilet that I designed and got approved in Massachusetts, no urine separation is necessary, so much of the nitrogen and phosphorus as well as the moisture is retained in the compost (adding dry, carbonaceuous material is necessary).
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