The Humanure Handbook: A Guide to Composting Human Manure, 2nd Edition

by Joseph Jenkins, 1999. Chelsea Green, White River Junction, VT. Softcover, 302 pages, $19.

The Humanure Handbook, newly released in a revised, expanded, and updated edition, is a delightful treatise on composting human waste. Joseph Jenkins, a 20-year veteran of using a 5-gallon bucket sawdust-toilet, begins by challenging our common practice of defecating in drinking-quality water. He then addresses, in detail, the various sewage treatment systems now in use around the world, the scientific concerns and cultural fears of pathogen transmission from human feces—which he calls fecophobia—and the composting techniques he uses on his Pennsylvania homestead. Jenkins not only uses composting as a means of getting rid of human waste, he values the humus he collects as a rich source of organic material that he freely uses in his vegetable garden after careful composting at high temperatures over time.

The Humanure Handbook is well illustrated with graphs and charts, cartoons and photos; is carefully referenced and indexed; includes an international directory of commercially available composting toilets, as well as instructions for constructing simple sawdust-toilets. While less comprehensive than

The Composting Toilet System Book (see

EBN

Vol. 8, No. 7/8),

The Humanure Handbook is both informative and interesting—well worth reading for anyone interested in alternative sewage treatment.