Category Archives: design

Earle Barnhart & Hilde Maingay on Sanitation Alternatives

Written by Mathew on February 15, 2011 — Leave a Comment

We received a lovely e-mail from Earle & Hilde, who have been busy illustrating alternative urban sanitation systems that can solve Cape Cod, Massachusetts’ ongoing aquifer poisoning.  Great flow diagrams for nitrogen within different systems, these would be a great complement to any presentation on contemporary sanitation practices and the future of sanitation.

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Flush with Inequality: Sanitation in South Africa

Written by Mathew on November 19, 2010 — Leave a Comment

Jonathan Lukens sent us this Design Observer article by Barbara Penner on sanitation in South Africa.  It is worth the long read, carefully pointing out the class and colonial assumptions behind by treating dry toilets as engineering solutions for the poor rather than design problems for everyone.  It really gets to the issues of market-driven [...]

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Pail Collection and Composting in Skaneateles!

Written by Mathew on October 14, 2010 — Leave a Comment

This is the longest-running pail collection system I’ve seen in the Western World.  Run from 1908-1998 around summer cottages in upstate New York, 5-gallon buckets were picked up from public outhouses and private summer cottages.  Sewage was banned to protect the watershed. PDF article here. Continuous interaction with cottage owners has been essential to the [...]

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Tanzanian Frustration with Infrastructure Funding

Written by Mathew on October 7, 2010 — Leave a Comment

why are donors / financers willing to pay 16,000,000 EUR for a piped
sewerage system with central treatment plant but reluctant to pay 4,000,000 EUR to cover the same population with household toilets?

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Now you can Buy

Written by Mathew on October 1, 2010 — Leave a Comment

Our posters are now up on cloacina.org, along with a buy button.

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Speaking at Cyborg Camp this Saturday

Written by Mathew on September 30, 2010 — Leave a Comment

I’m going to be at Portland’s Cyborg Camp talking about waste management and human senses.  There’ll be some good French sanitation history too! I’m back to back with Max Ogden- I’m practicing right now.

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Links on the history and future of toilets

Written by Mathew on September 25, 2010 — Leave a Comment

History Kris De Decker is one of my favorite technology writers, and up on Low Tech Magazine he has a great new article on re-use of human excrement, resource crises, and a 19th century Dutch and French vacuum sewers I’d never known about.  Vacuum sewers are making a comeback. Future Both EcoSanRes and SuSanA (Sustainable [...]

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GardenPool & Our Design Fiction

Written by Mathew on August 20, 2010 — 1 Comment

Molly and I wrote this piece of design fiction about using the suburbs for scrap last summer.  And today in a Transition PDX is GardenPool, where they DID roughly what we were talking about! love it.

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The Other WTO

Written by Mathew on August 18, 2010 — Leave a Comment

The World Toilet Organization. Check out this amazingly comprehensive 158 page compendium (PDF link) of toilets, sanitation, and sewage technologies.

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Peak Phosphorus vid from Phosphorus Futures

Written by Mathew on August 13, 2010 — Leave a Comment

Taking the Pee (draft audio) from Dylan McIntyre on Vimeo.

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We’re speaking at PSU on January 25th

noon on a Wednesday. Room 296 in the Smith Memorial Student Union (near SW Broadway and SW Harrison). We will speak about the recent history of urban sanitation, and the dual crisises of resource management and aging infrastructure driving the development and deployment of alternatives.  The talk will focus on case studies of alternative systems in the US, China, Germany, Sweden, and Yemen.
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