Tag Archives: composting
Constructive Interference: Opening March 19th
Mat’s hand sink design, our bathroom posters and the Emergency Sanitation Handbook from the PNCA class will be on display later this month in Atlanta, GA. The show is a collaboration between the Center for Disease Control and Prevention and Emory University.
Portable Composting Toilets for Multi Day Events
The Cloacina Project with design and implementation from PNCA’s graduate students in Collaborative Design created an open source hardware platform for toilets, urinals, hand sinks and privacy screens for portable low cost dry toilets. Recognizing that hardware is only half the problem the PNCA students addressed the user interface by creating a training protocol, help [...]
The 90s: US starts land applying sludge, Swizterland stops
In the 1990s, Switzerland banned the re-use of sludge for any agricultural purposes because of the high heavy metal and other persistent pollutants. Austria, and Sweden also banned such re-use. The main concern was that since waste water systems combine industrial and residential waste, the treated material could be harmful to the longterm health of [...]
Compost-heated Greenhouse c.1750
Ním Wunnan points us towards the Lost Gardens of Heligan, where they have restored to operation a “pineapple pit,” a compost-heated greenhouse in fashion in the mid-18th century for growing pineapples in Britain. It is, as far as is known, the world’s only operational pineapple pit.
Tuning the Aeration of our Pile
We’ve built a compost pile that is designed to be minimally turned and composted in a vessel, so we’re using a blower to get air in, and we need to tune the aeration rate. Our first problem running aeration tests is to measure the effective aeration of our system. As detailed below, the New Alchemy [...]
Greenhouse & Sensorhub up and running
Check out our data streaming in at cloacina.sensorhub.org explanations and images of the greenhouse and electronics will be forthcoming.
Diagram of Types of Composting Toilets
Ah, at last I found the simplest illustration of types of composting toilets. It’s from a review of household dry sanitation practices around the globe put out by Toilettes du Monde in France. The full article hasn’t been translated into english yet, but the summary has.
Pail Collection and Composting in Skaneateles!
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 [...]
Where do our pharmaceuticals end up?
A summary of contemporary research on the degradation of pharmaceuticals, pharmaceuticals in water, and in composting.
