Separate Your #1 and #2 With a NoMix Toilet

If you’d have asked me whether #1 or #2 was the bigger problem for water treatment, I would definitely have said #2. Turns out that #1 is a pretty big problem in and of itself, contributing the majority of both nitrogen and phosphorus in our wastewater.

A possible solution? Separate the pee and the poo at the source for better processing! Now getting pee and poo to a treatment facility separately would require retrofitting the entire plumbing infrastructure – it’s not going to happen. But removing the pee and allowing homes and businesses to convert it to fertilizer, well that’s at least within the realm of possibility.

An important first step towards this goal is the NoMix toilet, which is starting to gain traction in Europe.

Image courtesy of capl@washjeff.edu