This Tuesday: Composting Toilets & Supporting Codes and Policies

With the support of PHLUSH, the Jefferson County Sanitation HAT has been hard at work this year strengthening community relationships, surveying local residents on sanitation needs and educational interests, and collaborating with local and regional experts to address rural sanitation challenges.  A Housing+Sanitation Learning Series kicked off this fall, starting with a presentation of FLUSH:…

Read More

Enacting Awareness: Water, Waste, and Public Space

With last Friday’s whimsical 5K walk, activists at the University of California at Santa Cruz focused attention on often-evaded issues. “Slugs to Sludge” was created as a playful way to raise awareness of sewage infrastructure and the water it requires, and to advocate for action on ecological sanitation at UCSC and beyond. With the average…

Read More

Poo to Peaches – Educating the Next Generation of Composting Toilet Users

Guest post by Stephen Thomas of Watershed Management Group. Every day, the average person flushes 10 gallons of clean drinking water down the toilet. This constitutes a waste of two precious resources: scarce water supplies and human manure, which could instead be composted to form a fertile soil amendment. While there are various  commercial composting…

Read More

Let’s Legalize Composting & UD toilets in US

architecture-door-entrance

Our friends at Recode have drafted model code for composting toilets with urine diversion (UD) and IAMPO is preparing to vote on it. This Portland-based group of scientists and policy advocates have made spectacular progress. Now Recode is calling on us to help make history. Please consider a tax-deductible donation to enable Recode’s Director to travel to California to address IAMPO officials. Details are in…

Read More

Do you Poop Sustainably? Alternative Toilets Save Water & ReCycle Waste

Urine-Diverting Toilet

This guest blog post is from Atara Jaffe. Sustainability. From mainstream media to blogs, sustainability is not just a buzzword, but is frequently used as a term to embody practices related to survival. Everyone from homeowners to architects are incorporating “sustainability” tactics to slowly transform the way people think and live. While solar panels have popped…

Read More

Sewers are broken. Where will you go?

PHLUSH partner organization MDML (once known as Cloacina.org Project) created an informative and life-saving guide that shows you scientifically-proven methods for human-waste composting in an emergency. Don’t miss the opportunity to download it for free or purchase it for 10 bucks on their website. This illustrated guide presents a series of graduated responses you can do to keep…

Read More

Portland Takes Lead in Sound Advice for Emergency Sanitation

Lately, we’ve been checking out what other West Coast cities at risk of earthquake-induced water and sewer system failure and non-functioning toilets are recommending to residents. Some cities propose that residents bag, bleach, throw away, or bury human waste in the event of an emergency.  Such proposals could have dangerous consequences.  Portland, however, has proposed…

Read More

Sobering realities for World Water Day

World Water Day is celebrated worldwide today, March 22 and here in Portland on Saturday.  As advocates of sustainable sanitation we have trouble with the custom of using our drinking water to transport our human excreta, household graywater, industrial chemicals, and storm water runoff to the wastewater treatment plant.  Portland’s Bull Run water is among…

Read More

Meet Susan Mund, PHLUSH Volunteer

  As an  all-volunteer run organization, PHLUSH relies solely on the help of dedicated volunteers to conduct outreach, plan activities, and manage online communications. So we want to acknowledge the efforts of friend and committed PHLUSH volunteer – Susan Mund. “It is so confusing that in a world concerned with clean, accessible and affordable water,…

Read More

Toilets for Emergencies

What are we going to do when the toilets don’t work?  Do we have the knowledge and materials we need to build simple, safe, functional toilets for household and multi-household use?   Helping Portlanders answer these questions is the goal of Toilets for Emergencies, a fall campaign organized by PHLUSH in partnership with PNCA’s Collaborative Design…

Read More