A Free Minimalist Urine-diverting Dry Toilet (UDDT) for the Unhoused, Poor or Disaster-stricken

By Chris Canaday. Ecuador-based researcher Canaday generously prepared this in response to our inquiries. He invites feedback via Inodoroseco or email canaday2 AT gmail.com Shifting from wasteful, expensive, contaminating, water-based toilets to decentralized, environmentally friendly, dry toilets should be more a matter of paradigm shift than capital investment. This is especially true for those who have little money,…

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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…

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Ecological sanitation is dinner topic

Most of the thirty odd Portlanders who gathered for dinner at a private home in the Laurelhurst neighborhood had had the same experience. When they had suggested ways to make sanitation more sustainable, there were always some friends and family members who simply refused to discuss the matter. Taboos about human excreta run deep. So,…

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Ecological Sanitation initiative taking off in 2011.

At its final monthly meeting of 2010, PHLUSH and kindred groups will lay basic plans for a new initiative in ecological sanitation – or ecosan – to be rolled out throughout 2011.   Everyone is invited to attend the gathering at 5:30 pm at Floyd’s Coffee Shop at 118 NW Couch Street, near the Skidmore…

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Sanitation Policy Advocacy in Flush-and-Forget America

Following on Singapore, PHLUSH was invited for the second year in a row to speak at the World Toilet Summit. This year the annual event was held for the first time in the US.  Convened in Philadelphia Oct 31-Nov 3, 2010, the Summit was jointly organized by the World Toilet Organization and the International Code…

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Earth Day and the crisis you've never heard of

Earth Day got its start when Wisconsin Senator Nelson Gaylord called on US university students to organize Vietnam style demonstrations and teach-ins to bring attention to environmental degradation and push a new policy agenda.  It worked. …….. Grassroots organizing brought together 20 million Americans in Earth Day events that first year – 1970.   In 1990 Earth Day…

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