Reply: Looking for contacts from Norway and North America, Public dry toilets in recreational wilderness areas

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  • Manfred
  • Advisor for water, sanitation and hygiene behaviour change
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Re: Reply: Looking for contacts from Norway and North America, Public dry toilets in recreational wilderness areas

Hallo,
Norway has many dry toilets since Norwegians have many cabins. At the University of Live Sciences (NUMB) there is Prof. Peter Jenssen who may be able to help you. You can send him a mail: Petter D. Jenssen;  This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

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  • LauriVarri
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  • I work at the University of Applied Sciences of Hämeenlinna as an study counselor in the degree programme of Forestry. I am interested on toilet waste management in recreational wilderness areas like national parks etc.I did my Masters thesis on dry toilet waste management in recreational wilderness areas in Finland.
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Re: Reply: Looking for contacts from Norway and North America, Public dry toilets in recreational wilderness areas

Dear Elisabeth,
I am happy to share my thesis to SuSanA library. My thesis can be uploaded here  urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-2020051410168  .

If there is anything else related on this subject, you are always free to ask.

Thanks,
Lauri
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  • Elisabeth
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Re: Reply: Looking for contacts from Norway and North America, Public dry toilets in recreational wilderness areas

Dear Lauri,
Thanks for your posts! Could we upload your thesis to the SuSanA library (doesn't matter if it's in English or in another language). If it can't be shared, could you please copy the abstract here and perhaps the conclusions chapter?
But I hope there is nothing preventing you from sharing your entire thesis with us.

The topic is important and we don't have much material on it yet in the SuSanA library or here in the discussion forum.

Thanks,
Elisabeth
Dr. Elisabeth von Muench
Freelance consultant on environmental and climate projects
Located in Ulm, Germany
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  • LauriVarri
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  • I work at the University of Applied Sciences of Hämeenlinna as an study counselor in the degree programme of Forestry. I am interested on toilet waste management in recreational wilderness areas like national parks etc.I did my Masters thesis on dry toilet waste management in recreational wilderness areas in Finland.
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Re: Reply: Looking for contacts from Norway and North America, Public dry toilets in recreational wilderness areas

Hi Rochelle,
Somehow I have missed your messages. Sorry about that.

I managed to complete my thesis in June 2020 but I am always interested to learn more (and get more contacts) about public sanitation in wilderness areas. Thank you for your advice.

Cheer,
Lauri

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  • LauriVarri
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  • I work at the University of Applied Sciences of Hämeenlinna as an study counselor in the degree programme of Forestry. I am interested on toilet waste management in recreational wilderness areas like national parks etc.I did my Masters thesis on dry toilet waste management in recreational wilderness areas in Finland.
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Re: Looking for contacts from Norway and North America, Public dry toilets in recreational wilderness areas

Hi Geert,
Thank you for your interest towards my thesis. Unfortunatelly there isn’t any published articles about my thesis in english but I am happy to tell more about my conclusions. You can also send me aprivate e-mail if you are interested lauri.varrigmail.com.

In my thesis I found out that toilet waste management and especially preventing negative impacts from dry toilets to environment (eutrophication and hygiene) is very complicated thing. Especially when working in a cold or freezing climate. Also one big issue is the national environmental legislation and the common interest to  solve the waste problem that exists but still is in the shadows of common interest.

I recommend you to check Toilet Tech Solutions website www.toilettech.com/  and learn about their system to handle toilet wastes.

Founder of Toilet Tech Sytems Geoffrey Hill has done also an interesting research   open.library.ubc.ca/cIRcle/collections/u...s/24/items/1.0073570  that you should check. Information from Geoff (earlier messages in this discussion) gave me a lot new ideas for my study.

I think that Geoff´s idea to use a small scale septic field (presented in his thesis) for urine is a best available technology for handling the liquid waste(urine) in remote sites(my personal opinion). Only “weak” factor is that this system needs the urine diverting toilet system that isn´t available on every site. Like in Finland and Sweden, urine diverting toilets that actually diverts urine outside the toilet or actually work in cold climate are very rarely seen on public sites. Normally urine and feces are mixed together and the liquid waste is leachate in Finland and Sweden. Nevertheless, I see that Geoff´s idea to treat urine in small septic field has a great potential and In my interest in a
future is to test this system for leachate.
 
In my thesis´s conclusions I am trying to emphasize that it is important to look the bigger picture and not just one toilet. How to solve and manage the toilet wastes of the whole area? How the toilets are situated in respect of service connections(roads, etc.)? In some cases (high use, near roads)  the septic tank toilets and transporting the waste to local waste treatment plant might be the best solutions  although it is quite expensive and not very sustainable. How to manage waste from remote sites? Treated on site or transported to centralized treating unit? Liquid is always problematic to transport so it should be treated always on site at least on remote sites. Feces however could transported more easily for centralized treatment units like bigger composting unit etc.

One promising system for treating toilet waste in centralized unit (doesn't mentioned in my thesis) is microthermal process that can handle also septic waste (if I have understood correctly). Finnish company (Digital Toilet Systems Oy) has available technology for this and the system can treat toilet waste in 1-2 days and turn it to a hygienic fertilizers. Unfortunately there is only website in finish www.dtso.fi/ Founder of the company is a Raini Kiukas and she has done a long career in dry sanitations related matters in Finland. The company is also on their way to bring out some new systems for urine treatment.

I hope I was able to answer at least some of our questions.

Cheers,
Lauri

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  • geertbogaert
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Re: Looking for contacts from Norway and North America, Public dry toilets in recreational wilderness areas

Hello Lauri,

Looking to introduce dry toilets in Belgian natural parks myself, I am very interested in your thesis.
  • Do you have more (articles, ...) to read in english on your conclusions?
  • Or can you pass me links to the best practice examples you found?
  • I wondered if you found a dry toilet system that composts urine and solids together and excludes any risk of contaminating the soil of the place where it is located. 
Thanks very much,

Geert
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  • Rochelle
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Re: Reply: Looking for contacts from Norway and North America, Public dry toilets in recreational wilderness areas

Hey, just saw this, but in case you are still looking, check out Crater Lake National Park in Oregon, USA

www.rogueweb.com/crater/

warm regards, Rochelle



--

Rochelle Rainey (She/Her)

Global Health Bureau, Division of Nutrition and Environmental Health
Washington, DC 20547

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  • LauriVarri
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  • I work at the University of Applied Sciences of Hämeenlinna as an study counselor in the degree programme of Forestry. I am interested on toilet waste management in recreational wilderness areas like national parks etc.I did my Masters thesis on dry toilet waste management in recreational wilderness areas in Finland.
  • Posts: 11
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Re: Looking for contacts from Norway and North America, Public dry toilets in recreational wilderness areas

Thank you all for your kind support for my Master´s thesis work. I got a lot of new ideas from the discussions, material links and contacts that you shared.

I got my thesis work (Development of public dry toilet waste management in recreational wilderness areas, Case: Metsähallitus ) published in May and I graduated in June.  Unfortunately  the report is in finnish and there is only a short abstract in english. Thesis report is available here:  urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-2020051410168

If anyone has any questions concerning my thesis or the subject itself I am happy to help. 
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  • povington
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Re: Looking for contacts from Norway and North America, Public dry toilets in recreational wilderness areas

Thanks to all contributors for some very insightful perspectives on waterless toilets. This was a great thread to read.

Lauri - I don't have any ideal sources to share, but two reports on the Sanitation Technology Platform (STeP) website briefly discuss sanitation in U.S. national parks. The reports are more focused on procurement and the market size though; less so on the technical details of facilities management. For a quicker review, it might be best to search for "park" in both documents to skip to the most relevant sections. The two reports are:

Market Insights for the Reinvented Toilet: U.S -->stepsforsanitation.org/2017/12/market-insights-for-the-rt-us/
Reinvented Toilet: Early Adopter Compendium --> stepsforsanitation.org/2019/02/reinvente...-adopter-compendium/

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  • LauriVarri
  • Topic Author
  • I work at the University of Applied Sciences of Hämeenlinna as an study counselor in the degree programme of Forestry. I am interested on toilet waste management in recreational wilderness areas like national parks etc.I did my Masters thesis on dry toilet waste management in recreational wilderness areas in Finland.
  • Posts: 11
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Re: Looking for contacts from Norway and North America, Public dry toilets in recreational wilderness areas

Dear Elisabeth,
The strict regulation in Finland is based on the national environmental legislation which says that all kind of contaminating of soil and groundwater is prohibited. This legislation is often referred when dealing with liquids from dry toilet because the considerably high amount of nitrogene and phosphorous and fecal bacteria. Basically there is no big difference in regulations whether the liquid is leachate or pure urine. Leachete just needs to be stored for longer time than urine to make it more hygiene if used as an fertilizer.

I think the reason for strict regulation conserning waste waters is the fear of contaminating groundwater but also surface waters like lakes and rivers and finally the Baltic sea. We have a lot of lakes and rivers(still in good condition and quite often drinkable) in Finland and we are next to the Baltic sea which is suffering badly from eutrophication. Regulations and instruction from the environmental authorities conserning on dry toilets is fitted on households. Unfortunatelly same regulations are used also for recreational wilderness areas like national parks etc and that´s what makes things more problematic.

Yes, It is still possible to urinate in the wilderness and you don´t need a permit for that but If you have a dry toilet, especially public one, it needs to fulfill the requirements of our legislation. Problem is that there is no working system available for every toilet sites that can be fitted to the resources(money and staff) that maintenance has.

I hope I was able to answer all of your questions.
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  • Elisabeth
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Re: Looking for contacts from Norway and North America, Public dry toilets in recreational wilderness areas

Dear Lauri,

Could you explain this statement a bit further?:
"Unfortunatelly you are not allowed to filtrate leachate from from dry toilets into the soil in Finland"
Why is that? Is it because there is fear of groundwater pollution with nutrients? Or is it because of the freezing issue in winter?

When you say "leachate" would that also apply to pure urine in the case of a urine diversion toilet? What if someone wants to just urinate while out in the wilderness, would they be allowed to do that? ;-) Sometimes it seems that environmental regulations mean well but have gone too far and created other environmental issues, e.g. unnecessary use of petrol if urine has to be taken away in barrels rather than infiltrated.

Please keep us updated on what you find with your MSc research. It's good to hear more about the work in Finland and other "cold-winter countries".

Regards,
Elisabeth
Dr. Elisabeth von Muench
Freelance consultant on environmental and climate projects
Located in Ulm, Germany
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
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  • geoffbhill
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Re: Looking for contacts from Norway and North America, Public dry toilets in recreational wilderness areas

Happy to help out. The world needs more research here in waterless human waste management.

The BTW (Behind the Wall) is a urine diversion seat from France made by Ecodomeo (Emmanuel Morin). It does not require any bulking agent. With urine removed, bulking agent is entirely unnecessary. Bugs eat the feces without much effort, periodic watering and covering with a plastic or rubber sheet to keep the material moist is sufficient. Complete decomposition to stable organic matter takes 6-18 months depending on conditions.

We have this system in a few dozen locations with freezing temperatures, and used in winter only conditions in Canmore, Alberta at the Nordic Center. No issues. Design of piping to accommodate -20 to -30C on occasion. Various design considerations include: large diameter piping, minimize # of bends, minimize length of pipe, insulate pipe, straight drop in large pipe to get below frost line, and something we have designed but not deployed is a solar 12V heater (basically 12V heat tape and a 12V heat pad for the urine collection tray).

The design of the urine drainfield matches that of conventional septic fields. It is permitted as such in a few states in USA. In a septic system for residence in USA, one of the most common ways of treatment/ disposal of domestic sewage, a tank holds the waste stream for 24 hours to precipitate out solids, and effluent goes straight to ground contact within the soil based field. So these fields are used to treat waste with fecal matter, and urine, but diluted with water. We oversize our drain-fields to accommodate the high strength nature. Some are considering incorporating a dosing system to flush the entire field at one time, rather than trickle in urine to the front of the field. Usually we install 1-2 10' sections of 4" perforated pipe. This meets the daily peak flow and infiltration capacity of most soils by 5-10x at high use public sites used by 10,000 - 30,000 visitors per year.

Yes, urine picks up bits of feces on the belt and washes them into a tray with a urinal filter pad. There is some O&M here changing the filter pad every 4-6 months at moderate use sites. The design of the drainfield, complying with US standards, can handle feces, so we do not worry about some feces being in the urine. If desires were to have a sterile urine effluent, the urine can be stored in tanks for weeks - months to kill all pathogens, before going into the drainfield.

In most installations now, we install a 20L stainless steel grease trap to act as a small settling chamber for the urine, protecting the drainfield. This can be oversized to make a weeks-months retention time and kill pathogens. There is ample research on the destruction of all pathogens in stored urine. Here is one:

www.fwr.org/wrcsa/1439106.htm -

"Although there is a low risk for transmission of infectious diseases from handling urine, it should be stored for at least 50 days before use. This should be compared with Swedish recommendations (Schönning 2001) that vary from shorter storage times (1 month) at 4°C where the urine can be used on crops that are processed before use as fodder or food, to longer storage times (6 months) at 20°C where the urine can be used on all kinds of crops, even those that are consumed raw by humans."


Geoff

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