Science A $350 toilet powered by worms may be the ingenious future of sanitation

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SlyPokerDog

SlyPokerDog

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  • Worm toilets require no traditional flushing and aren't hooked up to a sewer system — instead, worms compost human waste.
  • More than 4,000 such "Tiger Toilets" have been installed to date across India, in homes of people who were previously defecating in the open.
  • The worm toilets smell a lot better than a pit latrine, and don't breed mosquitoes either.
  • Here's how a $350 toilet powered by worms could change the world and save lives.
Worms may not have spines, but they're doing some back-breaking sewer work in more than 4,000 toilets across India.

Since 2015, a creative new type of toilet called the Tiger Toilet has been popping up outside homes and schools around the country. From the outside, this toilet looks like any other pit latrine. But it doesn't smell like one. Instead, it comes with a built-in population of tiger worms.

"Their natural breeding, natural habitat is in cow dung heaps, or horse sh*t heaps, that kind of thing," Ajeet Oak, director of the Tiger Toilet company, told Business Insider. "Poop. That’s where they like to live."

The toilets involve no traditional flushing and aren't hooked up to a sewer system. Instead, the worms are contained in a container below the toilet, and they feast on feces. The creatures' activity leaves behind a mix of water, carbon dioxide, and a small amount of wormy compost (that's technically the worms' poo, though it's much less toxic and more nutrient-rich than ours).

The resulting water isn't clean enough to drink, but it "can go into the ground and it sort of gets filtered naturally from there on," Oak said. No wastewater treatment plant needed.

To get the worm system to market, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation awarded at least $4.8 million in grant money to the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine to perfect the technology. Tiger Toilets also received $170,000 for initial testing in India, Myanmar and Uganda from USAID. Now, after years of development and field testing around the world, the technology is finally reaching people who need it most.

"These are people who are getting toilets for the first time," Oak said, adding that before getting a Tiger Toilet, "they would go out in the field."

Bill Gates recently told a crowd in Beijing that he's ready to spend an additional $200 million developing technology for next-generation toilets like these that can operate without mainframe sewer systems.

"We estimate that by 2030, the opportunity here is over $6 billion a year," Gates said.

Read More: Bill Gates is so obsessed with redesigning the world's toilets, he brought a jar of poop onstage in Beijing to prove it

How worms clean excrement
Tiger worms, or Eisenia fetida if you prefer the scientific term, are animals that love to eat waste. This makes them a perfect composting solution, and they especially love what falls into their Tiger Toilet compartment.

"These worms, they won’t escape on their own, because they won’t survive in just soil," Oak said. They need our human waste to live.

https://www.businessinsider.com/bil...-invent-tiger-toilets-powered-by-worms-2019-1
 
SlyPokerDog said:
  • Worm toilets require no traditional flushing and aren't hooked up to a sewer system — instead, worms compost human waste.
  • More than 4,000 such "Tiger Toilets" have been installed to date across India, in homes of people who were previously defecating in the open.
  • The worm toilets smell a lot better than a pit latrine, and don't breed mosquitoes either.
  • Here's how a $350 toilet powered by worms could change the world and save lives.
Worms may not have spines, but they're doing some back-breaking sewer work in more than 4,000 toilets across India.

Since 2015, a creative new type of toilet called the Tiger Toilet has been popping up outside homes and schools around the country. From the outside, this toilet looks like any other pit latrine. But it doesn't smell like one. Instead, it comes with a built-in population of tiger worms.

"Their natural breeding, natural habitat is in cow dung heaps, or horse sh*t heaps, that kind of thing," Ajeet Oak, director of the Tiger Toilet company, told Business Insider. "Poop. That’s where they like to live."

The toilets involve no traditional flushing and aren't hooked up to a sewer system. Instead, the worms are contained in a container below the toilet, and they feast on feces. The creatures' activity leaves behind a mix of water, carbon dioxide, and a small amount of wormy compost (that's technically the worms' poo, though it's much less toxic and more nutrient-rich than ours).

The resulting water isn't clean enough to drink, but it "can go into the ground and it sort of gets filtered naturally from there on," Oak said. No wastewater treatment plant needed.

To get the worm system to market, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation awarded at least $4.8 million in grant money to the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine to perfect the technology. Tiger Toilets also received $170,000 for initial testing in India, Myanmar and Uganda from USAID. Now, after years of development and field testing around the world, the technology is finally reaching people who need it most.

"These are people who are getting toilets for the first time," Oak said, adding that before getting a Tiger Toilet, "they would go out in the field."

Bill Gates recently told a crowd in Beijing that he's ready to spend an additional $200 million developing technology for next-generation toilets like these that can operate without mainframe sewer systems.

"We estimate that by 2030, the opportunity here is over $6 billion a year," Gates said.

Read More: Bill Gates is so obsessed with redesigning the world's toilets, he brought a jar of poop onstage in Beijing to prove it

How worms clean excrement
Tiger worms, or Eisenia fetida if you prefer the scientific term, are animals that love to eat waste. This makes them a perfect composting solution, and they especially love what falls into their Tiger Toilet compartment.

"These worms, they won’t escape on their own, because they won’t survive in just soil," Oak said. They need our human waste to live.

https://www.businessinsider.com/bil...-invent-tiger-toilets-powered-by-worms-2019-1
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I thank God in heaven above that I'm not a worm.
 
It seems like this is the country that would promote worm toilets as they have one of the worst garbage disposal systems in the world.
 
Can't they just shit in the streets like they do in great cities like SF and Portland?
 
As long as Bill Gates can make $6 billion off them.
 
The Swedes have been producing composting toilets for a long time due to frozen ground in rural areas...from a couple hundred bucks to about three thousand...no worms necessary...just spinning air...I want to get one someday
compost toilet.jpg
 
riverman said:
The Swedes have been producing composting toilets for a long time due to frozen ground in rural areas...from a couple hundred bucks to about three thousand...no worms necessary...just spinning air...I want to get one someday
View attachment 28743
Click to expand...
Dig down a foot and half to a few feet and the Earth is the same temperature around the world. It's warmed by the biggest blast furnace in the world, the Earth's core.
 
Lanny said:
Dig down a foot and half to a few feet and the Earth is the same temperature around the world. It's warmed by the biggest blast furnace in the world, the Earth's core.
Click to expand...
sorry...I don't think it is the same everywhere but hey.....if a shovel and a roll of toilet paper works...The Swedes seem to have a hard time digging outhouses near the polar caps and in my view...if you don't have to....what's the point? My uncle worked for decades on Project Deep Freeze in Antarctica and the core samples say it isn't very warm a foot and a half down ..there are thermal taps there as well but they don't keep things warm 36inces underground everywhere from my understanding
 
riverman said:
sorry...I don't think it is the same everywhere but hey.....if a shovel and a roll of toilet paper works...The Swedes seem to have a hard time digging outhouses near the polar caps and in my view...if you don't have to....what's the point? My uncle worked for decades on Project Deep Freeze in Antarctica and the core samples say it isn't very warm a foot and a half down ..there are thermal taps there as well but they don't keep things warm 36inces underground everywhere from my understanding
Click to expand...
Building code in Oregon is there is no freeze a foot and a half down anywhere in Oregon. That's in the Oregon building code. And in my building code studies it was explained to me that everywhere in the United States is above freezing a short way down, even in Alaska. In Alaska it may be more than a foot and a half down but it isn't extremely deep.
Antarctica is a sheet of ice extremely deep and ice is certainly cold. No, the building code doesn't apply to the Arctic or Antarctica.
I don't mean to imply that the building code is the same everywhere but I do mean to say that the variation below solid ground is not extreme throughout America.

https://www.weather.gov/ncrfc/LMI_FrostDepthMap
 
Lanny said:
Building code in Oregon is there is no freeze a foot and a half down anywhere in Oregon. That's in the Oregon building code. And in my building code studies it was explained to me that everywhere in the United States is above freezing a short way down, even in Alaska. In Alaska it may be more than a foot and a half down but it isn't extremely deep.
Antarctica is a sheet of ice extremely deep and ice is certainly cold. No, the building code doesn't apply to the Arctic or Antarctica.
I don't mean to imply that the building code is the same everywhere but I do mean to say that the variation below solid ground is not extreme throughout America.

https://www.weather.gov/ncrfc/LMI_FrostDepthMap
Click to expand...
My post was about Swedish composting toilets Lanny...
 
riverman said:
My post was about Swedish composting toilets Lanny...
Click to expand...
I thought the thread had morphed into talking about adapting the toilets to the U.S.
 
Lanny said:
I thought the thread had morphed into talking about adapting the toilets to the U.S.
Click to expand...
sure....I was adapting the Swedish compost toilet alternative to make a comparison about using worms to do what spinning air can accomplish..we have forum members here from all over the globe....I assume all use toilets
 
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