These ideas are all pretty horrible... it's your typical "we need to replace the entire system" bullshit that always fails to look at more than one aspect.

The big upside of modern sewers is that nobody has to shovel human waste. You don't just drop it into a hole like with a vacuum toilet, zero water toilet or a modern outhouse, you transport it to a modern facility for treatment without anyone touching it.

The number of diseases that spread through your poop is very high. Having people move around and pick up your pile of poop(and hay), to use as fertilizer is just a begging for an outbreak.

Granted, using potable water to transport feces is dumb as shit, pun intended, but that's an entirely different problem to solve.

Source: am safety lady, work with hazardous materials (indirectly, I only very rarely actually handle human waste)

I'm surprised by the negative comments even here.

My wife and I have been using a urine-diverting composting toilet (Nature's Head) full time for six years now. It has its quirks, but we both prefer it to a normal toilet - although we both lament that there is no "bidet toilet seat" possibility.

Obviously, there's no water needed, but there is also no smell. Like, less smell than a flush toilet. We have a tiny vent fan and no matter how terrible your deposit, whatever smell there is never makes it out of the bowl.

The compost, after sitting a bit longer with our outdoor compost, goes on our trees. But the overall volume from the toilet is really minimal. I change it every 5 weeks or so.

There was a slight adjustment period to get used to changing it. Again, it's not the smell, it's just the idea of "these are clumps of coco coir covered shit nuggets I'm looking at."

The worst part is the urine, which, when you're swapping out the bottles, does stink. It's not for everyone, but in the summer I dilute the pee with water (1:10) then I use that to water our compost.

Anyway... I think with more interest the design of toilets like ours could really be improved. I'm sure it would work without issue for families with their own suburban-like lots. Condos or apartments might need more infrastructure.

My impression is the real blocker is just "ew, gross" and maybe some manly "I only stand to piss!" We've also been surprised how many people seem to be totally tuned out to their... Uhh, "waste elimination" I'd say. Like, if you're pooping, you need to open the flap. We tell everyone, we have it written down. There is a whole explanation of how the toilet functions. But we'll still get home after being away, or after a guest leaves and one of us goes to the bathroom and - oh lord, what were they thinking.

These will be great for dry, rural places. However, for dense cities, I think the best things we can do are water recycling, using non-potable water for toilets, and saving tons of trees, water, and forever chemicals by adopting bidets- which would also considerably cut down the amount of waste we send through sewer systems. Nearly 60 lbs of toilet paper per person.

We use a simple homemade compost toilet, saving 150kg of climate change emissions per person each year, and instead of creating sewage, we create compost.

This is my day! Worm toilets exist, and require almost no compromise. They can use water like a flush toilet or be a bit more rustic. So cool. Real harmony with nature shit and no one cares!

Going to be a downer.

Not a living chance in hell these see any adoption in rich countries. Not .000001%.