If you’re coming to the field school this year and want to upgrade your accomodations to include your own private bathroom, consider bringing your own toilet seat and 5 gallon bucket (or 2 buckets).  These Luggable Loo toilet seats clip onto a bucket.  You can also improvise your own seat or build a toilet box like the ones we use.

We’ll still have plenty of toilets available, but if you’re coming for an immersion program and plan to stay in a shelter you build, having your own toilet inside is a luxury, especially when it’s the middle of the night and raining buckets.

We use a thermophyllic humanure composting system, so the bucket’s contents can be emptied onto the compost pile with everything else that will rot,  then covered with a layer of hay in order to balance the carbon/nitrogen ratio so it won’t smell or attract flies.  We’ve been doing this since 1996.  It’s simple.

Being able to take care of individual and group sanitation like this is an example of learning to live without infrastructure.