Meet the humanure toilet: It recycles poop to grow more food and stops sewage pollution

Estimated read time: 4 minutes

In 1995, Joe Jenkins lay in bed in his one-room cabin in western Pennsylvania, thinking about his book —  finished and ready for self-publishing —  when he realized the problem: his title.  Printed in giant letters across the cover was The Shit Book.

Accurate? Yes, but how would he advertise? He needed a different word. That night, Jenkins came up with the perfect one: humanure. It captured the essence of his craft: recycling nutrients in human feces, human manure. “I'll just make a contraction out of that,” he thought, “Call it humanure and see what happens.” He self-published The Humanure Handbook, which has sold over 90,000 copies in the US and been translated in 21 languages. 

Before developing the compost toilet system he’s famous for, Jenkins just wanted a better option than the stinky outhouse he’d used while care-taking an old farmhouse with no plumbing. He experimented at his next off-grid home, using a toilet seat above a bucket. He’d cover the deposits with sawdust and dump it outside in a pile. Over time, the compost pile transformed the contents into fertile soil — compost. Like magic. 

Jenkins had tapped into something simple, yet profoundly effective: nature’s decomposers. Specifically, he created an environment for microorganisms to transform organic matter – be it feces, food scraps or yard clippings – into pathogen-free, nutrient-rich compost. He has shared what he’s learned widely, with free step-by-step instructions on how to build a toilet, free downloads of books and videos. He also fabricated and sold a compost toilet called the Lovable Loo. 

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Meet the humanure toilet

His compost toilet works like this: A toilet seat sits over a container, such as a 5-gallon bucket. After using the toilet, add a scoop of sawdust to cover the deposit. This prevents odors and helps in the compost process. Each person fills up about one container a week. Once it’s full, swap it out for an empty one. Most compost toilet users fill up a few toilet receptacles before dumping them all into an outdoor compost bin. There, microbes consume the organic material, which generates heat, killing any potential pathogens, and creates compost. 

Some people tell Jenkins that human feces can’t be recycled because doing so will spread disease. His answer is, “not if you put feces through a compost process.” Human pathogens don’t survive the heat of a compost pile, nor do they like being outside of a human host. After waiting a year to ensure all organic material is broken down, the pile can be used as compost.

These simple compost toilets have the potential to address several global crises. They’re an affordable option for the 1.5 billion people who lack toilets, and would provide free compost to grow more food. They could also slash sewage pollution and prevent diseases spread by fecal-contaminated water. Jenkins has traveled around the world sharing this solution starting in Mongolia in 2006, then in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake, then more places including Mozambique, Nicaragua, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and India. 

In 2016, Jenkins and community partners taught a group in Nicaragua how to build and use the compost toilets. One woman told him she had no idea this was possible — to build a low-cost, odor-free toilet and a compost bin. Previously, like everyone in her community, she had to find a spot outdoors to defecate, but now she uses her own indoor toilet anytime she wants. It changed her life. 

Challenges with flush-toilet cultures

Even though water shortages and sewage pollution plague the U.S., Jenkins’s solutions haven’t gotten as much traction here as they have abroad. Red-tape and onerous regulations make it expensive and difficult to pilot the humanure system at the community scale. To embrace compost toilet solutions in a flush-toilet culture is "an uphill battle," says Jenkins. However, his system is used in alternative living setups, including cabins, off-grid homes, as well as the Kailash Ecovillage, in Portland, Oregon. There, a large humanure system processes feces and urine from the residents to make compost, all with city approval. The Portland project followed guidance in a green plumbing standard called We-Stand, which is available for other communities to use, too. 

This type of simple compost toilet system is easy to set up in places without power or water, and thus is an affordable option during emergency situations, such as fires, floods, earthquakes, and encampments. In 2017, at the Standing Rock Reservation, thousands of protesters flocked to rural North Dakota to support the tribe’s fight against an oil pipeline that threatened their land and water. Numbers swelled to 15,000 people, all needing a toilet. The tribe found an affordable and pollution-free option with compost toilets. The nonprofit Give Love built toilets, bathrooms, and a giant composter, plus trained volunteers to manage the compost toilets. Jenkins writes how toilet duty became the best job in camp, and the toilet structures became a favorite warm – not smelly – hang-out spot.

For 48 years, Jenkins has used compost toilets in his home and office, feeding his family from a garden fertilized with the humanure. He doesn’t shy away from the origins of the compost, serving guests vegetables he calls "turd-maters and poop-taters." He highlights the disconnect many people have with water and toilets. They scorn a compost toilet but are pooping into a pot of drinking water, calling it a toilet. “People who use compost toilets aren’t polluting anyone’s drinking water,” he says.

Years ago, a film crew led by Larry the Cable Guy of the History Channel’s Only in America show, visited Jenkins to learn about the humanure system. After filming, they ate fresh produce grown with humanure, then left to film their next subject: a man who claims he was visited by aliens and chosen to survive the upcoming apocalypse. “It’s bizarre,” says Jenkins, to get grouped with people waiting for aliens, when humanure toilets are an affordable solution to the very real sanitation crisis on this planet, plus it “makes perfect sense — recycling organic material and actually growing food and eating it.”

Laura Allen is a writer and educator based in Oregon. She co-founded Greywater Action, where she teaches people how to transform their homes to reuse water. She authored the books, The Water Wise Home: How to Conserve, Capture and Reuse Water in Your Home and Landscape, and Greywater, Green Landscape. Her article, For a better brick, just add poop, won the Gold Award in Children’s Science News from the AAAS Kavli Science Journalism Awards (2023). Her favorite pastimes include gardening, hiking, reading and visiting eco-toilets.