Legalize sh*t
We’re flushing gold down the toilet - let’s try another way
When I googled “how do we treat poo in Toronto” I got a long list of articles about the “poop dude” who brought both terror and hilarity into Toronto university campuses thanks to his predilection for dumping buckets of sewage onto the heads of unsuspecting students. Until his apprehension by police, fear of him and the contents of his buckets caused some to hide themselves in their dorm rooms.
But the fact is, our human bodies are designed to expel what we don’t need. Of course we don’t want it dumped on our heads, but it’s nothing to be ashamed of, and it’s nothing we need to hide from. While none of us want to go back to the days when improperly managed waste spread disease and parasites throughout closely packed populations, our approach of the last decades of flushing it out of our sight has been an expensive and misguided experiment whose time I hope can soon come to an end.
We spend billions on pumping clean water into our homes, which we instantly contaminate and then spend more to whisk it away. But instead of being taken away by some kind of feces fairy, it gets routed to expensive sewage plants through a complicated series of pipes and tunnels. And in 20-25% of our city, some of it gets channelled directly into our waterways. Thanks to the “combined outflow” systems in neighbourhoods like Black Creek, during heavy rainfall the city dumps raw sewage straight into our rivers, Lake Ontario and even residents’ basements.
There are far better, more beautiful, and healthier ways to deal with our waste once we are prepared to own up to what we’re producing. We can treat wastewater with innovative solutions, including natural wastewater ponds and constructed wetlands like the one pictured at the end of this article. Once created, they are close to self maintaining, and provide wildlife habitat to boot. And, we can prevent the initial contamination of water altogether by phasing out flush toilets and centralized water systems.
To deal with our humanure in a way that is safer, regenerative to our environment and cheap in the long run requires three things. The legalization of innovation. The expenditure of money on wastewater ponds, constructed wetlands, green roofs and other self-sustaining water capture and purification systems. And a change in mindset.
The easiest area for the government to start is to legalize change. Composting toilets in Toronto are either actually or effectively illegal due to codes and permit requirements. Installing green roofs requires city inspectors, permits and fees. Yet the city’s efforts to control what homeowners are doing aren’t preventing problems - they are just moving them down the line and into our lake, air and landfills.
To deal with the expense of new ponds and wetlands, overhauling our budget to replace mechanistic systems with natural ones would save us money on old sewage and water main systems that require regular upkeep and replacement. And, the initial outlay could be paid for by us users. It is time for us to start paying the price for the water we use in our homes (and swimming pools). We are not covering the true cost to our city of the water we use and it’s time we raise the price to match reality rather than paying for it out of property tax.
As for the new mindset? Well, I have confidence that our mindset around our own waste will change very quickly once we see the true cost of polluting and wasting water and are allowed reasonably convenient alternatives. If I had to pay the true cost of the water I was flushing down my two toilets you can bet I’d be switching to legalized composting toilets immediately. When we have to treat our waste closer to home we will stop dumping plastic like condoms, wet wipes, diapers and dental floss as we’ll have to deal with them ourselves instead of dumping them in the lake. Finally, once we see the beauty of the wetlands and ponds on our shores, rather than the ugliness that comes with contaminating our waterways, and enjoy the cost savings of self sustaining natural infrastructure, we will reap the rewards of our new approach.
We overcomplicate so much of our lives by refusing to see what we put out into the world - but by trying to make it go away rather than dealing it ourselves we end up turning what could a gift to the earth into poison for ourselves.
To turn sh*t into gold doesn’t require some kind of magic alchemy. It just needs a shift into a new direction - and since the alternative destination is so much more beautiful, why not go there?
Yes, and there are additional reasons to better manage our humanure. We live on a finite planet so we face finite artificial fertilizer https://energyskeptic.com/2022/limits-to-growth-natural-gas-fertilizer-that-feeds-4-billion-of-us/ https://energyskeptic.com/2020/phosphate-production-and-depletion/. We would want to make sure that the more natural treatment options also end up making fertilizer that we can reuse to grow food.
I'm not familiar with how the City accounts for moving water around dollarwise, but we also have to face finite and most likely declining energy. It would be imprudent to assume we will always have sufficient energy to pump water up from Lake Ontario, especially then to just flush it down the toilet or irrigate lawns.
For a City that is supposedly in a Climate Emergency, the bylaw situation is just catastrophic. Unfortunately the bylaws are very difficult to fight legally, partly because there are no Charter Rights to protect the environment or minimize one's energy use. If Toronto were serious about fighting climate change and/or protecting the environment they could pass a bylaw that reads some rights into the Charter when interpreting City Bylaws in the courts. For example a Charter 2e the right to minimize one's energy use. Considering how energy intensive flush toilet are this might give some leverage to challenge the bylaw restrictions on composting toilets. Of course you would have to get to court first. Toronto typically proceeds administratively on bylaws as opposed to bringing charges so bylaws are typically only in court by judicial review which is stacked in favour of the bylaws. Toronto bylaws also need a right to elect charges for those that don't want to knuckle under to administrative enforcement.
I remember once, in the early 80s, yarning with some other young marrieds about the surprises of first housebuyings. Mine was about discovering the holes every six inches around the entire outside, and then the snaking grooves in the floor under the broadloom in the second bedroom. The evening's winner was about a recently purchased house in Parkdale, with the garden shed that turned out to be an outhouse, and no indoor toilet..