Skip to main content
PBS logo
 
 

Book Review of The Toilet Papers: Designs to Recycle Human Waste and Water : Dry Toilets, Greywater Systems and Urban Sewage

reviewed on + 11 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 1


Interesting book. Yes, it may be about human excrement...but somehow the author was able to make it very informative and curiously interesting. For example, until reading this book, I never knew that in ancient China hotel owners discounted the price of the room to the third person to occupy a room and gave the room stay away for the fourth person in the same room...why...?, because excrement was collected and sold to farmers who after composting would use it to fertilize their crops. Clearly the more poop they could collect the more money they made.
Before you run out and check where your vegetables came from, remember that this practice requires a LOT of fermentation where naturally occurring heat kills off the stuff that might harm you otherwise. Don't know if the practice is still used, but in this planet where water is a precious commodity, flushing all this potential fertilizers seems very wasteful. Read the book it'll make sense