Poop.

The real dirty one. Challenging because we are trained from toddler hood to simply drop the pile in 3 gallons of pure drinking water and dispose. With hardly any odor, the turds magically vanish down a smooth, clean ceramic duct in a cleansing whirlpool of frothing water.

If you're reading this, you're probably aware of the environmental issues with that scenario. So enough said. Some other method, preferably a little easier on our dwindling aquifers, should be mandatory in any green minded household.

This is where iconoclasts like Joseph Jenkins fit in. His Humanure Handbook gives all the answers to safe, conscientious composting of fecal matter, using a non-technical system that can be set up for under twenty dollars, and last a lifetime. The Humanure Handbook, now in its third edition, can in fact be downloaded for free in pdf format here.

Jenkins' website, once visited, will render anything I write here secondary. So I will make it brief.

What the Humanure Principle involves is simply to crap in a plastic bucket and cover each deposit with sawdust until bucket is full. This can happen anywhere, but a privy would be the preferred location. Then haul the bucket outside to a largish semi permanent composting bin, dump the turds in, and cover the steaming heap with sawdust and copious amount of straw. Clean the bucket, and put it back in its place. Make the pile grow for one year, then switch to a new, similar sized composting bin, and let the first one rest for another year. Extract the compost from the first bin and till it into the soil. Repeat the cycle.

And what's so great about this? Besides using very little water and literally free to set up, it also kills pathogens effectively. This is achieved by true, passive thermophillic (hot) composting, using no heating elements, fans or other gadgetry. If done right, and this is not difficult, the turds will cook to death in a couple of days.

We have been using this exact procedure since October 2003, and can report nothing but praise. It is so embarrassingly low-tech and gadget unintensive that our materialistic minds, schooled to only believe flashy catalogs with the latest greatest, almost refuses to even consider this. A bucket, sawdust, straw and two bins off nailed together shipping pallets. That's it. It works.