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Old 03-31-2008, 10:35 PM   #15
CanisLupusArctos
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When in the Outing Club during college (a very enviro-conscious bunch of people) they had outhouses at their cabins in the White Mountains. They were composting outhouses. Each outhouse had a small cement foundation that was hollow with 2 compartments, each accessible from a little door on the side of the foundation.

Directly underneath the pottie seat in the outhouse was compartment #1.... freshies. The only things we were allowed to put in there were poopies and toilet paper if we could help it... and "flush" with a handful of cedar chips (big bag was kept in the outhouse.) This compartment would be allowed to sit for a year.

After a year it would be shoveled into compartment #2, mixed with a few shovelfuls of cedar chips, and closed up for another year.

Once every year the club would run a work trip during which they'd open compartment #2 and find a pile of potting soil which they spread around the forest. Then they'd hold their noses as they opened compartment #1 and started shoveling it into empty compartment #2 for its second year of composting.

As a freshman I wasn't sure I'd like the outhouses but they really weren't bad at all. They weren't too cold in winter, no worries about clogging by using too much TP, and they smelled like cedar chips.
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