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>A council's incentives for compost toilets > >This scheme won the year 2000 Social Innovations Award >in the Ecology category. The following is adapted from >an item entitled 'Tanum declares war on WCs' which >appeared in the Norwegian Ideas Bank (Stiftelsen >Idebanken, PO Box 2126 Grünnerlokka, Norway, tel 00 47 >2203 4010; fax 00 47 2236 4060; e-mail: >idebanken@online.no; web: www.idebanken.no). >The municipal council of Tanum (population 12,000), on >the west coast of Sweden, has used financial >incentives to reduce the number of mains toilets in >the community. > >Tanum is a sparsely populated community with several >thousand holiday homes. To connect all the permanent >residents, not to mention the summer guests, to >sewerage and install modern cleaning plants would have >been extremely expensive. > >The council was also convinced that the WC was an >ecological blunder - instead of nutrients being >returned to the soil, clean water is used to wash them >out to sea, where they become pollutants (even after >partial cleaning); and then farmers have to use >chemical fertilisers to replace the lost nutrients. > > >'For new homes they would give ready permission only >for composting toilets' >To close the nutrient cycle, politicians in Tanum >decided that for new homes they would give ready >permission only for composting or urine-separating >toilets (meaning toilets where the urine, which >contains most of the nutrients, goes into a storage >tank). They also decided that people who already had >WCs should be encouraged to replace them. > >The municipality did not have the power to ban WCs >outright, but permission to install one was made >dependent on an environmental assessment in each case >- and even if one got the permission, there was a >strong disincentive, as hooking up to a sewer was >charged at 60,000 SEK (about £3,150). As a result, >only two or three out of the 40 to 50 new houses being >built each year come with WCs. > >Those who opt for other solutions can avoid outgoing >mains connections altogether and can in most cases >allow the grey water to infiltrate into the ground. >Those already connected to sewers have their annual >service fee cut by 50 per cent if they convert to >composting or separating toilets. > >In particular, a number of farmers in Tanum now use >urine or composted toilet wastes on their land. > >Tanum's example has since inspired other Swedish >communities to include goals for human waste recycling >in their Local Agenda 21 plans. > >Birgitta Jonsson, Environment Department, Tanum >municipality, S-457 81 Tanumshede , Sweden (tel 00 46 >525 182 82, fax 00 46 525 183 00).
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