Sludge Watch ==> UN: Water Shortages & Valentine to the Inventor of Earth Closet

[Maureen Reilly]

Sludgewatch Admin:

It most certainly does not make sense to use precious potable water to flush 
  toilets.
If only the 'Earth Closet' technology had won out over the 'Water Closet'.

Here is a Valentine post mortem to Robert Moule (1801-1880) - designer of 
the Earth Closet.
See more on the Earth Closet below:

http://www.exnet.com/1996/01/15/science/science.html
..................................................


Water Shortages May Affect Two-Thirds of World by 2025, UN Says

By Alex Morales

Feb. 14 (Bloomberg) -- Two-thirds of the world's population may be living in 
areas where there are water shortages by 2025, the United Nations' Food and 
Agriculture Organization said.

At present, 1.1 billion people don't have access to adequate clean water to 
meet basic daily needs, the FAO said today in an e-mailed statement. By 
2025, 1.8 billion will be living in areas with ``absolute water scarcity,'' 
and two-thirds of the population may face ``water stress conditions,'' it 
said.

``Water has a major impact on the capacity of people everywhere to improve 
their lives,'' Pasquale Steduto, chief of FAO's Water, Development and 
Management Unit, said in the statement. ``In many regions, farmers trying to 
produce enough food and income face the added challenges of repeated 
droughts and competition for water.''

Sustainable and efficient use of water has become a key challenge; water use 
last century grew at more than twice the rate of the population, Steduto 
said. With about 70 percent of all fresh water drawn from lakes, waters and 
aquifers dedicated to agriculture, improving farming techniques is necessary 
to solve scarcity problems, he said.

Methods to be developed include trapping rainwater for use on farms, cutting 
down on leakage from irrigation systems, increasing productivity and 
changing crops, the FAO said.

The UN estimates the current population, of about 6.5 billion people, will 
increase to almost 8 billion by 2025. Two thirds of that would be about 5.3 
billion people.

To contact the reporter on this story: Alex Morales in London at 
amorales2 at bloomberg.net .

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601085&sid=am1686TSjV1s&refer=europe

.......................................

Rev Henry Moule and the Earth Closet
An earth-closet is a lavatory in which dry earth is used to cover excreta. 
Until a hundred years ago, the traditional ``place of easement'' for people 
living in the country was either a privy with a cess-pit, or an 
earth-closet. The definitive book on the privy is Chic Sale's ``The 
Specialist.''

In Britain, Queen Victoria used an earth-closet at Windsor Castle, although 
many types of water-closet were available. For many years, the earth- and 
water-closets were rival systems with champions and detractors on both 
sides.

Henry Moule, champion of the earth-closet, was born in Melksham, Wiltshire, 
on 27 January 1801, the sixth son of a solicitor. He went to Cambridge, and 
in 1829 became vicar of Fordington in Dorset, where he remained for the rest 
of his life.

(Also born 1801: Robert Dale Owen, American social reformer and politician; 
Sir Joseph Paxton, English architect who designed Crystal Palace; Fredrika 
Bremer, writer, reformer and champion of women's rights; Vincenzo Bellini, 
Italian operatic composer who influenced the likes of Wagner and Chopin; 
Brigham Young, second president of the Mormon church.)

For some years he was chaplain to the troops in Dorchester Barracks, and 
from the royalties of his 1845 book ``Barrack Sermons'' he built a church at 
West Fordington.

In 1861 he produced a 20-page pamphlet entitled National health and wealth, 
instead of the disease, nuisance, expense, and waste, caused by cess-pools 
and water-drainage. ``The cess-pool and privy vault are simply an unnatural 
abomination,'' he thundered, ``the water-closet ... has only increased those 
evils.'' And he went on to describe his own amazing discovery.

In the summer of 1859 (I think) he decided his cess-pool was intolerable, 
and a nuisance to his neighbour; so he filled it in, and instructed all his 
family to use buckets. At first he buried the sewage in trenches in the 
yard, one foot deep, but he discovered by accident that in three or four 
weeks ``not a trace of this matter could be discovered.'' So he put up a 
shed, sifted the dry earth beneath it, and mixed the contents of the bucket 
with this dry earth every morning. ``The whole operation does not take a boy 
more than a quarter of an hour. And within ten minutes after its completion 
neither the eye nor nose can perceive anything offensive.''

Then he discovered that he could recycle the earth, and use the same batch 
several times, and he began to grow lyrical. ``Water is only a vehicle for 
removing it out of sight and off the premises. It neither absorbs nor 
effectively deodorises.... The great ... agent ... is dried surface earth, 
both for absorption and for deodorising offensive matters.'' And, he said, 
he no longer threw away valuable manure, but obtained a ``luxuriant growth 
of vegetables in my garden.''

He backed up this last point with a scientific experiment, persuading a 
farmer to fertilise one half of a field with earth used five times in his 
closet, and another with an equal weight of superphosphate. Swedes were 
planted in both halves, and those nurtured with earth manure grew one third 
bigger than those given only superphosphate.

Moule quoted a biblical precedent for his efforts, from a set of 
instructions about cleanliness: ``And thou shalt have a paddle upon thy 
weapon; and it shall be, when thou wilt ease thyself abroad, thou shalt dig 
therewith, and shalt turn back and cover that which cometh from thee.'' 
(Deut. 23:13) The New English Bible is even clearer: ``With your equipment 
you will have a trowel, and when you squat outside, you shall scrape a hole 
with it and then turn and cover your excrement.''

According to Moule, doctors said that if his scheme could be generally 
adopted, ``much more would be effected by it for the prevention and check of 
disease and sickness, and for the improvement of health, than Jenner has 
effected by the discovery of vaccination.''

About 1850, some people in England brought the earth-closet inside the 
house, and various patent mechanisms appeared, the first by Thomas Swinburne 
in 1838 (No 7810). In 1860 Henry Moule produced a sort of commode with a 
bucket below seat, and a hopper behind it containing fine dry earth or 
ashes. When you had finished you pulled a lever to release a measured amount 
of earth into the bucket and cover the contents.

In partnership with James Bannehr, agent, Moule took out a patent in 1860 
(No 1316)---and others in 1869 and 1873. He set up the Moule Patent 
Earth-Closet Company (Limited), which manufactured and sold an earth-closet 
for every occasion, the expensive models in mahogany and oak. ``They are 
made to act either by a handle ... or self-acting, on rising from the seat. 
The Earth Reservoir is calculated to hold enough for about 25 times, and 
where earth is scarce, or the manure required of extraordinary strength, the 
product may be dried as many as seven times and without losing any of its 
deodorising properties.''

The closet was often inside a shed or privy, which provided some privacy and 
protection from inclement weather.

Parker's Patent ``Woodstock'' Earth Closet had similar automatic mechanisms 
triggered either by the release of pressure on the seat---so that it 
`flushed' when you stood up---or by pressing a foot lever.

W Liddiard invented another ``Patent Self-acting Foot-board'' to discharge 
the earth. He also patented a commode ``particularly adapted for use 
in-doors,'' and a multi-seater earth-closet for use in schools. Any number 
of units could be bolted together, side by side, and the earth-releasing 
mechanism operated from a distance, so that children could be prevented from 
playing with the device and wasting the earth!

An 1873 dry-ash commode could be filled straight from the fire-gate. The 
cinders were automatically separated and kept for reburning, while the fine 
ash covered the contents of the bucket every time the lid was raised. A 
later version had a removable drawer instead of a bucket, rather like some 
chemical lavatories today.

In the 1960s, my father had an earth closet in a tiny shed outside his 
remote holiday cottage in Yorkshire. He issued strict instructions not to 
pee in it, since urine would make it smell; ``Go out on the hillside,'' he 
said. However, Moule claimed that the dry-earth principle is applicable to 
urinals, and ``especially suitable for schools and railway stations and 
other public places ... all offensive smell may be prevented, and a valuable 
manure manufactured.''

I had thought the earth-closet was a bit of a joke, but Moule was convinced 
that it represented the future. He worked out the implications; if used by 
six persons daily the earth-closet would require on average one 
hundredweight (50 kg) of earth per week, which he recommended should be 
dried in an iron drawer under the kitchen range. A town of 10,000 would need 
16-18 tons of earth per day---but only borrowed!

He wrote a string of tracts and pamphlets, including ``The advantages of the 
dry earth system'' (1860), ``The impossibility overcome: or the inoffensive, 
safe, and economical disposal of the refuse of towns and villages'' (1870), 
``The science of manure as the food of plants,'' and ``Manure for the 
million---a letter to the cottage gardeners of England.'' He also tried hard 
to get government support, with an 1872 paper on Town refuse---the remedy 
for local taxation. The substance of his argument was:

``There can never be a National Sanitation Reform without active 
intervention by central government.
That active intervention can never take place under the Water Sewerage 
System, without a large increase of local taxation.

But let the Dry-Earth System be enforced... and with a vast improvement in 
health and comfort, local taxation may be entirely relieved.''
He managed to convince a lot of people. The medical journal The Lancet of 1 
August 1868 reported that 148 of his dry-earth closets were used at the 
Volunteer encampment at Wimbledon---forty or fifty of them used daily by not 
less than 2000 men---without the slightest annoyance to sight or smell.

The Field of 21 November 1868 said ``In towns or villages not exceeding 2000 
or 3000, we believe the earth-closet will be found not only more effective, 
but far more economical, than water drainage.''

This combination of economy and health was powerful. In 1865 the Dorset 
County School at Dorchester, with 83 boys, changed from water-closets to 
earth-closets, and cut the annual maintenance costs from GBP3 to 10/- 
(GBP0.5)! At the same time smells and diarrhea were eliminated. Lancaster 
Grammar School brought in earth-closets because the water-closets were 
always out of order ``by reason of marbles, Latin grammar covers, and other 
properties being thrown down them.''

For some decades in the second half of the nineteenth century, therefore, 
the earth-closet and the water-closet were in hot competition. Almost 
everything Moule said was true, and much the same arguments are used today 
by the champions of bio-loos and composting lavatories. The environmental 
considerations have not changed; using water-closets is expensive, and 
merely shifts the problem downstream---the sewage has to decompose 
somewhere.

Henry Moule died in 1880, but even in his seventies he was still trying to 
persuade the British government that the earth-closet was the system of the 
future, and he nearly succeeded. Nevertheless in rich countries, because it 
does rapidly and effortlessly remove the sewage from the house, the 
water-closet has won the battle---so far...