peerreviewed research guiding the practice said claire furlong a selfdescribed toilet scientist at the ihe delft institute for water education in the netherlands most of the available literature was produced by companies that sell worm toilets so academic researchers remained skeptical theres kind of a long and quiet history of wormbased sanitation said furlong but there was nothing to say that the worms actually ate the shit that went in over the past few years furlong and her colleagues have published a series of studies demonstrating how well worms break down fecal sludge in one study published in the journal of water sanitation hygiene for development in 2014 worms helped reduce the volume of fecal sludge by 76 over 30 days compared to 17 without worms furlong is currently studying whether worm or vermicomposting toilets can be an effective sanitation strategy for people in myanmar a boon for society could dry toilets and composting scale up to solve largescale sanitation problems michigan state universitys joan rose is skeptical efforts to introduce composting toilets in highpoverty urban areas have faced many challenges from collection trucks that cant fit up narrow streets to the difficulty of providing enough toilets for the residents she said and if you cant solve those issues others arise when youre talking about a million people in a community and youre trying to compost all that waste whos going to haul it out said rose in some places its the poorest of the poor who do all the hauling and its women mark elliott from the university of alabama thinks that composting toilets would also be a hard sell in rural parts of the united states where people are used to using flush toilets even if in some cases the sewage just gets dumped behind their homes and then theres the matter of maintenance with composting toilets youve got to do some degree of raking or stirring and youve got to do some type of emptying said elliott when it comes to dealing with your own waste even if you say oh dont worry its going to be compost at that point its not going to stink people dont want to do it more how diet may have changed the way humans speak study whether its in cities or rural areas lalander agrees that for any sanitation system to work on a large scale it must be simple for people to use with centralized services that take care of things like emptying compost but she sees no reason why such services couldnt be provided for waterless toilets much as they are for traditional septic tanks and when it comes to the daily experience of using composting toilets she said design can make all the difference she is particularly impressed by the pedaloperated conveyor belt toilets produced by ecodomeo in my own house i dream of having a urine diverting vermicomposting toilet said lalander and i would have one of those pedals editors note june 15 2019 a