Compost Toilet Trial Report - Ministry of Civil Defence and ...

For a small trial of up to 15 people, the mechanisms used were sufficient to recruit
enough participants. If additional participants were required, it would have been
necessary to use additional community networks and/or broaden the catchment area,
for example allowing Porirua City and/or Hutt City residents to participate.
4.2 Delivery and collection
For most participants it took less than 15 minutes to deliver the materials, assemble
the unit and set up the wheelie bin. For those users who had not attended the briefing
an additional 5 – 10 minutes was required to brief the participants and allow them to
ask any questions. Supplies for two sites (including wheelie bins) could be fitted into a
WREMO Ute (Ford Ranger).
One participant requested a ‘split’ unit, i.e. separate boxes for the two buckets and two
other participants were unable to fit the units in their existing bathrooms and had to
place them in a spare room. They were provided with heavy duty plastic liners to line
the bottom of the units.
All material for the ‘split’ unit could be fitted into a single 240 L wheelie bin (Figure
4.1), this could be an appealing choice to people wishing to include a compost toilet in
their emergency preparedness kit. A standard unit did not quite fit into a wheelie bin.
Figure 4.1: A 240 litre wheelie bin containing an
unassembled compost toilet (split unit) and all
material supplied for the trial. This material
could last a two person household six to eight
weeks.
Several of the participants requested that the toilet unit was not assembled, wishing to
assemble it themselves. All were able to do this successfully in less than 5 minutes.
All wheelie bins were set up for the users, Appendix 6.
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