As for the sawdust: cedar works best for eliminating smells and often there is a ceder specific fabrication shop in a medium to large town (picnic tables, fences ect..) who would love to get rid of it. Lumber yard dumpsters are almost always full of sawdust, and any furniture shop you ask will probably give you more than you could use in months.

a moderate amount. the worst issue is when tree roots find the debs that are open to the ground. I imagine it could be grey water , if suitable products were used eg plain low sodium detergents vs Sard one shot

“I realise that lawns do not apply to OZ with the current water shortages…”

a perrenial turf has been proven to use less irrigation water than trees and shrubs. there high water use grasses and low water use. the low use ones really are efficient.
the only issue i have with lawns is the cost of mowing.

i did waffle on there
but i still reckon it all ties in together
the ecosystem recycles itself, consumes all its own waste
and discharges mostly air and clean water

thinking about it all took me through various stages, leading to humanure.

currently the experimnets are on hold
not enough worms

and i have no way to dispose of urine yet. given i live in a unit with no soil gardens
a days worth is all that you can possibly dilute down enough to give your plants. if its not highly diluted it smells.
In the old days it was easy
go piss on a citrus tree up the back, or the old dry and stick leaf pile. Inoffensive.
and endless capacity to soak up any domestic production

but worms dont like 1-ammonia, 2- thermophillic microbe heat

currently my worm farm is getting precomposted materials
waste food, shredded paper, fallen leaves i collect in a bag while on evening walk
seed pods, chicken bones, teabags, eggshells etc + onions, citrus
everything
if the black soldier fly get in and are in decent numbers then even meat and fat scraps can go in, as if they are there i never see other maggots, and BSF love meat.

i do this in feedbags. it all shrinks down ok
its not ideal but ive seen no vermin
once precomposted i feed it to the worms
they love it
they also get neem leaves (fallen) and albizzia flowers (fallen)
fig leaves and ill use mango leaves later

now….

the idea is to build up a large happy worm farm
so i can continue the poo feeding trials
deposit of toilet paper, faeces, cover material , minus urine, or minimal urine
buried straight in and under the beds of worms

id say my population would b 50:50 , Eisenia andrei : Perionyx excavatus

my little experiments showed me they loved it.
but too much urine set off a thermophilic reaction and the worms retreated to balls huddled around the cooler perimiter.

my expectation is that using precomposted everythings, plus greenwaste and coir as bedding , with at least 2 worm species suited to all seasons will allow direct burial in the wormbed of human dung.

it would be straighforward to run a test using E coli, to see what effect worm numbers and time have on prevalence (tested as colony forming units - easy as)
vs a control with no worms

my reading already leads me to suspect that worm bacteria and enzymes would rapidly kill off these guys anyway

Please stay on the line when food/garden threads appear. Would you like to write a post on what you’re doing, where, how?

it gave me the direction to have a go

id always fel that the septic system was great! it turned wastewater into mulch on site
it was perfect, excpet that our crap didnt belong in it!

as a disposal system for kitchen and shower and laundry wastewater it couldnt be beat
but it was an ineffective means of managing our excreta
- for all the reasons outlined in jenkins book

my family are not as adventurous as me
im usually the first to eat a strange food, or try a strange practice
but they come around usually

so il followed the directions
using hardwood (eucalyptus) sawdust and depositing in a 20L bucket
too easy!

Urine and faeces were combined. yes there was a little smell at the bottom but it was very minor and easily rinsed.
anyone whos had to clean greatraps and septics will be relieved at the minor smell issue vs one big one!

I tried using cane tops as the filler but its too coarse. Fine bagasse may be acceptable, im yet to try it. Its also infinitely more renewable and available than hardwood sawdust, in many areas.

so it all worked very well

i am confident that if i was to continue on taht path for 10-15 years in one place i would create a rich anthropic soil horizon made of
- charcoal
-stable organic matter
- very high base stauration (Ca, Mg)
as well as elevated K , P, S and N
made from these simple ongoing inputs, many of which are generated in situ

my current trial is regarding the use of Blue worms, red worms and BSF to run an all-in-one recycling bed for all household scraps incl meat, bones and shellfish remains
plus human faeces, waste paper

im now in the true tropics and live moves at a faster rate!

So far im having excellent results with small amounts of human faeces. I dont have enough worms yet, or a suitable size bed
but the few trial ‘nuggets’ have been dealt with summarily.
the worm bed is raked open, the bucket of organic matter and feaces put on , and the bed raked over.
poking around with a rake a few weeks later and there was no traces of faeces or toilet paper. just vanished completely.

bedding is coco peat, neem leaves, waste card and newsprint, occassionally some bagasse and aged horse manure.

thanks for reaching the end of my very long post
i hope it all ties in. to me the parts of the journey have been inseparable from the whole
i post because there is SO little out there
there are 6+ billion people shitting out there daily, or 3 times daily
and yet i have trouble finding good info on recycling this stuff?

everyone. please post. somewhere, everywhere
your ideas, experiences, successes and failures.

Having a gardening, science, chem., biology background I just got more and more excited.

In all the time since I have only ever found 1 single possible problem with it, that seems unresolved
(even though in my heart I ssuspect nature will provide and elegant solution)
That problem is the formation of dioxins BTW

Apart from that the addition of fine char to the soil just matches in every way.
It buffers, it absorbs nutrients, it provides stable microhabitat for soil organsisms, stimulates their growth, it improves soil porosity, improves water absorbtion,

In a garden setting it sorts out the problem of those slow to decay woody materials, it sorts the issue of what to do with noxious material – like rose prunings and diseased plant parts

It sorts some household waste too. All wastepaper and card.

I would build a fire in a steel oil drum, with a few holes punched in the base get it roasting, then keep feeding it. The new material would flare, smoke and as soon as the smoke stops id add more material on op. the material beanth turns black but seeing as oxygen is limited , combustion stalls
Id throw in bamboo, paper, card, sticks, woody fruits , peach pits, rose thorns, cactus spines, diseased plant material like citrus gall, or nematode affected rootballs
Anything recalcitrant and noxious.
If it might take 3 years to break down out there – it takes 3 minutes to be transformed in there!

As the bin filled the heat would be extraordinary, but once I was done, I finished it
I turn on the hose and douse it. It would billo seam and hiss and within a few minutes itd all be done and dusted.
Id kick the bin over and make sure it was out
From that id get a bucket of char, and all my waste problems sorted for that garden session.

the soil made of the compost, the mulches, the manures, the char and the mineral additives - became superlative.

please see pics
http://i190.photobucket.com/albums/z144/Bernard_090/char-compost.jpg
http://i190.photobucket.com/albums/z144/Bernard_090/charvegsoil.jpg

plus pics of some of the mulch species about the evap trench
http://i190.photobucket.com/albums/z144/Bernard_090/November08101.jpg
http://i190.photobucket.com/albums/z144/Bernard_090/citrustrenchcomfrey.jpg

Food goes to the chickens
Soft scraps, leaves, lawn clippings eggshells, teabags, coffee grinds etc to a compost inoculated with worms
And all the hard stuff, gets charred
Then it all gets put back together, the chickens mix it together and you have an exceptional soil conditioner!

The worm thing just kinda happnned.
Once you remineralise, add organic matter
Start composting
The worms just show up

I had a reln worm bin but they never thrived
So the worms got dumped in the compost heap and veggie gardens and they thrived so long as there was always a mulch layer.

Huge native worms lived beneath, while the epigeic compost worms lived above.
When I would dig up a sod, the earth would look like swiis cheese with large tunnels all throughout.

it was all working so well. my garden exploded with vigour , while surrounding gardens stagnated

but what about crap?

Comfrey (S uplandicum - the sterile fodder type)
Vetiver grass (Cv. Monto - sterile)
Bana grass (Pennisetum purpureum - sterile)
Queensland arrowroot/ Achira - Canna edulis
lesser used
Banana (sterile)
Lemongrass (sterile)
Clumping bamboo
all these species soak up greywater, and moisture around our leachfield.
the rural area uses septic system. 2 tanks and pumped out to a raised evaporation trench. I planted all around this with fibrous rooted plants to speed up the process with evapotranspiration, and catch nutrients and carbon as above ground biomass that could be cut regularly and used as

1)animal bedding (chickens and ducks)
2)Mulch
3)composting filler

this all worked wonderfully

i still imported organic matter, and manures. if they were cheap enough, id be mad not to.
BUT i was getting to the stage that i didnt really have to.

next discovery - biochar