Composting your poops is one of those things you might actually consider were it not for all the gross, decomposing faeces you’d need to store and transport about your property. Biolan’s got an idea that might help ameliorate some of that vile mess by freezing the smell in its tracks.
Treehugger reports on one of the latest developments from Finnish composting toilet company Biolan. The Icelett is a plumbing-free toilet with a built-in refrigeration unit. Basically it’s a freezer-like bucket for doing your business in that retards all of the biological activity in the waste by cooling it down to five degrees. All that’s left for you to do is empty the poop into a composter or a compost heap every now and then and let nature take care of the rest.
BUT! Perhaps the most ingenious innovation on this toilet is that even though it’s freezing your poop, the toilet seat isn’t cold. Apparently, the heat produced by the refrigeration unit will keep the seat warm.
Icelett isn’t totally gross-free or convenient. As Treehugger points out, since none of that composting is happening in the toilet itself, when you empty it out, you’re dealing with straight up poop. The same stuff that came out of your body. There’s no ventilation built into Icelett so depending where you put it in your house, you will smell the smell until it freezes.
Obviously composting your poop isn’t practical for most people, and even if it was, you’d need to have a use for all that fertile soil after the process is done. Still, it’s cool that people are trying to think up creative ways to make otherwise energy-saving technologies more palatable. [Biolan via Treehugger]