What Can Be Put In a Composting Toilet?

If you are considering purchasing a composting toilet, your primarily planned use of them is likely to dispose of your internal waste.  This is what they are built for, after all, and if they are sized right and maintained properly they should be able to handle this “organic waste” excellently.  For most toilet composting systems, you will also be adding additional dry matter after each “deposit” to help keep the toilet in balance, such as sawdust or peat moss.

However, one huge advantage of having a composting toilet in your home is that it it will not only deal with human waste, but also a wide variety of different types of organic waste your household likely produces.  If you live in an apartment or other dwelling that does not have access to an outdoor compost bin, you will find that your composting toilet will serve this purpose well.  Composting toilets are able to recycle all sorts of kitchen scraps, be it vegetable peelings, burnt rice or leftover oatmeal.  You can also throw in your left over egg shells, tea bags and coffee grounds.

But that is not all: composting toilets can also handle “brown” organic matter as well, including paper, disposable cotton diapers, organic tampons (with no plastic tags) and cardboard.  In fact, by using it to dispose of paper and other dry composting materials, you will help keep the compost mixture in balance. (For more information on how toilet composting systems work, read “How Toilet Composting Works“).

You can even place yard waste in your composting toilet!  Grass clippings, leaves, and almost every kind of waste plant matter that you might throw into an ordinary composting bin is also suitable for a composting toilet.

You can also compost old clothing made from organic fibers, cotton rugs, blankets and more.  Just be sure that when you add cloth to your composting toilet that it does not contain any synthetic matter.

In fact, you may find so many uses for your composting toilet in your home that you will regret not purchasing a larger model so you can compost even more of your home waste.  (For more information about how to select the right size composting toilet for your family, read the “Guide to Purchasing a toilet paper ToiletRated“).

Composting toilets help benefit the environment in multiple ways: by composting organic materials instead of sending them to landfills or sewage treatment plants, by saving on water, by saving on social expenditures, and more.  You will find that by installing a composting toilet in your home you will be able to dramatically reduce the amount of waste your family sends to the landfill and instead be able to turn that waste into a valuable natural resource (compost).