“Make poo useful and fertile”. The slogan La Fumainerie could not be more explicit. Since 2020, this association has developed in Bordeaux the first network for the collection and recovery of human excreta. The goal? Reduce the environmental nuisances linked to our current system of urine and faeces management and reuse these resources in a sustainable and ecological manner. A first in France.
Founded in 2019, the La Fumainerie association’s mission is to democratize the use of dry toilets in the city. Concretely, the organization proposes to install these ecological devices in private individuals residing in collective housing to replace their modern, more polluting toilets. But that’s not all. The association launched in Bordeaux, in July 2020, a two-year experiment aimed at deploying a network for the collection and recovery of raw human excreta, reports the ecological news site. Reporterre. Hence the name of Fumainerie, for “human manure”. Each week, its members collect used containers by bicycle in the various districts of the city.
Unique in France, this system should make it possible to first question the social acceptability, technical feasibility, environmental efficiency and economic sustainability of different solutions for the extraction at source of this waste from the human digestive system.
Fight against wasted resources
Our current model of human urine and excreta management is far from ideal. Since the creation of modern sewers and toilets, these excreta go into the water. As a result, rivers are polluted in addition to wasting water to transport these precious resources.
“When we flush the toilet, we send a fraction of our excreta into the river. We concentrate in a very small aquatic environment an enormous quantity of nutrients – nitrogen and phosphorus – which will grow algae and contribute to the death of rivers ”.
Fabien Esculier, researcher at the Water Environment Urban Systems Laboratory (Leesu) at the École des Ponts ParisTech, cited by Reporterre
About 27 l of drinking water would be consumed per day and per person for flushing our toilets, reports the Fumainerie on its site. Since the start of its experiment in 2020, the association has collected 3.4 tonnes of human excreta. “We calculated that the saved drinking water corresponded to the drinking water consumption of ten people during their entire life.“, Confides Emilie Pates, volunteer member, to our colleagues from Reporterre.
Recycle urine and feces
Once collected by the Fumainerie, human faeces are composted by the Gironde company Pena environnement, which specializes in their recovery. These droppings are then standardized and transformed into agricultural fertilizer that can be marketed. The urine is processed by the company Toopi organics which, in the long term, would also like to resell it in the form of bio-fertilizer to replace chemical fertilizers. By the end of its experiment in 2022, the Fumainerie would like to succeed in recycling all the collected materials.
For the moment, the association has 60 co-producers and is still looking for a viable economic model. The structure relies on public funding to maintain its activity. To become independent, she estimates that each co-producer household would then have to pay 42.32 euros per month.
In addition to the financial question, cultural obstacles relating to the use of toilets are slowing down the extension of the device to a greater number of users. But for Fabien Esculier, taken over by Reporterre, “The Fumainerie is the symbol that anything is possible”. This experiment would have inspired the town hall of Bordeaux, which plans to install dry toilets in certain public places, squats and slums.
A pioneering initiative, which smells of ecology. To go further, here are 4 reasons to adopt a dry toilet at home.
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