At Compost It, we envision a future without sewage in our rivers.

 

With your help, we're exploring the viability of providing compost toilet installation and waste-collection services to urban homes and businesses across the UK.
 

Sound interesting? Fill out our survey below and help shape the modern sanitation service we all deserve.

 

What's wrong with our current sanitation system?

 

 

There are really two parts to this question:

 

1) What's wrong with how our sanitation system is operated, and

 

2) What's wrong with the design of our sanitation system.

 

The answer to the first question will explain why the system needs to change. The answer to the second will make it clear that the system needs ripping out entirely and replacing with a service that's fit for purpose.

 

What's wrong with how our sanitation system is operated?

 

 

In the UK, the majority of our sanitation system is operated by for-profit companies, who have collectively paid out over £78 billion in dividends to shareholders - mainly pension funds and investment banks - since the industry's privatisation in 1989. Meanwhile, the financial and operational functionality of these companies is on its knees. The industry currently has a collective debt of over £60 billion, and faced £158m in fines in 2024 alone for failing to operate to an acceptable standard. As if this wasn't bad enough, households are now paying almost twice as much on their water bills than they did in 1989 after adjusting for inflation.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What's wrong with how our sanitation system is designed?

 

Since there is only one set of pipes bringing water into our homes, the water we flush our toilets with must meet the same standards as the water we drink from our taps. The process of turning 'natural water' - from rivers, lakes and reservoirs - into drinking water is an energy-intensive process involving a variety of chemicals. The average toilet uses 5 litres of water per flush, taking the average household water use for toilet flushing to around 60 litres per day, with the same volume - plus a little extra - heading back into the sewer network.

 

An appalling amount of untreated sewage is dumped directly into our water bodies. For the portion of sewage that is not dumped directly into our waters, another high-energy, highly chemical treatment process is used so that the water can be released back into the environment. The solid material left over from this process is called 'sewage sludge', or 'biosolids'. Sewage sludge is applied to agricultural land as a soil treatment, but there are questions about its nutritional quality and concerns about its safety. Biosolids are also used to generate electricity - some good news amongst the bad.

 

When we eat food grown as plants, we are absorbing the nutrients from the soil in which the plants were grown. To grow more food in the same soil, we must restore the soil's nutrients. Nature achieves this process through composting - animals eat plants, and their excrement returns the nutrients to the soil. Our current sanitation system is completely out of touch with this natural nutrient cycle. One of the consequences of this is that we need to apply vast quantities of synthetic fertilisers to agricultural soils, a huge percentage of which ends up in our rivers. In 2024, British farmers applied 2 million tonnes of fertiliser to their land.

 

What we desperately need is a sanitation system which respects and restores the natural cycle of soil nutrients...