Albuquerque and many other U.S. cities have a serious problem: Thousands of people experiencing homelessness need a place to use the bathroom when they’re not in a shelter or a public toilet isn’t available. When forced to go outside, there are significant consequences.
Small business owners and their employees spend valuable time and resources cleaning up messes and residents regularly complain to city officials about issues around their properties. Those who defecate outside expose themselves to health risks from harmful bacteria and diseases like hepatitis A and shigella. There are other safety issues that make women especially vulnerable.
Clean-up efforts come at a high cost to taxpayers: The city is on track to spend nearly $1 million this year. Requests are filtered through the city’s 311 system to third party contractor Specialized General Services. Each cleanup costs hundreds of dollars and response times can take days.
But a group of neighborhood leaders and organizers in the International District say they have an alternative that’s cheaper and better for the environment — composting toilets. They’ve begun to engage with city and county officials to get feedback and maybe some resources and funding.
“This is such a safe, simple, inexpensive opportunity. It’s a fast way to react right now — that’s what’s so appealing. We could get them out today,” Tawnya Mullen, the South San Pedro Neighborhood Association board chair, said. “It’s a great opportunity to get rid of the headache.”
What is it?
Mullen, who uses a composting toilet in her home, said one of the simplest versions is a five-gallon plastic bucket with a retrofitted lid and seat. It comes partially filled with organic material like leaves, hay, wood chips, sawdust or used coffee grinds. A deposit is covered up after each use and when the bucket is full the contents are added to a larger compost pile.
Each bucket comes with detailed instructions and biohazard stickers on the outside.
“It composts to a high enough temperature that it kills all the pathogens within two days, typically,” Mullen, a nurse, said. “The end product is actually a viable agricultural material.”
But what about the smell?
“I sniffed a bucket that had been used in my bathroom for five days,” Nick Hamill said. “It smelled like dirt.”
Hamill is board president of the Fair West Neighborhood Association and also a nurse.
“The idea sounds out there, but the reality of it feels a lot less wild,” he said.
Mullen, Hamill and about a dozen other volunteers that include public health experts, a physician, regenerative agriculturists and an agronomist have been carefully testing out a few trial toilets in commercial areas of the International District where those experiencing homelessness tend to camp.
The early reaction is positive, they say, including among small business owners.
“I’ve ever so gently mentioned it to my [office] landlord; he’s intrigued,” Hamill said. “Obviously this is a surprising idea, and I try to be sensitive to the fact that I don’t want people to feel like it’s forced upon them.”
Cost, support
Mullen has researched toilet composting programs in California, Vermont and Haiti.
She said a scaled down version which includes labor and maintenance costs, using repurposed buckets from local restaurants, for example, comes in at about $300. A scaled up version made from corrugated metal is about $500.
Mullen said she first thought of that idea more than a decade ago as an effective way to mitigate climate change and reduce water use.
“It just so happens that it combines really nicely with the public health crisis that we have right now,” she said.
Mullen estimates the residential use of a composting toilet saves about 7,000 gallons of water per person each year.
“Imagine that scaled up to a municipal level. We’re not allowing farmers to water their fields, but we’re flushing water that could be used to grow food or that we could have to drink,” she said.
Mullen said city and county support, applied to those experiencing homelessness, would ideally include the donation of a centralized piece of land for the composting process. It would also allow officials to monitor the process.
“If they would just sanction the bucket pickup and collection and give us the nod that this is great, and then say that they’re going to help build it out over time, I think that we could get a lot more volunteers,” she said.
Mullen said Albuquerque City Councilor Nichole Rogers and Bernalillo County Commissioner Adriann Barboa have told her they support the idea and want to learn more.
“It’s a climate-ready solution, cost-effective, job-creating, exceptionally inexpensive and pretty easy to launch on an initially small scale,” Mullen said.