When the toilet flushes, most of us leave the room, thinking little of what happens next. For the staff of the Eastsound Sewer and Water District, what goes through the pipes is paramount. That’s why they are working on a plan to not only reduce cost for waste treatment, but to go the next step – transforming human waste into soil.

“The main reason we started thinking of the idea was because it’s very expensive to throw away waste. We’ve been looking for alternatives to get rid of waste and not just put it in a ‘dumpster,’” said Roy Light, Eastsound Sewer and Water District superintendent.

It was an idea that started six years ago and now Light predicts will be a reality within a year. Construction is slated for next fall.

The district is planning on using the “screw-press” process through the company FKC, which has more than 4,000 operations worldwide. Light said it essentially presses water out, leaving solids that are safely processed into usable soil.

“They actually call it a soil amendment because it has high fertilizer value,” he said.

Light added that there is always some reluctance in the community to re-using human waste, but the process produces a class A biosolid and kills all pathogens. There will also be extensive testing before the product is released to the public to ensure its safety.

Class A biosolids are mandated as an unregulated substance by the Department of Ecology, meaning that the sewer district can give the soil away for free to the public, which is the sewer district’s plan. They will even have a machine that will load it into your truck, said Light.

According to DOE, biosolids are a primarily organic, semi-solid product resulting from the wastewater treatment process and are a valuable commodity because they have physical qualities and nutrients that make them good soil amendments and fertilizers.

“It doesn’t look or smell like you think it would,” Light said.

Most wastewater plants recycle the liquid portion of human waste, but the sludge left over, called biosolids, remains a challenge.

Currently the sewer district takes waste, processes it and then has to pay to haul it off island, and it eventually makes its home in a landfill.

Light has spent years researching virtually every alternative processing method and landed on the “screw-press.”

He hopes that the benefits of the new process for the district will in turn help reduce the cost for citizens to have their septic systems pumped.

He said it’s unusual to turn waste into a soil at a plant of their size because they are fairly small, but because they are located on an island, it makes sense to have the island’s sewer and water district be as self-sustainable as possible.

Susan Kimple, Eastsound Sewer and Water District manager and avid gardener, already has first dibs on the initial load of the districts’ “new” product, especially since the islands’ soil can be iffy for planting.

“I’m really excited,” said Kimple. “For years we have been working on it and it’s finally coming to fruition. It will benefit the whole island, not just Eastsound.”

Toilet history

– Compiled from Time Magazine, Scientific American and Reuters.

Nov. 19 is World Toilet Day – an event hosted by the World Toilet Organization to raise awareness for the 2.5 billion people around the world who live without proper sanitation.

Historians agree that the first “toilets” possibly came from Harappa civilization in India, the Scots and the Greeks. Skara Brae, a Neolithic settlement on the Scottish mainland dating back to 3,000 B.C., revealed what could be “drains” extending from recesses in their walls. Ancient Rome had hundreds of public lavatories. In the late 1880s, English plumber Thomas Crapper helped popularized the private flushing toilet in Europe, but he is believed not to be the inventor.

Not until the 20th century did we see flushable valves, water tanks that rest on top of the bowl rather than above, toilet-paper rolls (invented in 1890 but not heavily marketed until 1902). These minor improvements seem like necessities now.

In 1994 Congress passed the Energy Policy Act, requiring common flush toilets to use only 1.6 gallons of water, less than half of what they consumed before.

The first toilet-themed park in the world opened in July 2012 in South Korea in honor of Sim Jae-duck, founder and first president of the World Toilet Association.