Flat-Pack Urinal: Composing Straw Bale for Outdoor Events

When I was hitchhiking in France (in 1957), a truck driver that had given us a ride stopped, got out of his truck, walked over to a fence by the side of the road, and took a piss. So simple; why not? He was facing away from traffic, unit not visible. In this country (or the UK), it’s not de rigueur for some reason. The French don’t seem to have that Puritan body-as-shameful attitude.

   Here, from Mike W., is a great alternative to toxic chemical toilets for males (at least for urine) at outdoor events. Totally makes sense. Save that nitrogen!

   “It is inefficient and unsustainable to haul human waste back in from remote festivals and other places typically populated with port-a-potties. So why not use on-hand materials to make something simple and green?

   Thus L’Uritonnoir by Faltazi which turns an everyday farm item into a urinal by means of simple funnels attached on various sides and connected via a loop running around the perimeter. The composted results can be recycled right back into the local land. …”

Click here.

About Lloyd Kahn

Lloyd Kahn started building his own home in the early '60s and went on to publish books showing homeowners how they could build their own homes with their own hands. He got his start in publishing by working as the shelter editor of the Whole Earth Catalog with Stewart Brand in the late '60s. He has since authored six highly-graphic books on homemade building, all of which are interrelated. The books, "The Shelter Library Of Building Books," include Shelter, Shelter II (1978), Home Work (2004), Builders of the Pacific Coast (2008), Tiny Homes (2012), and Tiny Homes on the Move (2014). Lloyd operates from Northern California studio built of recycled lumber, set in the midst of a vegetable garden, and hooked into the world via five Mac computers. You can check out videos (one with over 450,000 views) on Lloyd by doing a search on YouTube:

14 Responses to Flat-Pack Urinal: Composing Straw Bale for Outdoor Events

  1. well, okay, maybe i am a bumpkin, but aren't those "troughs' angled the wrong direction?????

    other than that, seems like a good idea…

    had friends who had a largish party, put a spout in a house behind the garden shed…Hose ran off to greenspace..

  2. yes…i did click through to the site, and finally realised how they are set up..

    saw this type of thing on some other festival site, and they said it worked very well to degrade the straw bales into excellent mulch/fertilizer…and highly recomended…

    they too, talked about the one draw back being the "spouts", non bio degradeable..

    since this is for short duration, might something made of light wood, be suitable, then it would degrade?

  3. good grief, now something must be manufactured to pee?

    and to think that the last pissoirs were removed from Paris decades ago – the stench and puddles along with

  4. when I was in Belgium, I used to see guys by the side of the road using the 'hand over' method.. Thumb towards stomach over top as that hides any 'appendage' view..

    Mike W

  5. well….i grew up with fellows off to "checking the tires"…being female, and at times gullible, it took me quite a few years before i understood what was up. ….then as a teen off on a few double dates, it was the joke of the trip to speed up and take off (only a short ways) as one of the fellows was "checking the tires"..grin

  6. Hello Carol !
    I ordered your book! I look forward ! The idea of ​​uritonnoir came from a visit at the Centre for Alternative Technology in Wales.

    Laurent (Uritonnoir team)

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