Green to the Extreme Tip 7: if it's yellow, let it mellow

Local eco-blogger Vanessa Farquharson spent a year going green in radical fashion, chronicling her endeavours on her blog, Green as a Thistle, and in her upcoming book, Sleeping Naked Is Green. In the run-up to Earth Day, we've asked her to provide us with tips on how to become more environmentally friendly in the most unfriendly of ways.

The "If it's yellow, let it mellow / If it's brown, flush it down" rule is familiar to most of us who spend time in cottages, where a lot of our big city standards go out the window. But how did it work out for you in your Queen West condo?
This experiment was semi-successful in the end — if you drink enough water, your pee will be more diluted and won't smell as much; if, however, you're anything like my sister, who consumes nothing but coffee and alcohol all day and tends not to go No. 2 for days on end, it's gonna be pretty nasty. (There's actually a totally insane story about this, involving my poor cat and a few days' worth of mellowing, but you'll have to read my book to get the details, of course.) Anyway, because I was also keeping a water bottle in the toilet tank to displace the water in there and use less of it each time I flushed, I really didn't feel like I was saving the Great Lakes by flushing two or three times less each day. Now, I have a proper dual-flush toilet, and it's amazing. The only time I let it mellow these days is if I get up in the middle of the night to go pee.

Did it mean that you had to clean your toilet more frequently? Wouldn't that mean using more water and cleaning products?
Hmm, I didn't notice any more buildup or anything. Urine is remarkably clean and sterile — more so than saliva, even — so it wasn't requiring more cleaning products. Even if it did, my cleaning products usually consisted of baking soda and vinegar.

Did you make exceptions for guests, or explain it to them and ask them to follow along?
I totally made exceptions for guests — there's no way I'd ever ask someone to pee into my pee! Although, when I went away on vacation and arranged for house-sitters, I always asked them to try and abide by some green house rules, including the let-it-mellow rule. I always try to inspire others to be green rather than force it upon them, and when it comes to personal hygiene, it's a touchy area.

On the subject of toilets, though, I will say this: my absolute favourite discovery during my challenge was composting toilets — I used ones made by Sun-Mar while on a sustainability-themed bike trip through the Oregon valley, but the company Enviro-let makes some here in Canada. They don't require any water, they don't smell, and you can use all the poop as fertilizer after about a year. At one of the farms I stayed at, it was much less sophisticated — literally just a bucket and some sawdust — yet it was just as impressive. Why we've resorted to those stinky Port-o-lets with blue liquid is beyond me. Every outdoor concert venue should be switching to composting toilets, in my opinion.

Read more of Vanessa Farquharson's Green to the Extreme tips and other ways to make yourself more environmentally friendly at www.eyeweekly.com/greenliving.

Further reading: green-friendly toilet paper