The Cycle Experience (2025 - ...)

After nearly 10 years of experience with building and managing my own compost toilet system at home (since 2016), it was time to bring the topic forward, and outward.

"The Cycle Experience" is a topical framework, with the aim to give more recognition to resource-oriented sanitation, and dry toilets in particular. It is embedded in my broader project "Boden im Kreislauf" at BOKU University. 

I first created a Facebook group "Trockentoiletten in Österreich" (Feb. 2025) to gather interested people.

The same year (Sept. 2025), I presented a poster about my experiments at the Conference of the Danube Countries.

Next step (Apr. 2026) was the setting up of an exhibition featuring 4 stations, like on Joseph Jenkin's famous illustration in The Humanure Handbook: (1) a table with food and drinks, (2) a urine-diverting dry toilet, (3) a composter and (4) some plants growing in pots. All four stations are linked by arrows on the floor. An accompanying poster was designed by Carolina Páez Velez.

The first occasion to show the exhibition was the Long Night of Research (Apr. 2026) with the title "Wozu ist meine Kacke gut?" ["What's my shit good for?"]. Next exhibition will be at the Conference of the Danube Countries (Sept. 2026).

Doing outreach work on this topic forces me to improve the system to the highest level. Hence, in parallel to the outreach activities, my dry toilet composting system is constantly being improved, following among others the goal of complete hygenisation in a backyard / household setting. In spite of existing literature for practitioners on the topic, this is not a trivial undertaking and there are worlds between my first trials back in 2016 and the current status of my system. 

Ultimately, one output of these activities should be a set of recipe-like principles accompanied by low-cost, and low- to mid-tech designs to ensure complete hygenisation of the compost. 

Luis Quiroga Gutierrez in the middle of the cycle