Tiki Gardens

[MarkP]

If you were to dig a 6" deep hole to bury your poo, covering it carefully, digging a new hole each time, and not disturbing any of these deposits for a year or so, that would be absolutely the best and most environmentally responsible way of dealing with your waste. Careful composting would be equivalent. Sending it to a modern and well maintained waste water treatment plant would be good too but not as good and would be about equivalent to a properly designed and well maintained septic tank and leach field. All of the above would be good although in practice each method has its own risks. The burying and composting require individual attention to detail which some people can't manage. The septic tank/leach field requires some maintenance depending on local conditions which if not done can result in sewage flowing across your lawn. The waste water treatment plant is really expensive and is only as good as the government that pays for it and mandates it. There have been significant failures of the latter here in Hawaii that resulted in discharges that would never have happened with more hands on methods, while to be fair the big municipal systems for all their faults deal with waste from the least capable levels of society in a way that individual methods never could.

My point is that done properly, burying your waste in the back yard is not just an acceptable compromise, it can be the cleanest and most effective method. On the other hand I have spoken to well meaning and by all accounts otherwise capable folk who thought the best thing to do was to use enough water to let the poop soften and break up, then broadcast the resulting slurry into the ferns. When the county comes down hard on alternative methods of waste disposal it is partly because they know this kind of thing happens.