Nomadic Gardening: Biodegradable Cleanliness

It seems backwards to be constantly shipping off human waste with clean water. There are ways that solid waste can be handled and urine is quite easy to control once diverted. However, when we bathe there is a certain amount of water that gets dirty even when running a tub.

Can we know when we clean ourselves that we are giving back to mother earth? The soap we use can be natural, the materials of the building can be locally sourced, and our waste water can be used to grow something important. That is why I wanted to design an outhouse/ bathing house that would eventually biodegrade completely - and in the meantime create a new feature in the environment from its waste.

This would involve building a structure, setting up plumbing naturally with bamboo pipes or other found objects, and directing the used water into a location where it can be further processed or utilized such as a wetland or garden.  The water could be piped in, fed by rainwater reserves, or collected from the air.

One goal of this project was to explore different timelines of decomposition and leaving a structure behind that doesn't have to be maintained but that can provide solace to the next person and eventually change in it's usage. The plants may tear in through the wall and fertile land could cause the spot beside your project to turn into a vegetable patch. At the very least, it will tumble back to the earth as it began.
I decided to focus on waterproofing methods for a building like this. The areas that may need to be covered by waterproofing are anywhere that water may pool and humans may touch often.

There are many ways to waterproof naturally. Lanolin and shellac are natural waxes secreted by animals. Oils like tung and linseed are made by pressing seeds into what is called a drying oil - which will harden with oxidization. These differ from waxes and resins in that the latter two can redissolve, not having covalent bonds forming as there is with drying oils. This makes then readily biodegradable. Resins like dammar gum and copal have been used for centuries and are extracted from trees. I will be focusing on pine resin. Resin is secreted by plants but is different from sap, latex, or mucilage. It is also called pitch which is the name for viscoelastic, solid polymers.

One way of extraction is dry distillation and this is done by heating wood until tar and resin drips from it and charcoal remains. This releases gasses but those can be captured along with the oil from the top or released. This is what a “Tar Kiln” in Scandinavia is used for. Resin has no nutritive purpose for a plant but seals up wounds in trees. This is why the other extraction process is to cut the tree and harvest what resins drip out.

Resin can be mixed with beeswax and caranuba or other sawdust to create “cutlers resin” which has been used to attach knife blades for centuries. The beeswax can be replaced with any fat as a softening agent. Animal manure can be used for the fiber. This combination should work well for waterproofing. You can use Pine resin to waterproof boots and boats. It is highly flammable but can be solidified onto a stick with a double boiler method to be later re-melted for application. 

http://www.primitiveways.com/pine_pitch_stick.html

http://www.maritime.org/conf/conf-kaye-tar.htm