In early November 2018, the second round of material from the composting toilet bin was harvested and land applied. Geoff Goodhue from Clivus and Marco Vallejos, a junior at Williams who is doing research about composting toilets at colleges in the Northeast, removed material from the composting toilet bin and transported it in buckets to the hillside across the street from the Oakley Center.
While the first two annual land applications took place near the Oakley Center grounds, subsequent land applications will rotate between other campus locations that have meadows.
While the composted material is safe to land apply, there has been interest in learning what, if any, and levels of man-made chemical compounds remain in the compost that may therefore end up in the broader environment and compare that to effluent from the town’s waste water treatment facility. The Environmental Analysis lab has collected samples and plans to do the analysis in the coming months.
To learn more about the process at Williams, read the Composting Toilet FAQs
