Composting toilets: Every flush turns your waste to fertiliser

The most radical “green” features of the City Of San Jose’s new Environmental Innovation Centre are concealed behind two doors marked “Women” and “Men”. There, plopped between the other conventional stalls, are two “composting toilets”, the first ever installed in a California office building.

“You assume you get an outhouse on a trail,” says Nora Cibrian, an environmental services specialist with the city. “But you just don’t think you can do it indoors, too.”