Mount Rainier Gets Japanese Bio-Toilet

[Mulboyne]

[floatr][/floatr]Katu: Country's first biotoilet installed at Mount Rainier
Mount Rainier National Park is offering visitors a cleaner and eco-friendlier way to do their business with a specially-designed biotoilet. Instead of using chemicals, the commode uses cedar chips to treat the waste. The heat generated during decomposition kills any bacteria and waste materials are vaporized in one of its tanks. You never replace the chips. You can add water occasionally, but it does have a rain catch system which will add water to the tank. The water used is purified and re-circulated. And the whole thing uses very little electricity, about as much as a microwave needs. The inventor of the new-age john came all the way from Japan for the dedication ceremony on Monday. The toilet was a gift to Mount Rainier from Groundwork Mishima, a Japanese environmental group that is active on Mount Fuji. Mount Fuji has a "Sister Mountain" relationship with Mount Rainier. Rainier is the first in the country to have the biotoilet, which is priced at $70,000...Just like many toilets in Japan, the toilet seat is heated.

[Mulboyne]

The toilet on Fuji is suffering capacity constraints:

Mainichi: Biotoilet on Mount Fuji in danger of overflowing with human waste

A deluge of climbers to Mount Fuji has the Environment Ministry worried that a brand-new biotoilet set up on the iconic mountain's northern face could overflow, in yet another potential blow to plans to have the area designated a World Heritage site. According to the Fujiyoshida Municipal Government in Yamanashi Prefecture, the total number of climbers in July was about 99,000, about 35,000 more than last year. On July 19, the start of a three-day weekend, about 11,000 people visited the mountain, putting the number of visitors past 10,000 for first time since records began 27 years ago. The problem toilet, located at the seventh station on Mount Fuji, was designed to handle about 1,000 users per day, but so far there have been far more users than it was designed to handle, according to an Environment Ministry official.

With the obon summer holiday period in mid-August approaching, when the influx of visitors steps up yet again, city officials fear that human waste in the toilet could overflow. "We're biting our nails every day," a municipal government representative said. Other environmental problems, such as the illegal dumping of garbage, have already cropped up as obstacles in having the mountain inscribed on the World Heritage list. The Yoshida route up Mount Fuji has four public toilets from the fifth station to the top of the mountain. In light of the emerging problem, the Environment Ministry has installed signs at the sixth station and huts on the mountain encouraging climbers to use other toilets. The biotoilet works by breaking down the waste using microorganisms in a tank of earth and sawdust.