Jana Birchum
Water is our most precious resource – so why do we flush so much of it down the toilet? Perhaps we'd do better to follow the example of environmental engineer Lauren Ross and carpenter David Bailey, who designed and built Austin's first (legal) composting toilet. It uses no water and prevents chemical-laden effluent from entering our waterways, preserving one valuable resource while creating another: fertilizer. An effort of the Rhizome Collective, the project took four years to wind through the city's zoning process, but in the end, Austin's greenest latrine prevailed – a victory for do-gooder derrières everywhere.
