Adrytoilet is for depositing humanexcrement without usingwater, very different fromflush toilets that use water. It may be for sitting orsquatting. Theurine may get mixed with thefeces or be kept separate.

There are different types of dry toilets:composting toilet,urine-diverting dry toilet,Arborloo,container-based toilet,bucket toilet,pit latrine,incinerating toilet, orfreezing toilet.

All of these types of dry toilets work without flush water and without connections to sewers or septic tanks:^[1]

• Composting toilet - usually with feces, urine, and sometimesfood waste mixed together.
• Urine-diverting dry toilet – with urine kept separate to be used as afertilizer for plants, while the feces stay drier.^[2]
• Arborloo – which is like apit latrine but the pit is smaller and theouthouse is light and can be moved to another pit, while atree is planted on the old pit.
• Container-based toilet - with excrement going intocontainers that are taken to places where it isprocessed.
• Bucket toilet – simply a pail, but can also have urine separate and feces covered with dry material.
• Pit latrine - a hole in the ground.
• Incinerating toilet, freezing toilet – these are more complicated and expensive.

Other dry toilets are being developed, some with funding from theBill and Melinda Gates Foundation.^[3]

There are four main reasons for using dry toilets:

• To save water and therefore money;
• To preventwater pollution;
• Torecyclenutrients inagriculture, after treatment and storage to kill diseases;
• For places wheresewers andwastewater treatment are not possible.^[2]

Dry toilets can be very presentable and are used indeveloped countries (for example,Sweden,Finland, andNorway), where they are often found atsummer houses andnational parks. They are more common indeveloping countries in places where flush toilets are not possible or not desired. Sewers often cost too much where the land isrocky or irregular and where houses are far from one another.

Some people strongly believe that dry toilets are the best way deal with excrement, others argue that they cannot be done everywhere, and others simply do not want to change their habits. Dry toilets reduce water consumption andpollution, recover valuablenutrients for agriculture, and (when managed properly) eliminatediseases andchemicals efficiently.^[4]

It has been difficult to install and manage many dry toilets in cities (for example, in theErdos Eco-City of theInner Mongolia Autonomous Region ofChina).^[5] Designs need to be fine-tuned and carefully constructed and managed.^[4] The users also need to learn about the benefits of dry toilets and how to properly use them.

Nearly all toilets were dry toilets, and excrement was valued in agriculture, until flush toilets were invented.

InBritain, dry toilets were still used in some areas (including cities) until the 1940s. It seems that these were often emptied directly onto gardens, where the excreta was used as fertiliser. Sewer systems did not come to somerural areas in Britain until the 1950s or later.^[6]

Brisbane,Australia, was largely unsewered until the early 1970s, with many suburbs having dry toilets (called "dunnies") behind each house.

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  Nutrients recycle through the soil
• 
  Historical German dry toilet with a mechanism to addpeat moss to cover feces

• Sanitation
• Waste management

• Global Dry Toilet Association of FinlandArchived 2017-09-16 at theWayback Machine
• Sustainable Sanitation Alliance Discussion Forum
• Dry toilet publications in the library of theSustainable Sanitation Alliance
• InodoroSeco Blog of experiences and ideas about dry toilets (in Spanish and English)

• Toilets

• Webarchive template wayback links