I'd imagine you'd need a second plumping system, else what's the point? Certainly pharmesuticals in the water supply are a big problem, but I'm curious about how this helps without a separate infrastructure. Maybe localized urine pre-processing in larger facilities?

SOIL Haiti has a project called Wash, using similar toilets.

http://www.oursoil.org/what/resources/wash

A local farm also has this type of toilet/outhouse. You don't really notice the unique engineering when you're using.

Aside from Premarin, I think very few pharmaceuticals are urine-born. I suspect you mean urine-borne.

How would they separate shower water from urine? Just sayin...

Since you point at the idea of self usage as a fertilizer, would the pharmaceutical aspect present any issues...(just wondering if anyone has looked into that.)

If you really do need a seperate golden sewer system then I can't see this taking off many places. The cost of the infrastructure would be the limiting factor. Perhaps if you had an in house pre-filter system and then dumped it into the usual sewer it could work.

Beats sorting by hand and I'm sure the guys at

http://ratemypoo.com/bestof.html

would appreciate it.

- fair warning. Do not click that link. You will regret it.

"Urine contains 80 percent of the nitrogen and 50 percent of the phosphorus arriving at wastewater treatment plants."

"About 85 percent of users were open to the idea of using stored urine as fertilizer"

If I'm following this then the idea is to keep the urine out of the (so to speak) waste-stream. This likely simplifies the plumbing issues.

That said something must be done with the urine. When somebody tells me that 85% of people support reusing their pee as fertilizer I find myself wanting to see how the sample group was selected. 8) Heck, there are still people kvetching about low-flow toilets!

Perhaps of some merit in offices and larger apartment buildings and such that could collect urine in economically large quantities. I suspect the energy required to collect urine from a typical suburb would be pretty energy intensive.

Screw infrastructure issues. The real blocker is, afaik, the male of the species needs to sit down for number ones to get a decent separation.

On a practical note, that toilet looks like a PITA to clean.

Urine as fertilizer? So does this mean I should be encouraging my husband to go relieve himself in the garden whenever possible?

Separate Plumping system, now that is funny.

I went on a Swiss Government Sponsored tour of a 'green' building. The No-mix toilets were indeed a bit creepy. They implied that it is female urine that is the real problem.
A high res photo for you all:
http://capl.washjeff.edu/browseresults.php?langID=1&catID=25&subCatID=121&photoID=3856&size=l

Why go through all the bother of adding another waste line when "mulching" toilets have been around for so long? Back in the '80s I sold/installed Clivus units, and folks tell me they're still going strong. Modern mulchers are ++: more variety, smaller footprint, easier install, lower cost, same great benefits (dinner in -> potting soil out ;-).

Horrified by the waste of mixing potable water with feces, I built my own outhouse. it's very nice/no smell, lots of magazines/south-facing passive solar heat/rain-fed cistern so you can wash the crap off your hands if you should fly too close to Planet Uranus. Crap goes in a trash can, which I put aside to compost when it fills. It fills much more slowly if I separate out the piss, which (for men) is easy: a little gutter across the front of the hole. See, for example, this: http://asecular.com/index.php?091115

That toilet is going to be a *mess* the first time a #2 hits the divider. From what I've seen, even standard euro toilets smear everything that hits them and barely manage to flush solids down. The two waste lines and muni pickups that would be required make this no small project. But even if they are mixed down the line, this could save water if there were two levers: one for a small flush just to rinse/clean out the urinal portion, and a second lever for a larger flush for more serious business. But still, that thing will be a mess...

As someone who has lived (happily) with the simplest of composting toilets for some time I am with comment #13. Separating urine is great, but the real problem here is turning an easily composted and reused material (humanure) into toxic waste by adding it to fresh drinking water and letting it sit around and fester.

We don't need to duplicate the sewerage system, we need to start composting it instead and putting it back into our soil. This also bypasses the problem of industrial waste getting into an otherwise valuable source of fertiliser.

Most cities can't even separate the storm drain from the sewage. How is this going to work? The standing up issue is less of a problem. Simply install urinals in all bathrooms.

Ah, yes. The poop inspection shelf! Well, I'm all for that!

I think I should unfortunately comment again on this. Having gone through a Swiss Government presentation on the technology, there are several items that must be clear. The urine is separated and stored, not flushed. It can later be separately treated and elements of the urine can be extracted such as phosphorus. It cannot be simply used "as-is". It requires new pipes, storage tanks, and infrastructure. It seems like more of a technology for new construction. As for the urine itself, and as far as I was told, female and male urine are kept separately as female urine has micro pollutants in it, specifically pharmaceutical residues and hormones (code words for female things). Numero Dos, Nummer 2, or Poo can be treated regularly and put into the water system. The Swiss pronounced proudly that they flush their Poo into the Rhein towards Germany after treatment.
If one is so inclined to read a report, here is where one might look.
http://www.novaquatis.eawag.ch/publikationen/final_report_E

Auf Deutsch für meine Freunde:
http://www.novaquatis.eawag.ch/publikationen/abschlussbericht_D

Notice the cover photo of the special pipe for lady-urine. I always wondered if women would be offended for the Swiss targeting their urine.

i wonder what Zizek will say?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwTJXHNP0bg

You wouldn't need a whole parallel black water line if a small amount of mixing was acceptable: go serial!

Night soil could flow at certain times, golden showers at other times, and see how long it takes for the local buffer to fill up.

I'm glad that some populations are giving serious thought to their poo.

What about diarrhea?

What happens when you miss and poop into the pee bowl? How do you go about cleaning that? Also, what about vomit?

...

AND...what about the dudes standing up to pee? The raised pee tray would give all kinds of splash-back. Plus a longer dong would be even more likely to touch the inside of the bowl if he's sitting.

I just see too many issues with the functionality.

Regarding the issue of hormones in urine that many commenters have mentioned:

"Hormones and most pharmaceuticals can be prevented from entering the environment by simple technologies. Composting is extremely effective in destroying all compounds tested to date."

From: http://www.springerlink.com/content/t2457t346772475n/

So, that's another tick for composting of human waste.

Re: #14. Having used a urine diverting toilet for some years now, I have never seen a problem with it. You could go out of your way to make a mess, but then you could do that with any toilet. Urine separating designs are quite functional.

When I moved to New Zealand from Canada, I was amazed that ALL the toilets had full and half flush buttons. Even in Fiji... I have no clue why this isn't popular or mandatory in North America.

My guess would be it's because currently only woman can use hormonal contraceptives. If hormonal birth control for men is ever developed, the issue will lose its gender bias.

Are pharmaceuticals in the water an actual problem, or just yet another artifact of our ever-more-sensitive detection technology?

I mean, once you have sub-1-part-per-trillion detection capability, I expect you can find traces of anything in everything.

#24,

Dual flush toilets were first introduced in Australia where design rules require them. I believe they are used in NZ mainly because of the influence of the Australian market.

New Zealand, like Canada must have plenty of water. A lot more than Australia, anyway.

One sewer is enough to carry both: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_division_multiple_access

Ask the fish and frog populations that suddenly found themselves to be all-female.

I think the real question here is: does it blend?

This rule of thumb has always served us well: when it's brown, flush it down. When it's yellow, let it mellow.