La fumainerie

La Fumainerie is an association under the French law of 1901 which is composed as follows

• A collegiate management team of 6 people, including some co-producers of the network. They are citizens of the Bordeaux metropolis who wish to become actors and decision-makers in their sanitation
• 2 employees, including a coordinator and a network coordinator, supported by a civic service employee (present for 6 months in the association). They are all in charge of urine collection but also of the bokashi (pooling of human resources).
• The membership, numbering 99 in 2020.

The association collects urine from 30 sites which represents about 86 people, 1097 kg of urine and 345 kg of faeces collected in April 2021 and 5200 litres of urine collected since September and 1700 kg of faeces collected since September.

Les partenaires techniques de l’association sont :

• Un petit coin de Paradis a producer of dry toilets that has developed a model adapted to the activity of the Fumainerie.
• Recup Bokashi Aquitaine with whom the association shares human and material resources for the collection and composting of materials
• Toopi Organics, which recovers urine for use as biostimulants.
• An industrial composting platform (PENA Environnement). As the association is in an experimental phase, PENA Environnement has agreed to charge only for the collection of the bins (€60 per tonne for transport) and not for the cost of processing the material (between €90 and €100 per tonne).

The first issue in excreta recovery is the method of collection. Source separation avoids contamination of urine (which contains very few pathogens) by faeces. Devices already exist on the market: dry male or female urinals and “separating” toilets:

• urine flows forward by gravity
• faeces and toilet paper are collected at the back in a suitable container.

However, the collectors already on the market were not adapted to the urine collection method developed by La Fumainerie. Collection is carried out at home using electrically assisted cargo bikes. The containers were not suitable for this mode of transport. For urine, for example, the bins did not have a watertight closing system.

La Fumainerie therefore worked in partnership with Une petit coin de Paradis to develop separate toilets adapted to their mode of collection. To combat bad odours, inputs are added to the various containers:

• lactic acid at the bottom of the urine containers to stabilise the urea. This stabilisation of urea prevents its degradation into ammonia, the molecule responsible for bad odours..
• sawdust in the faeces tanks to allow faster drying, to cover the material to prevent the invasion of pests (flies) and therefore to avoid bad odours.

The implementation of such an ecological sanitation system requires a rethinking of toilet design:

• the need for a well ventilated or at least air-conditioned space. Instead of putting the air-conditioning up, it makes sense to install the air-conditioning at the bottom of the room in order to draw the bad smells downwards.
• rethink the lighting system: overhead lighting makes the use of toilets by viewing materials unattractive.

Initially, the starting point for collections was Mérignac. However, this organisation wasted time, due to the time spent on the roads, and increased the risk of road accidents. La Fumainerie therefore set up neighbourhood houses with Recup Bokashi Aquitaine in the city centre of Bordeaux to optimise collections, supported by the city of Bordeaux.

In each of these houses are stored containers for urine and faeces, pre-filled with lactic acid and sawdust, and the mode of locomotion. After each collection, the urine and faeces containers are stored there. Once a week, a truck collects the urine and faeces from the various neighbourhood houses in order to keep the carbon emissions of the carbon network to a minimum.

During the week, there are fixed collection times of one hour. The co-producers must be available at the time of the slot they have been allocated.

Before each collection, the collector checks the app to see how many co-producers he or she has to see and how many empty containers he or she has to take with him or her. The application is also used to notify the co-producer of the collector’s arrival: on leaving the previous location, the collector sends a message to the co-producer.

La Fumainerie pools its collection resources (both human and material) with the association Récup Bokashi Aquitaine [2]. The association provides the people of Bordeaux with a biobucket to collect and recycle their waste.

The association provides users with a bokashi type bucket. The biowaste is recycled by anaerobic fermentation made possible by the addition of “efficient micro-organisms” (EM). These micro-organisms prevent the material from rotting and prepare it for better assimilation into the soil. Bokashi has three advantages: odourless, easy to use and hygienic.

The two associations pool their collection. In the same time slot, collectors can collect excreta and/or buckets of bokashi.

Once the urine and faeces have been collected by La Fumainerie, they must be recycled.

La Fumainerie currently works with two entities:

• Pena environnement [3], which recovers faeces through tunnel composting
• Toopie organics [4], which recovers urine as biostimulants via lactic fermentation.