⟡ The Composting Toilet That Terrified the State ⟡
Filed: 27 March 2020
Reference: SWANK/TCI/2020-ENV-TOILET
π Download PDF — 2020-03-27_SWANK_TCI_SocialDev_EnvironmentalHealth_CompostingToilet_LegalReply_NNicholson.pdf
I. This Wasn’t About Sanitation. It Was About Sovereignty.
This letter, addressed to TCI Social Development, was submitted in response to unsolicited concern regarding the family’s composting sanitation system — a system:
Fully compliant with environmental law
Structurally safe
Intellectually intentional
And clearly misunderstood by the very institutions tasked with “development”
What they called unhygienic, we called ecological.
What they deemed suspicious, we filed as architectural autonomy.
II. A Toilet as Curriculum, A Home as Statement
This document outlines:
The composting process and its hygienic integrity
The educational philosophy behind child-involved sustainability
The lawful absence of any public health breach
The impropriety of unannounced home inspections
The issue was not waste. It was control.
A family designed its home around sustainability — and the state responded with scrutiny, not curiosity.
III. Why SWANK Filed It
Because ecological sovereignty is not a safeguarding risk.
Because composting does not trigger jurisdiction.
Because self-reliance in sanitation does not warrant professional worry.
When institutions fear dry toilets more than documented trauma,
we file for the record — not for permission.
IV. SWANK’s Position
We do not accept that environmental literacy triggers surveillance.
We do not tolerate false equations between nonstandard design and child risk.
We do not apologise for intelligence, elegance, or lawful innovation.
Let the record show:
No law was breached
No child was harmed
No water was wasted
But dignity was challenged — and SWANK responded in writing