A question we get a lot Vansage.com as well as one that I see all over the internet is, Can you use a composting toilet in a camper van?

Yes, but there are pros and cons, as follows:

β€’ Using a composting toilet in a campervan requires a vent hose with an outlet through the floor or side wall

β€’ An electric fan is required to vent the air from the composting toilet reservoir to the outside

β€’ Composting toilets often need to be permanently mounted, not portable

β€’ Composting toilets require a special medium that breaks down human waste

β€’ You cannot put paper or other debris in the campervan composting toilet

Of course like so many things regarding van life and campervan design and build and outfitting, the answer is not cut and dried. It depends on your van and your lifestyle.

So we'll get into a few tips that will help you decide if you can use a composting toilet in a camper van. First of all, some of the advantages of a composting toilet that will help you decide if you can use one in your van.

Probably the biggest advantage is that you can go longer between emptying the reservoir.

So in that way, it's more like a β€œnormal” RV or full-size RV toilet where they fill a black water tank over a long period of time, maybe a week or longer, and then they pull into a dump station and empty the tank all at once and they're done with it. They don't really have to think about it other than cleaning the head.

So that's nice to be able to go a bit longer. And one of the reasons you can do that is because the composting medium masks smell very well if you're handling it properly. We'll get into that in a second here. The medium. That is.

Then another advantage is that there's less environmental impact.

A lot of people are concerned with using a lot of plastic bags or nasty chemicals in a basic folding toilet or a portable cassette toilet. And so they like the idea of creating compost where basically what comes out is dirt, instead of this slurry of again, chemicals and human waste. So that's an advantage as well.

And then the fact that you have this toilet that is not too bad in terms of smell and requires less emptying. It means that you have kind of more normal access to a toilet in your van.

It's important to understand that a composting toilet requires some installation. So basically you can think of it kind of like an air conditioning unit, good air conditioning doesn't result from just putting a freestanding unit in your van and turning it on. You need ducting.

Well, it's the same with a composting toilet. It needs to be ducted.

It also needs a fan to be wired. So the way a composting toilet works is there'll be a fan that pulls air out of the reservoir and then pushes it out through a tube and that tube is connected to a hole that you've either cut in the floor or the side of the van.

There's both wiring and ducting to deal with in terms of installation, those aspects also limit the portability and location, obviously, of your composting toilet.

So you need to choose a spot in your campervan where the toilet will live more or less permanently.

And I say more or less because it is possible to install a composting toilet with some portability and you could even have it completely portable as long as you're willing to have a kind of extension cord and then to run your hose outside each time you use it or to have it where you can...