Article by Don Poo-leone
In an exclusive world premiere, the 2023 Yours and Owls Festival featured a VIPoo zone – a luxury composting toilet nestled among the music stages and art installations.
The brainchild of University of Wollongong researchers, VIPoo was promoted first and foremost as a pleasurable experience. Speaking to Glimpses of Pootopia Magazine, VIPoo spokesperson Dr Lucas Ihlein said that the team took great pains to present toileting as an aesthetic experience:
Our swanky composting dunny is a fragrant and ethical alternative to those putrescent festival portaloos we all detest. Portaloos – untended, unloved – are so often awash in excrement and garbage that many festival goers choose to “hold it in” rather than run the gauntlet. By contrast, VIPoo allows bowels and bladders to empty in complete comfort, coddled within bucolic straw-bale architecture.
In the view of this humble reporter, the experience of those nasty plastic+chemical portaloos at festivals represents a toileting nadir: almost anything would be better. But it’s clear that VIPoo went above and beyond – beautifully designed signage, a dedicated concierge to greet and check in each user, soothing classical music, potted plants, spacious interior design, and premium quality toilet paper – these were just a few of its notable features.
Upon exiting VIPoo, I was given a polite round of applause and directed to a custom-built hand-wash station, where I engaged in light conversation with one of the VIPoo team. I was handed a “Shitcoin” banknote and thanked for my contribution to the environment. Wait, what? Weren’t they doing me a favour? It was at this point that the ethical aspects of VIPoo dawned on me.
It turns out that all the “product” contributed by users throughout the festival will be composted and turned into soil. Soil is one of the world’s most valuable and rare commodities. We grow food in it, plants sequester carbon in it. And because of the industrialisation of agriculture, drought, and extreme weather events, soil erosion is a massive problem worldwide – particularly in Australia. So, here’s a way we can actually make new soil! All of this I gleaned from my convivial chat with one of the VIPoo attendants, as I munched on a delicous mandarin offered to me as a reward for my services to soil building.
If this is the future of toileting at music festivals, then I say bring it on!
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More information about VIPoo at Yours and Owls Festival (14-15 Oct, 2023).
Short video documentary by WayWard Films.
See photos on the VIPoo instagram here.
Article about VIPoo on The Stand, by Lizzie Jack.
Project page at Global Challenges (UOW).
The VIPoo team:
Artists: Dr Lucas Ihlein and Dr Kim Williams
Economists: Assoc.Prof Amir Arjomandi and Assoc. Prof Alfredo Paloyo
Engineer: Prof. Faisal Hai
Scientist: Dr Bethany Hoye
Festival Organiser: Xanthe Barker
Community Partner: Anne Walton
Concierge: Amber Jones
Visitor Experience Facilitators: Kaz Zouain and Cameron Barnes
Sanitation and Cleaning: Katie Jones
Graphic Design: John Causley
Video Documentation: WayWard Films