VANCOUVER – A “beautiful experience” isn’t a term often used for a trip to an outhouse, but researchers at the University of British Columbia say the description fits for their mushroom-powered waterless toilet.

It’s described as the world’s first such toilet, turning human waste into compost using mycelia, the root network of mushrooms. The MycoToilet, inside the small cedar-sided building, has been dropped in among the trees at the university’s Botanical Garden for a six-week test run.

The toilet separates liquids from solids, with the solid waste going into a mycelium-lined compartment, where lab tests have shown 90 per cent of the odour-causing compounds are absorbed.

Steven Hallam, a professor in the department of microbiology and immunology at the university, said they’ve known fo

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