The Compost Mandala Art Project.  Festival goers create an ever evolving community art using finished compost as the medium.  This compost was made from human poop and pee and food waste and garden waste and aged for two years prior to use.

The Compost Mandala Art Project.  Festival goers create an ever evolving community art using finished compost as the medium.  This compost was made from human poop and pee and food waste and garden waste and aged for two years prior to use.

About Us

Holy Shit is a community service project that promotes radical technologies for honoring water (as well as human "waste").  Examples of technologies we promote include:

  • composting toilets
  • neighborhood-scale composting of humanure
  • low-tech gray water systems
  • low-tech water conservation pracitces
  • using gray water to make compost tea
  • bird/sponge baths
  • less frequent bathing for better skin health and water conservation

Holy Shit conducts demonstration projects at transformational festivals and other events to promote these technologies.  Holy Shit's brings art, beauty, fun, silliness, honoring. community and caring to the act of "going to the bathroom".  Holy Shit builds sacred poo temples, also called, "practical alters".  We want to change people's perception of what it means "to go".  It can be an honoring and giving back of nutrients to the Mother who loves us and gives us life.

V Calvez has been successfully composting human "waste" for 20 years, using the techniques described in the Humanure Handbook by Joseph Jenkins.  V also designs and builds commercial composting systems for Green Mountain Technologies www.compostingtechnology.com.  In 2015, V received a vision to bring composting toilets to music festivals on the West Coast. In 2016, Holy Shit conducted demonstration projects at 4 summer music festivals.  The response was overwhelmingly positive.

At Holy Shit, we believe that:

  • Pooping and peeing in drinking water doesn't feel honoring or sustainable. 
  • There is a different way "to go" that more consciously honors water and our body's nutrients.
  • All things are intrinsically valuable and deserve respect.
  • "Going to the bathroom" can mean returning nutrients back to the Mother in a good and honoring way.
  • We don't conserve something because it is scarce, we conserve it because it is sacred.
  • Nature has answers to so many of our cultural problems.
  • Simple, local solutions are often preferable to complex, centralized solutions.