Germany has fallen head over heels for the Trockentrenntoilette — the dry separating toilet. Up and down the country, vanlifers and tiny-home builders are swapping smelly chemical cassettes for something simpler, cleaner and completely waterless. At the heart of almost every one of these builds sits a single clever component: a urine separator. We love seeing where ours end up, and Steffi’s camper-van loo is a real beauty.
“Finally I have built my CampingVan compost toilet,” Steffi told us from Germany. “The challenge for me was to save space, so I didn’t want to use a usual toilet seat. I also wanted to use the loo box as a seat in my van, but hide the toilet for aesthetic reasons. Now look how beautiful it has become — tadaaa!”
What we love is how neatly Steffi solved the classic van problem: space. By dropping a We-Pee separator into a tidy wooden box that doubles as a seat, she kept her floor plan free and her interior looking sharp — no bulky toilet seat, no chemicals, and no water tank to fill or empty.
She’s in good company. “I wanted to thank you for the fast delivery,” wrote Natasha, also from Germany. “Warm greetings!” It is always a pleasure to send a separator off to a new home across the North Sea.
For German vanlife, the real appeal is autarky — being completely self-sufficient. A separating toilet needs no chemicals, no water, no electricity and no service station. Separate the liquids from the solids at the source, and the odours simply never get started.
Building your own Trenntoilette? Our urine separators are designed to be the simple, affordable heart of your build — sturdy, easy to fit, and ready for you to design the rest around. Take a look at the range and start planning yours.