DUSSELDORF CARAVAN SHOW: Ultimate RV toilet?

Another major theme at this year's Dusseldorf show is RV toilet technology, with the big players, Thetford and Dometic, both rolling out new hi-tech products designed to make the whole experience a lot more hygienic as well as more pleasant and convenient.

However, Norwegian company Cinderella has come up with perhaps the most innovative approach of all: an RV toilet that is clean, environmentally-friendly and produces next to no waste.

Cinderella is the market leader in incineration toilets, selling about 40,000 so far mostly to Nordic countries for domestic use. But what's an incineration toilet, you say?

According to Cinderella, it's a “toilet where the waste products urine and excreta are incinerated at high temperature, leaving only a minimal amount of ash, about one teacup per person in one week of use”.

The waste is burned in an enclosed incineration chamber under the toilet seat, with combustion gases expelled through a separate ventilation pipe.

The RV version does require some gas to power it, and minimal 12V power for the ventilation fan and control panel, but no water or drain connections are required, and unlike conventional RV toilets or even more environmentally-friendly biological toilet solutions, you're never exposed in any way to the waste.

From the outside it looks like any other toilet. The only difference is each time you use it you place a small ‘bag' inside the toilet to catch the waste. It's then simply a case of closing the lid, hitting the ‘start' button on a touchpad, and letting the incinerater do its thing.

Cinderella says the toilet can be used around 100 times before it needs emptying, and depending on the type of ‘deposit' the whisper quiet combustion process takes around 30 minutes.

The child-proof system will automatically stop if you start to use the toilet again, and will even dispose of women's sanitary products.

The new Cinderella Motion toilet was developed in conjunction with Sweden's Cabby Caravans, and it should be available soon from more European brands, not to mention the possibility of some Australian manufacturers making it an option.

The main barrier at the moment is that it requires specialised installation by trained personnel. It's also expensive, with the sleek 20kg model on display at Dusseldorf priced at 4000 Euros (about $5500) and costing a further 1000 Euros for installation.