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Toilet Revolution: Shyama V. Ramani at TEDxMaastricht
This is one of the best Sanitation/ Global Health stories we have seen lately. Delivered in a very pleasurable consumable format, by a great speaker who make the topic reachable to a board spectrum of professionals and people. It’s antidotal in nature, while being universal in the realities of solving a village’s sanitation issues. Shyama has an honesty that needs to be incorporated into the newly developing transparency practices oft the world’s NGOs . This talk needs to be shown to the NGO’s and their altruistic “minions” before they venture out to help their global brothers and sisters.
The story starts out after audience imagining life with out toilets with Shyama explaining how she as pure novice, walks into a coastal village after a tsunami, and realizes she must bring the villages toilets back.
She learns along the way “…2.4 billion people don’t even have access to a toilet that functions, 1 billion don’t have access to any toilet the just have to defecate anywhere they can …” Thus the “….lack of waste management and toilets is making a killer that we are not talking about enough … diarrhea…. the number one killer in most developing countries…”
She Googles and contacts “experts” to educates herself with the facts to get the job done or so she thinks.
Upon the last new toilet being being initiated with a squat of a villager behind closed doors, Shyama, unlike many of the NGO’s, does not walked away. The core of her captivating story is what happens afterward … The door is opened, the veil of naivety is exposed and lifted. Where/when most project fall into failure, she and her partner begins the long diagnostic/prognostic/improvement cycle.
Shyama reminds us it is a an effort that is ongoing with more to learn and invites us to come back… It will be a crime if we do not see the next installment of this story as it continues to unfold.
Essential and very practical points abound within her story. One that are be showing up in other stories from around the world- and hopepfully becoming a din that must be addressed. With some paraphrasing, here are a few I see tucked in her tail:
1 NGO’s can’t do it alone and succeed; the villagers are needed – with a vastly redefined roll for NGOs.
2 Technical experts/ engineers may not be the social experts – both are needed.
3 Toilets at the onset are not alway seen as valuable/desirable assets. Education is needed before during and after
4 Women and men of the villages do not have the same perspective on sanitation. The project must address both separately as well as together .
5 Villages without ongoing support services will quickly have “…fossils of abandoned stinking toilets allover…”
6 Schools as an institution do not just naturally promote and desire ecosan toilets. They must also be nurtured. (details not addressed in this piece – but would be important to learn more about)
7 Building heathy social stimulus/pressure/ pride must be part of the scope
8 People who want the toilet must be educated on use and care
9 The villagers must be part of the economic model – the social model. Such pieces as manufacturing / construction/ distribution/ sales/ support / education/ promotion/ etc
10 Microfinance is a viable solution – (a work in progress in the story)
11 Toilets can provide a financially valuable natural resource – fertilizer
12 This all makes it a slower road, but it is a viable road, unlike the fast road the many NGO’s are building.
13 100% may be the target but 80% is a not a bad number to start with- and even that require lots of work.
Shyama reminds us it’s a an effort that is ongoing and invites us to come back ,so to speak. It will be a crime if we do not see the next installment of this story as it continues to unfold.
Related TEDx posts
half-a-dozen(+) Sanitation infographics – WATSAN /WASH
Here are a half-a-dozen…well 3/4 of a dozen infographics on WATSAN/WASH/sanitation
There are more on our Pinterest WATSAN board
World toilet day poster – UNICEF
Site: Facebook page: http://j.mp/18GyPku
From walk4wells.org – “Water and Women (and Girls!)”
site http://j.mp/18Gx8nl
Reinvent the Toilet (original Gates Foundation link of image not available)
Gates Foundation WASH Site: http://j.mp/18GB5Z4
From The World Poverty Project : Breaking the Taboo of the Loo
Site: http://globalpovertyproject.com/blog/view/671
From emag.suez-environnement.com – Access to water and sanitation
site: http://j.mp/18GEwiA
From Water.org’s Field guide to toilets http://water.org/toiletday/fieldguide/
What Your Poop and Pee Are Telling You About Your Body
Possible origins of graphic :http://j.mp/18GHeEI
From plancanada.ca: From head to toe: anatomy of a girl’s health
Site:http://plancanada.ca/page.aspx?pid=4657
Putting Poop In Its Place: The Problems With Bad Global Sanitation fastcoexist.com http://j.mp/10fjt2U
s
What’s a Toilet Worth? by World Bank & The Water and Sanitation Program (WSP) http://wsp.org/
TEDxAmsterdamWomen Anjali Sarker – Toilet+ overcoming my childhood fear TEDX event
A great presentation by Anjali Sarker of Toilet Plus on their strategy and reasoning for introducing toilets that work based on financial technical sustainable and social criteria. Toilet Plus is in the early phase of it plan.
” DEFECATION! DISEASE! DEATH! In Bangladesh, each year 69000 children die from diarrhea largely because of unhygienic sanitation. 68% of the villagers use unhygienic pit latrines or defecate openly. Though both govt and NGOs are trying to solve this problem, their efforts largely fail because poor villagers- 1)simply lack motivation to change their sanitation behavior or 2)can’t afford the shift to safe sanitation.
TOILET+ /Toilet Plus introduced as A HYGIENIC AND AFFORDABLE SANITATION SOLUTION. It’s a urine diverting dry toilet and is structurally similar to Ecosan. It can recycle 100% waste to produce organic fertilizer and is flood resistant. Toilet+ ($110 value) is made affordable to the villagers through microcredit from partner MFI.
Toilet+ OFFER COLLECTIVE PROFIT & RESPONSIBILITY. Households form cooperatives,apply for microcredit, and become collectively responsible to repay the total monthly installments to MFI. Member households get toilets from Toilet+ and Toilet+ get paid by MFI. Members sell waste (human and other bio-waste) to Toilet+ and Toilet+ convert waste into organic fertilizer for selling to agro firms. By selling waste, a cooperative gets $70 a month (75% of the collective installments) and each household pays only $1.3 out of pocket to repay the collective monthly installments. Members create strong peer pressure on one another to use toilet so that they can repay collective loan easily.
THE MODEL TURNS TO A SELF-SCALABLE AND SELF-SUSTAINABLE SANITATION CHAIN. Cooperatives will continue to earn revenue from sale of waste after repaying the microcredit in 2.25 years. Understanding the high profitability of financing toilets, enthusiastic cooperative members will start lending non-users to purchase Toilet+ just like MFIs. Users will use peer pressure to make other non-users purchase and use Toilet+ with cooperative financing. Thus cooperative will grow and members will earn more revenue from sale of waste from their financed toilets.
Toilet+ IGNITES THE SPARK, COMMUNITY MAKES IT A REVOLUTION. 1)The more a family uses Toilet+, the more it earns 2)Many Cooperatives will finance others’ toilets as a profitable business and thus expand the size of the cooperative. 3)Fewer fatal diseases, cleaner environment, and more income will improve the living standard of community permanently. “
source for quoted content Dell Social Innovation Challenge- Toilets (changed to third person)
About Anjali Sarker from DELL site
Toilet Plus site:
Related articles
-
Microcredit Regulatory Authority (MRA) is the central body to monitor and supervise microfinance operations of non-governmental organizations of the Republic of Bangladesh.
- A Business Model That Will Blow Your Mind & 10 Ways You Can Improve Yours (fireflycoaching.com)
- Canadian-made toilet aims to lay waste to sanitation diseases (ctvnews.ca)
- Toilet Apartheid (counterpunch.org)
- Renewed research call for low-cost sanitation technologies in Bangladesh [deadline18 Feb 2013] (sanitationupdates.wordpress.com)
- UN deputy chief urges action on water rights (sfgate.com)
- ICDDRB – Update on WASH and hygiene practices (sanitationupdates.wordpress.com)
- April Rinne, Where Is Microfinance Most Powerfully Linked with Sustainable Agriculture, Renewable Energy, Water and Sanitation to End Poverty and Mitigate Climate Change? (slideshare.net)
- Farmers in Nepal Use Urine to Boost Crop Yields (scientificamerican.com)
SuSanA Releases Compilation of 13 factsheets on key sustainable sanitation topics
From SuSanA web page:
FACTSHEETS
- Capacity development for sustainable sanitation
- Financial and economic analysis
- Links between sanitation, climate change and renewable energies
- Sanitation systems and technology options
- Productive sanitation and the link to food security
- Planning of sustainable sanitation for cities
- Sustainable sanitation for schools
- Integrating a gender perspective in sustainable sanitation
- Sustainable sanitation for emergencies and reconstruction situations
- Sanitation as a business
- Public awareness raising and sanitation marketing
- Operation and maintenance of sustainable sanitation systems
- Sustainable sanitation and groundwater protection
The document is available as a single 116 page pdf or two pdfs breaking the dock in half.
It is filled with hot links to a wealth of reference material. This alone will make the document invaluable. All urls are written out so links retain their value in a paper copy.
The list of contributors is is huge. A nice thing is the main authors provide hot email links at the end of each of the 13 sections so you can easily contact them.
The only problem with such a beautiful document is there is no traditional table of contents or index.
Executive summary from the pdf
“The target audience for this document includes a wide range of readers who are interested in aspects of sustainable sanitation and their links with other environmental and development topics. Possible readers include practitioners, programme managers, engineers, students, researchers, lecturers, journalists, local government staff members, policy makers and their advisers or entrepreneurs. The emphasis of this document is on developing countries and countries in transition.
The Sustainable Sanitation Alliance (SuSanA) is a loose, informal network of organisations such as NGOs, private companies, governmental and research institutions as well as multilateral organisations that aim to contribute towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by promoting sustainable sanitation.
Sanitation generally refers to the provision of facilities and services for the safe disposal of human excreta and domestic wastewater. Personal hygiene practices like hand washing with soap are also part of sanitation. Sanitation also includes solid waste management and drainage but these two aspects are not the focus of this publication. In order for a sanitation system to be sustainable, it has to be economically viable, socially acceptable, technically and institutionally appropriate, and protect the environment and natural resources.
SuSanA contributes to the policy dialogue towards sustainable sanitation through its resource materials and a lively debate amongst the members during meetings, in the working groups, bilaterally, through joint publications and via various communication tools like the open online discussion forum. This publication showcases the broad knowledge base and state of discussions on relevant topics of sustainable
sanitation. All of the working groups have published one or two factsheets providing a broad guidance relating to their specific thematic area.
The 11 working groups of SuSanA have the following titles:
WG 1 Capacity development
WG 2 Finance and economics
WG 3 Renewable energies and climate change
WG 4 Sanitation systems, technology, hygiene and health
WG 5 Food security and productive sanitation systems
WG 6 Sustainable sanitation for cities and planning
WG 7 Community, rural and schools (with gender and social aspects)
WG 8 Emergency and reconstruction situations
WG 9 Sanitation as a business and public awareness
WG 10 Operation and maintenance
WG 11 Groundwater protection
Due to the inter-relationships between the working groups, the factsheets are inter-related and where appropriate, are cross-referenced. The factsheets relate to different parts of the “sanitation chain”, which consists of user interface, conveyance, collection/storage, treatment, reuse or disposal. We have attempted to visualise the linkages between the different working groups and the sanitation chain in the following schematic. There are some working groups which are dealing with overarching themes and these have been placed inthe centre of the schematic.”
Publisher:
Sustainable Sanitation Alliance (SuSanA) and GIZ, Germany
Related articles
- SuSanA – Compilation of 13 factsheets on key sustainable sanitation topics (sanitationupdates.wordpress.com)
- Humanitarian crises and sustainable sanitation: lessons from Eastern Chad (washafrica.wordpress.com)
- Time to Get Our Sh*t Together (sanitationupdates.wordpress.com)
- Sanitation at the 4th Africa Water Week, 14-18 May 2012, Cairo, Egypt (sanitationupdates.wordpress.com)
new study: Social Factors Impacting Use of EcoSan in Rural Indonesia
The Social Factors Impacting Use of EcoSan in Rural Indonesia report came out in June 2010.
The Study Starts of stating the fact that “Joint Monitoring Programme (JMP) 2010 data indicate that around 38% of the rural population has access to improved sanitation services and that open defecation remains a widespread practice for over 60 million Indonesians. ”
With a majority of Indonesia being Muslims the study include a a look at Muslim teaching on the subject of sanitation. “The study objective was to identify the social, religious, cultural and gender-related factors which influence rural people’s attitudes towards urine and excreta-based fertilizers in general and the EcoSan urine diversion system in particular. It doe not pretend to be anything but a modest study: ” the study does not seek to be a comprehensive reflection of the whole of Indonesia. Instead, it provides a preliminary assessment of attitudes towards EcoSan, and identifi es some key drivers and inhibitors…” It survey 350 people in 5 out of 33 provinces included Muslims, Christians and respondents with traditional
beliefs. Four producers and retailers of excreta and urine based fertilizer were also identifi ed and interviewed.
One of the key finding come in this paragraph:
“The study data show that this is not only a Muslim religious objection,
but that Christians also consider it difficult to keep the excreta dry by not
using water above the disposal hole. While the percentage of Muslims who
considered it difficult to keep the disposal hole dry was fairly constant, the
percentage of Christians who felt this way varied from 35% in Kulon Progo,
Central Java to 78% in East Sumba. This confirms the assumption that
use of water for cleansing, where available, is also an Indonesian cultural
behavior that inhibits the use of a toilet system requiring dry storage. ”
The study reports the researchers’ findings that more than “…80% of the respondents are willing to use urine or feces-based fertilizer.” The report goes on to say a similar number are willing to consume products from the fields using compost based fertilizer. The hard part, the study states, is only 50% of the people surveyed are will to to be involved in processing the urine and feces to make the compost. (I would like to know how this compares to other locations around the world 50% Seems high- a positive rather than negative – )
The study goes on to look at the roles/ potential roles men and women of a family unit have on
- selecting fertilizer for crops, and for selection installing,toilets for the family.
- selecting toilets installing them and composting waste from them.
The conclusions are complex. Hopefully organizations that want to just plop down ecosan units all anywhere in the will carefully read this short but informative report in its entirety. We must truly understand the people, if we / they are to have success with ecosan or any other viable alternative!
Report Sections
INTRODUCTION: ECOSAN IN INDONESIA
- Background
- Objective of the Study
- Consideration of EcoSan as a Sanitation Option
- Methodology
DEMAND FOR ORGANIC FERTILIZER EXISTS ACROSS RELIGIONS AND REGIONS
- Excreta-based fertilizers are still a sensitive issue for some
RESERVATIONS ABOUT USING ECOSAN TOILETS
- Gender Differences
IS HUMAN EXCRETA-BASED FERTILIZER NAJIS?
CONCLUSIONS
Publishing Agency:
The Water and Sanitation Program (WSP) “…a multi-donor partnership administered by the World Bank to support poor people in obtaining affordable, safe and sustainable access to water and sanitation services.”
Editors/Authors/ Researchers:
The research was carried out by Entin Sriani Muslim assisted by Ana Nurhasanah in 2009. This learning
note was co-authored by Martin Albrecht, Isabel Blackett, and Ikabul Arianto and peer reviewed by
Eduardo Perez and Jeremy Colin.
Document type Pdf with search-able / selectable text. 4 pages Includes images and graphs
Eye opening report on Haitian sanitation and what the future holds
the challenge of sanitation
The International Federation International Federation Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) realease a 24 page report titled Haiti: From sustaining lives to sustainable solutions –the challenge of sanitation in July 2010 Special report, six months on • July 2010
Contents are follows
- Top line messages
- Before the earthquake Tentative steps in the face of chronic under-development
- It’s a dirty job,but somebody has to do it – Case Study
- Six months on: notable achievements, but substitution is not the answer
- Hygiene promotion at Camp La Piste Case Study
- Sanitation technicians –doing the work that nobody else wants to do Case Study
- The challenges of the next 6–12 months Taking the frst steps towards sustainable sanitation solutions
- Making it fun to learn about hygiene Case Study
- Cleaning up the camps Case Study
- The next ten years Innovation is the key
- Haiti earthquake operation in figures
The Top line message is as follows
- Sanitation saves lives. Without it, there is a risk of a secondary disaster, in which the people who have survived the earthquake could succumb to preventable disease.
- The IFRC is calling on the international community to recognize sanitation as one of the absolute priorities in Haiti’s reconstruction, and to ensure that sufficient resources are devoted to it.
- The current situation is not sustainable. The IFRC and other agencies providing water and sanitation services on behalf of the Haitian authorities are currently stretched beyond their capacity and mandate.
- Haitian authorities must receive funding and support to build their capacities to provide the improved sanitation services the Haitian population needs and deserves.
- Access to appropriate sanitation is also a dignity and protection issue, particularly for women and children. Community participation is essential to identify ways to ensure that people feel safe when using sanitation facilities – toilets and showers – both at night and in the day.
- Innovative solutions for future sanitation provision are needed. For example research is needed into potential solutions such as small bore sewerage, large-scale composting of waste, or
establishing biogas production.
They go on to say in (footnotes are remove here but are in original pdf)
“…Six months on, a large proportion of sanitation services (and two-thirds of the water trucking) continue to be provided by international partners. This is notsustainable. The IFRC calls upon the international community to recognize sanitation as one of the absolute priorities in Haiti’s reconstruction and ensure that sufficient resources are devoted to it….”
“…Before the earthquake, safe water access was amongst the lowest in Latin America and the Caribbean, nwhilst access to sanitation was amongst the lowest
in the world… ”
“…Whilst the IFRC works mainly in larger camps and neighbourhoods, other agencies and NGOs are working in small camps that are not accessible to
larger de-sludging machines. They have also taken this “improve on what exists” approach, consulting with camp dwellers to learn and build upon their own practices. They are currently piloting a number of different options. These include field-testing the distribution and safe collection of biodegradable bags in locations where there appears to be no other viable solution (for example, no space for more conventional toilets), installing toilets that use little or no water, and investigating options to introduce manual de-sludging pumps that would improve upon the bayacou system of toilet clearance used prior to the earthquake…..”
“There are huge challenges in meeting the long-term sanitation needs for Haiti, but at the same time great opportunities exist to make substantial improvements
to the sanitary environment of Port-au-Prince and beyond. The key is to support the Haitian authorities in investigating and putting in place pioneering sanitation solutions. The crucial starting point is to ensure that equal importance, support and funding is channeled to sanitation as well as the provision of water in tackling the long-term rebuilding of Haiti…”
“…Investment in formative research is needed now in areas such as the barriers and motivational factors to achieving improved sanitation within Haitian society,
the ability and willingness to pay for it, and whether there is an openness to adopt innovations such as the agricultural use of human-derived fertiliser or the conversion of excreta into energy through biogas production. All these issues must be properly researched, together with a better understanding in how to carry out urban mass sanitation, given that most experience to date stems from rural and peri-urban situations.
Haiti is still in the first phase of recovering from the devastating effects of the 12 January earthquake, but now is the time to look forward – to the next six months and also to the next 10 or 20 years. The decisions made now will have the most profound influence in helping the country deliver a prosperous future for its citizens. Making sure that sanitation is given equal priority and funding
to the provision of water – and seizing opportunities to put in place innovative long-term approaches to solid and human waste management in Haiti requires immediate action, research and planning.”
Ecosan /”ecological sanitation” posters published on slideshare
here is a great set of Ecosan /”ecological sanitation” posters published on slideshare
by India Water Portal – IWP homepage more IWP slideshare slides & presentations
DRY TOILET 2009 Conference proceedings and presentations
The proceedings from the DRY TOILET 2009 conference held by Global Dry Toilet Association of Finland are available They are a great resource and available at http://huussi.net/tapahtumat/DT2009/full.html
The summary is also avaliable in – suomi (Finish) and Russian as a pdf
The Suomi version of the home page is http://www.huussi.net/
| Session | Presentations
& |
|
| 1 PROMOTING ECOLOGICAL SANITATION IN ORDER TO ACHIEVE MDG’S |
||
|
India, Namibia, Finland, Tajikistan, Nepal, Uganda |
|
| 2 HEALTH AND SAFETY ASPECTS RELATED TO DRY SANITATION |
||
|
Philippines, India, Argentina, Belarus, Nigeria | |
| 3 IMPLEMENTING ECOLOGICAL SANITATION IN EMERGENCIES |
||
|
Pakistan, Bangladesh, Chad |
|
| 4a PROSPECTS AND CHALLENGES IN RE-USE OF EXCRETA | ||
|
Mexico, Benin, Ethiopia |
|
| 4b PROSPECTS AND CHALLENGES IN RE-USE OF EXCRETA continues |
||
|
Finland, Kenya, Ghana, Burkina Faso, Sri Lanka |
|
| 5 CHALLENGES IN IMPLEMENTING ECOLOGICAL SANITATION |
||
|
Mexico, Columbia, Zambia |
|
| 6 GENDER ASPECTS RELATED TO DRY SANITATION |
||
|
Nepal, Uganda, Bangladesh |
|
| 7a TECHNICAL DEVELOPMENT OF DRY TOILETS |
||
|
Kenya and Bangladesh and others |
|
| 7b TECHICAL DEVELOPMENT OF DRY TOILETS continues |
||
|
Finland, Ethiopia, Inner Mongolia, China |
|
| 8 CAPACITY BUILDING |
||
|
Sweden, Kyrgyzstan, Tanzania,Kenya, India |
|
| Side event SUSTAINABLE SANITATION FOR TOURISM AND RECREATION |
||
|
Scotland, Republic of Karelia, Russia, Kazakhstan, Finland |
|
Cost of Eco-San Toilet Lowered in Uganda
Uganda: Cost of Eco-San Toilet Lowered
Gerald Tenywa 18 November 2009 AllAfrica.com
Kampala — THE cost of the ecological sanitation (eco-san) toilets has been lowered in a bid to promote their use countrywide. The move is also aimed at encouraging farmers to use human waste as a fertiliser to improve agricultural productivity. Water state minister Jennifer Namuyangu said the availability of local materials to construct the eco-san toilets has helped to reduce the cost from about sh2m to only sh200,000. [$110 us dollars]….
Water supply and sanitation in Uganda From Wikipedia
EcoSan video focusing on Urine as Fertilizer
Here is great video showing how the EcoSan toilet works, stressing:
1 You don’t need water to us an EcoSan toilet, saving a precious resource
2 There is a huge benefit to use urine as a fertilizer
The video the workings of toilet itself. What I find wonderful is that this video explains & shows the full sequence of steps taken to after urination to get the urine onto the the field as fertilizer. This is followed by a wonderful comparison of crop yields comparing side by side fields, on fertilized with urine the other fertilized with commercial fertilizer. The fields fertilized with urine did better than the commercial fertilizers and at NO COST!!!! The video is in English and the location is Ethiopia. Several local experts are use to explain particular points.
Title Urine Diversion Toilets: advantages and use agriculture
a brief Ecosan Documentary by Andreas Wilkin c 2008
produced for the ROSA project
contact Franziska Meinzinger f.meinzinger @ tu-harburg.de
Technische Universitat Hamburg-Harburg TUHH
(Hamburg University of Technology)
WASHLink Notes: addition resources:
other related YouTube videos (using following search terms)
| ecosan urine | ecosan construction | ecosan watsan |
| ecosan design materials | ecosan fertilizer | ecosan toilet |
WHO:
Google Scholar search
sanitation & water news
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