Worldwide, about 2.6 billion people use unsafe toilets or defecate in the open. Millions of tons of excreta end up in our environment and cause diarrhoeal disease, killing 1.5 million children each year. Today, the Gates Foundation has invited the brightest innovators to ‘reinvent the toilet’ . They will present their proposals for solutions to the immense challenge of ending open defecation and reducing the health, developmental and environmental burdens that result from inadequate sanitation.
And this is certainly a challenge that merits urgent action. As they say on their website: Smart investments in sanitation can reduce disease, increase family incomes, keep girls in school, help preserve the environment, and enhance human dignity.
But, why do 4 out of 10 people still not have access to safe sanitation? Yes, technology is part of the problem. For example in areas with high groundwater tables, where we currently have no low-cost sanitation technology that keeps faeces safely separated from human contact. And, a big problem is that most people in developing countries that do have toilets, rely on pit latrines or septic tanks, while there are insufficient options for safe disposal or treatment once these containers fill. Various types of toilets convert the pit contents into safe compost or even biogas, but in general the technology problem is that we focus exclusively on the toilet itself (containment of faeces).
Toilets parts on display in India (Photo C Sijbesma)
Looking beyond the toilet
Changing this situation requires overcoming several challenges. The first is that we currently design and plan for the containment of faeces and not for transport, treatment and final disposal or productive use. These are crucial steps in ensuring that that untreated faeces do not end up in the environment.
The second challenge is that there are a lot of reasons why existing technologies fail, that are related to the technology, but not (only) technical: the technology is unaffordable for the poorest, construction materials are not available, local workmanship is of low quality, etc. And thirdly, to ensure that technologies are used, we need to understand what consumers want. It’s households who make the decision to invest in a toilet. The process of technology introduction, demand creation and hygiene behaviour change is a crucial factor in determining if the technology will be taken up.
Technologies do matter, but it takes a lot more…
In many countries, a range sanitation technologies are piloted. Some work well and go to scale, while others break down or do not deliver the services they were intended to provide. There are very few standards for assessment and introduction of technology at local levels. To address this gap, the WASHTech project is collaborating with national and local government, academic institutions, private sector enterprises, WASH agencies and donors in Burkina Faso, Ghana and Uganda to develop a simple participatory tool for assessing the potential of innovative WASH technologies and the performance of conventional technologies in a given context.
The technology assessment framework is now under development and examines key criteria such as the performance of the technology, the market potential, whether the technology can be applied widely, support required from government and private sector institutions and sustainability of the technology over time.
We need innovators and creative thinkers to solve the sanitation challenge. And technology is one part of the puzzle. In addition to improving technology, we need to reflect on what we know already, understand what sanitation options people want and strengthen the enabling environment for sanitation services that last. This means investing in formative research and behaviour change, strengthening governance and accountability, working on better supply chains as well as in technology that is not only innovative, but also appropriate.
Informing families about low-cost toilet options, Uganda (C. da Silva Wells)
[...] the toilet’ and the technology assessment framework of the WASHTech project in the Learning for Change Blog by Carmen da Silva [...]
Reblogged this on WASHTech, THE project (2011-2013) and commented:
In this blog post Carmen da Silva promotes WASHTech’s Technology Assessment Framework as a tool to assess sanitation technologies.
[...] article d’opinion a été publié dans the Learning for Change blog (blog l’apprentissage pour le changement) le 14 août 2012. 12.352767 -1.500471 Share [...]
Thanks Carmen, I guess sanitation and hygiene cannot be emphasized enough. Just some thoughts. You do mention behaviour towards the end of the post, bring it up front. First of all sanitation is about HYGIENE behaviour. The simplest tech or even no tech solution is okay as long as hygiene awareness and behaviour are there.
Reinventing the toilet? Is that really needed? There are soooo many solutions around, dispersed accross the globe and history. What is probably more needed is efficient and effective Knowledge Management (KM): making existing information and know-how overseeable; accessible and useable to those who need the know-how at the time they need it and not supply driven.
Sanitation solutions needed? Yes but in some contexts more than in others. In dry low density population areas the risks are low, the need is low. In high density urban slums the risk and need are high. Who invests there? What does history (London, Amsterdam) tell us? It is not necessarily the households that invest, rather the rich that are at risk or enlightened (local) government.
KM KM KM, it’s the KM – as understood above – stupid! The KM facilitation that encourages local know-how to mature and spread. Local know-how, local learning. Hence the need for (institutionalized) decentralized learning in the WASH sector.
My #wash4dev stream here
Hello Peter, thanks for your feedback. It’s great to get comments, although I prefer not to start a conversation by calling someone stupid. You’re right that local learning and knowledge sharing are critical for ensuring change. I would consider continuous learning and KM to be part of better WASH governance.
But, I disagree with you that we should only put our efforts into about awareness and behavior. Yes, those are fundamental for any success, but many existing toilets are too expensive, unsafe or unappealing to be considered an alternative for many people. And, the other issue is what happens with the shit after it is in the toilet. In other words, technology is important.
The current reality is that 1 in 3 people world wide have no alternative to defecating in the open. 1 child dies every 20 seconds from contact with feces. The world population is growing rapidly, and so is the problem of poor/ no sanitation. We need solutions that work for the poor and work at scale.
The reason I highlighted WASHTech is because it is an example of a multi-stakeholder learning process about why various technologies work or don’t in different contexts, taking into consideration various perspectives and parameters. The Technology Assessment Framework could enable others elsewhere to learn and improve decision-making. Using it entails a collaborative process which helps people learn for change.
Carmen, thanks. Sorry about the stupid! (it was referring to Bill Clinton’s famous “It’s the economy, stupid!” whereby noone in specific is addressed, or rather all of us). Well I appreciate your view, but when I read about what money is invested in tech solutions, I wonder if that is spend in the most effective way. Read on about the BMGF ‘competition’ on inventing the non plus ultra toilet here https://plus.google.com/u/0/s/%23reinventingthetoilet