Asia’s first waterless toilet opens

People of Regullanka village set a precedence in personal hygiene, general cleanliness with ECOSAN toilet

• By P. Sujatha Varma, www.thehindu.com
• November 29th, 2012

 

Eco-friendly:Secretary of Arthika Samata andal, Gora, showing the compost procured from the cement chamber after opening of the toilet vault, at Regullanka village of Avanigadda mandal in Krishna district on Tuesday. —PHOTO: V. RAJU

Regullanka, a sleepy village nestled in the flood-prone island mandal of Avanigadda in Krishna district, has earned a rare distinction. For the first time in Asia, residents of the entire village have embraced an innovative, eco-friendly, waterless toilet – the ECOSAN toilet.

The village situated on the banks of River Krishna achieved a new level of personal hygiene and general cleanliness with an ECOSAN toilet.

Vijayawada-based NGO Arthik Samata Mandal (ASM) implemented this project to save the local women folk of the hardship of trekking a long distance to reach village outskirts to answer nature’s call. The project is sponsored by Switzerland-based Terre des Hommes (TDH).

“It took a long time to persuade the villagers and secure their nod for construction of the toilets with a promise that they will make use of them,” said ASM secretary Nau Gora.

“Hundred and odd families of Regullanka and its surrounding areas have a shallow water table and villagers often face water scarcity. The ECOSAN toilets are a safe bet for this region,” says Ms. Gora. It’s like killing two birds in one shot.

The excreta which is stored in a concrete chamber for six months and allowed to convert into compost, was being diverted to the fields as fertilizers, said Willy Bergogne, India Country Representative, of TDH.

He said that Regullanka had stood in the first in Asia to have implemented this project in the entire village.

Surrounded by a team of local officials, villagers and representatives of many other organisations, Mr. Bergogne and others opened the first ECOSAN toilet vault.

The near 100 kg of compost procured by breaking open the chamber was thin odourless powder. “Use this as manure in the farm and the difference will reflect in the output,” said Mr. Bergogne.

J. Satyapal Reddy, Superintending Engineer, RWS, Krishna district, complimented the ASM and the TDH for their achievement. Similar efforts by the government had failed to convince villagers in the past, he said.

• Vijayawada-based NGO Arthik Samata Mandal has implemented the project

• It took a long time to persuade villagers and secure their nod for ECOSAN toilet, says ASM secretary
  
  
• Body waste that is stored in a concrete chamber for six months and allowed to convert into compost is diverted to fields as fertilizer

Spotlight on sanitation for World Toilet Day

Epic Times,  UNESCO, Nov 18, 2012

Aid agencies and international groups are using this year's World Toilet Day to highlight the risks to women and children from poor sanitation.

Since 2001, November 19 has marked World Toilet Day, drawing attention to issues of toileting and sanitation worldwide. The United Nations says more than 2.7 million people die each year due to lack of sanitation, with almost 2,000 children dying each day from unsanitary conditions.

World Toilet Day

• More than 2.7 million people die each year due to lacking sanitation
• Most of those who die are under five years old.
• Each year, children miss a total of 272 million school days due to water-borne or sanitation-related diseases.
• Approximate 1.25 billion women and girls lack safe sanitation
• Only 1 in 3 people worldwide have access to suitable toilet facilities.
• More than 1 billion people still defecate in the open.
  
• In her latest report to the UN General Assembly, Catarina de Albuquerque, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the human right to safe drinking water and sanitation, has called for the elimination of inequalities in access to water and sanitation.

She's told Radio Australia's Cconnect Asia program the problem extends beyond the right to sanitation, to other rights including health,education , work and the right to lead a life in dignity.

"It is a crisis that we are facing, and since sanitation is a taboo issue, it's something dirty that we want to hide, we don't want to talk about it, we don't want to talk about it," she said.

"So if we don't talk about and if we make a taboo around it, obviously it's very difficult for governments to prioritise it in their policy and address this problem."

It is a crisis that we are facing, and since sanitation is a taboo issue, it's something dirty that we want to hide, we don't want to talk about it, we don't want to talk about it.

Catarina de Albuquerque, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the human right to safe drinking water and sanitation. The United Nations says a lack of access to toilets remains an important source of global inequality, with poor sanitation almost exclusively a burden of the poor.

It says lacking sanitation not only made poor people sick; it also shrank their already limited possibilities by forcing them to stay away from school and work. Each year, children miss a total of 272 million school days due to water-borne or sanitation-related diseases.

"Each time I go on a mission for the UN, I always visit a school, and I always talk with the girls, and not having sanitation - not having girls' only toilets - means after they reach puberty, they don't go to school - especially if they have their period" she said. "And I met some girls who tell me they miss school for one week a month...so you see the dimensions of the tragedy."

Jane Caro from international NGO WaterAid has told Radio Australia's Pacific Beat program the aim of World Toilet Day is to bring the issue of sanitation out into the open.

"As long as we keep it hidden - partly because it's such a taboo, shameful kind of subject still, shamefully - there isn't the same kind of pressure to provide this kind of infrastructure as there is perhaps for other things," she said.

"I think it is that silence that has allowed this to go on, and avoid thinking about it, and avoid, therefore, actually raising awareness, increasing pressure...and generally just being more open about the issue, which is I think the first step towards doing something about it."

WaterAid says 1 in 3 women and girls do not have access to toilets, and unsafe or open toilets increase the risks of physical and sexual violence. Ms Caro says they've found World Toilet Day events such as 'Big Squat' flash mobs help to raise awareness of the dangers through humour. 

When I started...to think about what it would be like to be a woman in a village where there was no toilet - or only one - and where it was not only embarrassing to reveal my needs, but possibly dangerous? It made me think."

"There's an obvious way to get people to talk about it, and that is our tendency to have 'toilet humour' as part of the way we joke with one another," she said.

"I actually think using some humour...[makes] people think, because that's what it did for me when I started to know about this, was actually to think about what it would be like to be a woman in a village where there was no toilet - or only one - and where it was not only embarrassing to reveal my needs, but possibly dangerous. It made me think."

One organisation working on the ground in Papua New Guinea is A-T Projects, which uses local materials to develop toilets for schools and communities in in Goroka Province.

Director Miriam Layton says while some foreign aid helps in setting up proper sanitation, more needs to be done by the local and PNG governments to improve facilities.

She says she hopes the new female governor of Eastern Highlands province will help drive the push to improve sanitation needs for women. "In our urban centres, as well as rural centres, there is no proper facilities to cater for women's needs as well," she said.

"So when women come for business in town, or for markets as well, they face problems when looking for toilets, and that is when they are arrested and there's violence.

"At the moment we are still getting support from outside, no own government - so we need to do a lot more work to convince the Papua New Guinea government, as well as the donors, to do more in this area."

Men in India are having a shitty time…

By Belmont Lay     March 10, 2012

After years of squatting in open fields in darkness, braving snakes and harassment from passing men, women in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh have decided to f*ck this shit, threatening their future husbands with the prospect of endless shame from being left at the alter, in exchange for decent toilets at home.

A lack of toilets apparently is also the cause for girls dropping out of school Only four in ten government schools in Delhi have access to functioning toilets for girls, the study said, which played a dominant role in the ability of female students to attend school.

The World Bank says the lack of such facilities costs India nearly US$54 billion a year in productivity and other losses — in large measure due to the impact on women. The United Nations Development Programme says that fewer than 35% of women in India get paid work.According to its conservative estimates, the gross domestic product could easily increase by 2-4% annually if the employment rate for women grows to 70%.

Why excreta matters

By Sunita Narain, Down to Earth, Jan 31, 2012

Illustration: Karno Guhathakurta Water is life and sewage tells its life story. 

This is the subject of the Citizens’ Seventh Report on the State of India’s Environment, Excreta Matters:

How urban India is soaking up water, polluting rivers and drowning in its own excreta. It has a seemingly simple plot: it only asks where Indian cities get their water from and where does their waste go. But this is not just a question or answer about water, pollution and waste. It is about the way Indian cities (and perhaps other parts of the world that are similarly placed) will develop. It is about the paradigm of growth that’s sustainable and affordable.

Urbanisation in India, relentless as it is, will only grow. How should the country manage its water needs so that it does not drown in its own excreta? This is what the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) has asked and tried to answer in the book. What has amazed us is the lack of data, research and understanding of this issue in the country. This is when water concerns all. People in cities get water in their houses; they discharge waste; and they see their rivers die. But they don’t make the connection, between flushing toilet and dying rivers. It is as if they do not want to know. But they should. 

Is this a reflection of the caste system of Indian society, where removing waste is somebody else’s business? Or is it a reflection of current governance systems, where water and waste are government’s business, and within that the business of a lowly water and sanitation bureaucracy? Or is it simply a reflection of Indian society’s extreme arrogance—it believes it can fix it all as and when it gets rich; that water scarcity and waste are only a temporary problem; that once it gets rich, infrastructure will be built, water will flow and the embarrassing stink of excreta in cities will just disappear. 

It is clear Indians know little about the water they use and the waste they discharge. We at CSE had to collect data the hard way—city by city, ferreting out the material from government offices, which are rarely visited by researchers. The second volume—71 cities: water-excreta survey—of the seventh citizens’ report puts together individual city profiles. Each city is mapped to know more about its past, current and future water footprint. Each city is mapped to know more about where the waste generated from such use of water goes. It is a geography lesson that’s essential to learn.

It was way back in the late 1990s that environmentalist Anil Agarwal, who conceived and crafted the State of India’s Environment reports, had said one needs to understand the political economy of defecation, where the rich are subsidised to excrete in convenience.

Now when we researched for this report, which explains the political economy of defecation, we were struck by one fact that should make us all angry, really angry. We found countless instances where a city’s drain, called nullah today, was actually a river. Delhi residents are familiar with Najafgarh drain, which discharges the city’s waste into the Yamuna. But most of them do not know that this “drain” has its source in the lake Sahibi. Now Sahibi is gone, and what has replaced it in living memory is a drain carrying only filth, not water. Worse, New Gurgaon is now dumping its sewage into the same Najafgarh jheel (lake).

Buddha Nullah in Ludhiana is referred to as a drain because it is that—full of stench and filth. But not so long ago Buddha was called darya (river). It was a clean freshwater stream. One generation has changed its form and name.

The Mithi is Maximum City’s shame. When floods drowned Mumbai in 2005, it learnt it had a clogged drain called Mithi, marred by encroachments. It did not realise that the Mithi had not shamed the city, the city had shamed the Mithi. This “drain”, which originates near the city, is really a river. It was recognised as a river. It flowed like one. But today even official environmental status report calls this living river a storm water drain. One more city has lost its river. These lost rivers are our collective shame. 

But should Indians be surprised? Today they take water from their rivers—for irrigation, drinking and hydro-electric plants—and give back waste. Water no more flows in its rivers. It is the load of excreta and industrial effluent.

Indians should be angry over the loss of rivers. More worryingly, if they do not change their ways they will lose the remaining rivers, lakes and other water bodies. This generation will then not just be pitied for losing rivers, but accused of committed deliberate “hydrocide”. Coming generations will forget that the Yamuna, Cauvery and the Damodar were rivers. They will know them as drains, only drains.