NOT DIRTY:Sanitation is a sensitive and unpopular subject, one that Bill
Gates has attempted to relook at. The picture is of him touring the
“Reinventing the Toilet” Fair in Seattle on Tuesday. —PHOTO: AP
A solar powered toilet that breaks down water and human waste into
hydrogen gas for use in fuel cells has won first prize in a competition for
next-generation toilets to improve sanitation in the developing world.
The California Institute of Technology in the United States received the
$100,000 first prize for its design. Loughborough University in the United
Kingdom took the $60,000 second prize for a toilet that produces biological
charcoal, minerals and clean water, and Canada’s University of Toronto came
third, winning $40,000 for a toilet that sanitises faeces and urine, and
recovers resources and clean water.
The winners took part in a “Reinvent the Toilet” challenge set by the
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which asked designers to break with a
sanitation model that has changed little since it was developed by Alexander
Cummings more than 200 years ago. It is a model that depends on piped water,
sewer or electrical connections that poor countries can ill afford.
A year ago, the Gates Foundation issued a challenge to universities to
design toilets that can capture and process waste without piped waster and
transform human waste into useful resources such as energy and water.
Millennium
goals
“Imagine what’s possible if we continue to collaborate, stimulate new
investment in this sector, and apply our ingenuity in the years ahead,” said
Bill Gates as he announced the winners on Tuesday, August 14, in Seattle,
Washington state. “Many of these innovations will not only revolutionise
sanitation in the developing world, but also help transform our dependence on
traditional flush toilets in wealthy nations.” Sanitation and hygiene are the
laggards in the millennium development goals (MDGs) of reducing extreme poverty.
Basic sanitation, covering toilets, latrines, handwashing and waste, is not an
MDG but a target under MDG seven on ensuring environmental sustainability.
Sanitation and hygiene have been the poor cousins in the global water,
sanitation and hygiene work and programmes, outfunded by as much as 13 to one,
even though most water-related diseases are really sanitation-related diseases.
In March, the U.N. announced that the world had reached the goal of
halving the number of people without access to safe drinking water, well ahead
of the 2015 deadline. However, the world is still far from meeting the MDG
target for sanitation, and is unlikely to do so by 2015.
Only 63 per cent of the world population has access to improved
sanitation, a figure projected to increase to only 67 per cent by 2015, well
below the 75 per cent target in the MDGs. Currently 2.5 billion people lack
access to an “improved sanitation facility”, which hygienically separates human
waste from human contact.
Not
high-profile
As Ban Ki-moon, the U.N. Secretary General, has acknowledged, sanitation
is a sensitive and unpopular subject. It is not a high-profile issue, although
the UN declared access to water and sanitation a fundamental right in 2010 and
there is a U.N. rapporteur on the human right to safe drinking water and
sanitation.
At the current rate, the world will miss the sanitation MDG target by 13
percentage points, meaning there will be 2.6 billion people without access to
improved sanitation, according to the 2010 report by the World Health
Organisation (WHO) and Unicef joint monitoring programme for water supply and
sanitation. . If things carry on as they are, the MDG target will not be met
until 2049.
As many as 1.2 billion people practice what the U.N. describes as “open
defecation.” They go to the toilet behind bushes, in fields, in plastic bags or
along railway tracks. The practice poses particular problems for women and
girls, who can be subject to physical and verbal abuse or humiliation.
According to the WHO, improved sanitation delivers up to $9 in social
and economic benefits for every $1 invested because it increases productivity,
reduces healthcare costs, and prevents illness, disability, and early death. —
© Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2012
Human waste attracts less funding than other development projects but
‘Reinvent the Toilet’ challenge recognises that better hygiene can cut
health-care costs and prevent early deaths
