Mothers listen: It is rightGrandparents listen: It is rightChildren listen: It is rightEcological latrines are goodThey are easy to maintainThey do not smellThey do not have fliesThey are easy to maintain
They are made with cementThey are made with bricksAdvise everyone in the villageThat the result is better healthIt is ecological sanitation
- Feliciano dos Santos
When Feliciano dos Santos started to sing about ecological sanitation, the residents in his home province of Niassa, Mozambique, did not understand his point. Now he is touring the United Kingdom and has signed on with Poo Productions, a British film and music production company that promotes sanitation awareness in Africa.
Dos Santos’ own company, Estamos, supports villagers in Niassa who want to install ecological sanitation toilets. These ecosan toilets sit atop a water-tight chamber, which composts feces into rich pathogen-free fertilizer. Estamos plans to expand operations throughout Mozambique and eventually internationally.
Since human excretion is a taboo, most villagers did not want to talk about it at first, let alone manipulate it. But they have since noticed that the number of sicknesses has dropped and they grow enough produce to sell in the market. For his innovations, dos Santos won the 2008 Goldman Environmental Prize for Africa.
Practitioners call ecological sanitation, or ecosan, a sanitation philosophy that recognizes the potential health, economic and conservation benefits of reusing human waste. Known as a “closed-loop” system, ecosan latrines process human waste and wastewater into reusable materials such as pathogen-free fertilizer and energy, or can be used as a tool in reforestation efforts. The technique protects groundwater from fecal contamination and is an alternative to flush toilets, which require large quantities of potable water.
An international sanitation trend
Many countries are planning to implement ecological sanitation projects on a national scale. For example, in the last five years, the number of countries working on ecosan projects with the Deutsche Gesellschaft fuer Technische Zusammenarbeit, a German development organization, has nearly tripled, from 15 in 2002 to 44 in 2007. In China, one project involving GTZ and others started with 70 ecosan users and has since grown to more than 1 million participants. India, where almost half of the country’s 1.1 billion residents lack sanitation, is a focus for ecosan practitioners, according to Sören Rüd, junior expert on ecosan at GTZ.
Ecosan projects have been expanding rapidly, said Madeleine Fogde, capacity development manager at EcoSanRes, a research institute at the Stockholm Environment Institute sponsored by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency.
In South Africa, for instance, the municipality of Durban has authorized construction of 1,000 ecosan units per month in order to reach its target of universal access to sanitation and water by 2012. So far, 70,000 units have been completed. The government of Rwanda has proclaimed ecosan toilets as the minimal standard of sanitation in rural areas. Ethiopia, Bangladesh and India have also created national strategies to implement ecosan facilities.
The United Nations encouraged the trend by proclaiming 2008 the Year of Sanitation.
“When it comes to scale, we will see a change of a paradigm,” said Fogde.
An answer to rising fertilzer costs
Installing ecosan toilets not only provides a sanitary waste management system, it also creates byproducts that can be sold or utilized as fertilizer.
In recent years, the rising price of fertilizer has affected small-scale farmers’ ability to grow crops. As fertilizer companies run out of costly chemical resources, the price of fertilizer may become too expensive for most farmers in the developing world, said Rüd. Small family groups and small-scale farmers, who are targeted users of ecosan toilets, can save money by processing the toilet sludge into fertilizer, or they can create biogas by subjecting the sludge to anaerobic treatment.
According to Rüd, large-scale chemical fertilizer companies have yet to feel challenged by ecosan technology. Ecosan has not yet been commercialized because there are not enough toilets and users yet.
But the potential to commercialize exists.
“There is enough human waste in sub-Sahara to fertilize all the fields in Africa,” said Erin Fornoff, change manager for Ashoka Innovators for the Public, a Washington, D.C.-based international development group.
Overcoming a stigma
But the widespread adoption of ecosan toilets faces major challenges. Most people do not like to talk about defecation, and users often lack training and education on how diseases are spread and how toilets are maintained and thus prefer flush toilets. Ecosan techniques will not be adopted on a large scale until enough of these issues have been addressed.
“The user acceptance is crucial for success,” said Fogde. “The dry concept is difficult to accept for poor and rich alike who dream about a watercloset.”
Fornoff agreed: “Status is a problem. Using an ecosan toilet seems less prestigious than a porcelain flush toilet.”
There are more visceral reasons.
“There are still technical problems to be resolved with ventilation, for example,” Fogde said.
Changing the perceptions toward ecosan toilets is critically important to its future.
“It is a matter of winning hearts and minds,” according to Fornoff.
Like dos Santos, several Ashoka fellows are working on creative advertising campaigns to spread the word. In the Kibera slum in Nairobi, Kenya, Ashoka Fellow David Kuria runs a company called Ecotact, which builds facilities that include toilets, a soft drink stand and showers. Customers are lured to the restrooms by the drinks and showers, which also obscure the embarrassment of waiting by the toilets. For most residents of Kibera, who have never had the opportunity to shower, the facilities and soda pop stand provide a sense of dignity and luxury.
“The toilet-kiosks are an improvement over the ‘flying toilets,’” said Fornoff, referring to a common practice in Kenya and elsewhere whereby human waste is excreted into a plastic bag and flung away.
Sanitation experts are proposing various solutions to change perceptions toward sanitation. It is too early to tell which, if any, of the approaches guarantee success.
Sanitation expert Orlando Hernandez promotes a carrot-and-stick concept. He showcased an approach he called “sanitation marketing and community-led total sanitation” at the 2008 Global Health Council conference in Washington, D.C. It encourages locals to stop open defecation by using community mobilization techniques including “social sanctioning” of individuals found defecating in public. Communities are rewarded for reaching particular benchmarks.
GTZ focuses on teaching sanitation and personal hygiene in schools. The organization has launched pilot projects in local schools in Burkina Faso. The goal is for students to share lessons learned with family members at home so that the project will gradually influence entire communities.
Ecosan projects promote sustainability by encouraging income-generating activities that take advantage of fecal byproducts.
“You can have a sanitation project that makes a profit. ‘Waste into wealth’ is the idea of taking waste and making it into biogas,” said Fornoff.
Fogde said ecosan fertilizer businesses can also be applied to urban areas.
“One solution is to do what China is developing - small fertilizer plants that are installed where you have urine-diverting systems,” said Fogde. “The fertilizer that comes out as product from these plants is sold to farmers.”
According to Fogde, the ecosan philosophy bases its techniques on 2,500-year-old ancient Chinese farming techniques and the techniques of other excreta-using civilizations. Using human fertilizer enabled their settlements to sustain more people at a higher density than other agriculture systems. Ecosan improved upon the technology by introducing waste treatment processes that greatly reduce the risk of spreading of disease.
Careers in sanitation
Even in industrialized nations, stigma over human waste keeps people from working in sanitation.
“This is a global problem,” said Fogde. “Sanitation is not sexy, and it is still a little bit taboo. You do not speak about it around the dinner table, nor is it popular among scientists.”
At the Stockholm Environmental Institute, EcoSanRes is the largest research group, but the climate change, pollution and energy groups are considered more prestigious.
“Sanitation is still the poor cousin of glamorous water,” Fogde said.
The global reluctance to speak about human waste often causes discomfort for sanitation specialists. Still, many ecosan practitioners enjoy combating the stigma against sanitation.
“Many people stay with ecosan because even though it is a taboo, it is an interesting taboo to break,” said Rüd.
“I think you will have a secure future going deeper into sanitation and environmental sanitation,” said Fogde. “The demand is huge: 2.6 billion people still live without a toilet. That is an enormous market.”
Jobs in ecosan are rarely advertised and finding a job specific to ecosan may seem difficult.
“Get a job in wastewater management then implement your ideas,” Rüd advised.
There are some universities that grant degrees in ecosan. Most are concentrated in Europe, particularly in Sweden and Germany, but degrees are also available elsewhere. The University of Hamburg and the University of Weimar offer majors specific to ecosan, for instance.
“In Sweden, the research in ecosan is growing,” said Fogde. “Many universities in Sweden and Europe are now producing Ph.D.s and master’s students.”
For people seeking a profession in international development, sanitation is a relatively open field that allows practitioners to impact a community’s health, environment and economic sectors.
“Deal with this thing,” said Fornoff. “It solves a lot of problems.”
