Water & Sanitation for the Urban Poor (WSUP) has produced a series of short videos relevant for everybody working to improve water and sanitation services for low-income urban consumers, highlighting ways in which African water utilities and other key actors are achieving real progress in this area.

The first four videos in the series are now available to watch on our YouTube channel and cover the following topics:

Emptying pits: a serious business
Paulinho, a small entrepreneur in Maputo, Mozambique, is moving into the pit emptying business. This video shows him at work.

Fix the leaks, serve the poor
How reducing non-revenue water (NRW) can free up water for low-income communities: experience from Antananarivo, Madagascar.

Surcharging for sanitation
Charging for sanitation through water bills. This video explores Lusaka’s sanitation levy system.

Connecting people
Tariff reform and social marketing as strategies for increasing household connections to the water network: experience from Maputo, Mozambique.

*The next set of videos in this series will follow shortly. Watch this space!

PORTABLE toilets have come a long way since Britain first imported them from America 25 years ago. The beech panelling, wraparound mirrors, plasma-screen televisions and sumptuous toiletries of some modern trailers would not be out of place in a posh hotel.

Construction workers were the earliest adopters of mobile serviced lavatories, which became standard issue on building sites in the mid-1990s. Before then some had no facilities, whereas others set up typically squalid immobile toilets. Industrial users still account for three-quarters of the 100,000-plus portable loos in the country.

But it is hard to make money out of builders’ bums. Construction slumped during the financial crisis, falling by another 5% in the first quarter of 2012 compared with the three months before. Rental fees have dropped as the cost of transport, chemicals, waste disposal and even loo paper has risen. A basic portable unit, which costs £500 ($785) to buy, can often be hired for £20-25 a week.

So most hire firms now serve the events market too. Leasing to music festivals, sporting events and private functions brings higher margins, notes Martin Murdoch of PS Consultancy, who advises the industry. But this business is erratic. The organisers of this summer’s Olympics have commandeered 1,500 toilet blocks at the busiest time of year, infuriating the people behind the Glastonbury music festival, who cancelled their event. Since transporting loos is so time-consuming and expensive, most outfits remain small and fairly local. Even specialist events firms need construction work to tide them through the winter.

The industry’s best hope now lies in technology. Most luxury and bog-standard loos are “recirculating”, meaning they are flushed with existing waste from the tank below, combined with a blue chemical compound. But vacuum toilets, akin to aeroplane ones, are gaining popularity. They use little water and no chemicals; since they don’t send waste whizzing round again, they are better for health. Because they are so pricey, they will not soon transform the business. A high-end trailer with a vacuum toilet currently costs around £40,000 compared with £25,000-£30,000 for a recirculating one. Only a few festivals and individual clients are willing to spend the extra pennies for them, says Nicky Warner of Loos for Do’s, a rental outfit.

Yet the technology has promise. Some humanitarian organisations are considering using vacuum toilets for crisis situations, because there is less waste to dispose of. Mobile loos may even inspire the next generation of fixed facilities—they use so much less water than normal lavatories that architects are getting interested in installing vacuum toilets in new buildings, says Nicky Brown of Flexiloos, a vacuum supplier and manufacturer. If they catch on, the bottom could fall out of the flush toilet market.

Source: The Economist, May 26 2012

Weighted with two heavy sacks of discarded milk bags and meat bones slung across her back, a plastic bag of rotted cabbage in her hand, Rahab Ruguru walks through a smoky landscape of mountainous piles of burning waste, scavenging for a living.

“Working here is how I am able to feed my children,” says the 42-year-old mother of six, stooping to pocket a handful of discarded candy from the ground. “Of course it is not a usual job. Dodging pigs [and] used condoms, eating what I find. No, it’s not good for me. But it is a job and I have to persevere.”

Rahab Ruguru, 42, a mother of six children—between the ages of four and 17—moved to a small home directly bordering Dandora after the country’s 2007 post-election violence forced her family from their Eldoret farm near the western border of Kenya. Image by Micah Albert. Kenya, 2012.

Ms. Ruguru is one of an estimated 6,000 people who come daily to mine the Dandora city dump, a sprawling 12-hectare wasteland about 15 kilometres from Nairobi’s thriving central business district. They sort and place into large sacks waste that can either be eaten or sold to recycling companies – mostly metals, rubber, glass, milk bags, plastics, meat bones and electronics. Nobody earns more than $2.50 (U.S.) a day.

Nearly one million people live in the slums that surround the dump, the only one serving the Kenyan capital. While the Dandora garbage dump provides a source of income for some – Ms. Ruguru, for instance, says her scavenged items bring her money for her children’s food, school fees, books and uniforms – it is at the centre of a political controversy.

The trash pickers and their supporters do not want their only source of income to end. But most of the people living near Dandora want the trash site gone and have organized themselves into a grassroots campaign called Stop Dumping Death On Us.

“This isn’t just about trash,” says Aggrey Otieno, a human rights activist who grew up next to Dandora. “It’s about how our capital city is treating its most disadvantaged citizens.”

Father John Webootsa, another campaign activist, says the dump contaminates the lives of its neighbours. “The air we breathe here is acidic air, children are born with birth defects, the average lifespan is less than 50 years old, … the vegetables people take from here grow from polluted soil, the water we used to drink from the Nairobi River has turned tar black,” he says. “The facts are on the table. That dumpsite should not be there.”

A 2007 study by the United Nations Environment Programme found soil samples containing fatally high levels of lead in a community bordering the dump. It also found that 154 of the 328 children tested suffered from respiratory problems attributed to the site and had concentrations of lead in their blood that exceeded internationally accepted levels.

Dandora has been in operation since about 1975. Nairobi’s city council declared it full in 2001, but an estimated 2,000 metric tonnes of waste continues to be dumped there daily.

Local officials blame the city’s rapid population growth – Nairobi has grown from about 830,000 in 1979 to 3.4 million today – and an overwhelmed bureaucracy for keeping Dandora open. “Population growth has superseded our facilities,” says Mutabari Inanga, an environmental and public health officer who sits on Nairobi’s city council. Dandora, he adds, “has become an environmental and health crisis for which we have had no one to take responsibility.”

Mr. Inanga says the city is prepared to privatize waste management and relocate the site, but is waiting for the go-ahead from the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport. The proposed new dump would be placed next to the airport, but officials have expressed fear the site will attract birds that will interfere with air traffic.

On most days, children skip school in anticipation of the truck coming from the airport, which they consider a particularly good source of treats. As it waits to enter Dandora, the older ones clamber up its sides to examine the unfinished salads, sandwiches, bread, yogurt cups and refuse from incoming flights. Younger children sort through waste tossed on the ground.

Once inside the site, dozens of men fight over the haul. Baked by the heat of the Kenyan sun and reeking of spoiled milk, the congealed food waste is either eaten on the spot or placed in Kenya Airways bags to be consumed later. An occasional fight breaks out between pickers over the most coveted items – a half-eaten brownie, an unopened container of yogurt.

Avoiding the frenzy, women pick through items the children and men have ignored.

Ms. Ruguru and many others who come daily to rummage and pick through the garbage for something saleable or edible fear the day Dandora is decommissioned. They have come to depend on it for their livelihood and income. “If this site moves then I will move with it,” says Ms. Ruguru.

This website collects information on urban waste management with an emphasis on low and middle income Countries. There are links to relevant sites, tools, events, news and organisations. Information can be accessed by different waste management processes and topics, waste types, and countries/regions. There is a section on trends in urban waste management and a blog. To access all information, you need to register.

The portal is an activity of the Promoting Integrated Sustainable Waste Management through Public Private Partnerships (PPP-ISWM) programme, in short. The Programme is jointly implemented by the UNDP Public Private Partnerships Programme (UNDP PPPSD) and WASTE, a Netherlands-based NGO.

Web site: wasteportal.net

Reading your morning paper? Done with nature’s call? Now explore a place which in all likelihood will pull your eyes out and have your fingers itching to reach for your nose! 

Delhi ‘boasts’ of having the first ‘toilet museum’ of the world. Yes, you read that right and Metrolife brings you a closer look at this unique collection which is situated in Dwarka. Definitely a ‘first-of-its-kind,’ the museum has a rare collection of facts, pictures and objects detailing the historic evolution of toilets from 2,500 BC to the modern day technologies from around the world.

The museum gives a chronology of developments relating to technology, toilet-related social customs, toilet etiquettes and sanitary conditions of various eras. It also includes an extensive display of privies, chamber pots, toilet furniture, bidets and water closets in use from 1145 AD to the modern times. Add to this, there is an entire wall dedicated to awareness on sanitation through caricatures, posters and funny one-liners.

These facts and models are classified into eras and explained by curator Azaz Qamar Khan who describes the stages of how sanitation changed from Indus Valley civilization to present day technology such as the electric and electronic toilets and bio-degradable toilets which are also used in space by NASA.

The most interesting ones are the European style table-top, sofa seater and book shaped toilets. The sofa seater and table top were used to avoid inconvenience of leaving one’s work to use the toilet and the book shaped toilet was constructed by the French to demean English books such as those of Shakespeare! Then there are pictures of urinals engraved and decorated with expensive gems in the Victorian era! There is more. The museum has a photograph of a white elephant from Thailand’s zoo, sitting on a commode to relieve its care takers of the trouble afterwards!

The cutest is a small toilet shaped piggy bank from Japan which gives a sound of flush when pulled. Set up within the campus of Sulabh International Social Service Organisation at Mahavir Enclave, the museum is the brainchild of Dr Bindeshwar Pathak, who has been working in the field of sanitation for over four decades.

He is known to have taken up sanitation in India. But why a toilet museum? Dr Pathak recalls the time when he was visiting London and was asked to visit Madame Tussauds. “I have been to London many times but when finally I made it to Madame Tussauds it came to me to create something that will be exclusive in India. Since I have been working in the field of sanitation, a toilet museum made sense.”

The thought approved, execution began in 1992. The first piece that Dr Pathak finalised was a toilet in the shape of the throne of King Louis XIV. “I went to the toilet of a restaurant in Holland and saw this throne toilet displayed. I pleaded with the owner to give it to me but he denied so I got it photographed and got it made locally!”

And if you thought that the museum doesn’t get its share of visitors you couldn’t be more wrong! It keeps brimming over with tourists from around the world who are amazed to see something like this. Danielle Rapp, a visitor from Germany says, “I came to know about this unique place and decided to come here with my wife and kids. This is a funny place. I haven’t seen anything like this before. I am surely going to recommend it to my friends.” We agree, it is a must watch!

During a webinar, which was organised on 2 May 2012, Joep Verhagen of the IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre presented the results of a case study, which investigates a model that is based on the productive use of faecal sludge by farmers in and around Bengaluru (Bangalore), the capital of the Indian state of Karnataka. This particular service has emerged without any technical or financial support.

For more IRC webinars go to: www.irc.nl/page/69625

The conference aims to share information about innovative waste treatment technologies such as composting toilets and bio-systems, among NGOs and the Haitian government.

Agenda:

• Overview of National Sanitation Strategy presented by DINEPA’s Sanitation Office (DA)
• Presentations of lessons learned from previous projects and ongoing sustainable sanitation projects in Haiti
• Ateliers focused on different components of sustainable sanitation
• Stakeholder feedback
• Open forum to discuss National Standards for Composting Toilets and Biogas
• Production of a public document summarizing the findings of the conference

SOIL, US-registered non profit, has been promoting ecological sanitation solutions in Haiti since 2006.

For the full announcement and more information go to: www.oursoil.org/national-sustainable-sanitation-conference

• The detailed program of Session 7 and the two SuSanA side events is now available online.

What better place for a little outhouse – complete with slanted roof to withstand the elements – than high above the treetops and even over the clouds? If you are interested in visiting, this is the Cougar Peak Lookout in Montana, which overlooks Clark Fork River. Simply breathtaking!

• Link to slideshow

Vidya Balan, who received the Best Actress National Film Award for her role in 2011 Bollywood hit ‘The Dirty Picture’, will now play a role to alter the real dirty picture in India. Union Minister of Rural Development Jairam Ramesh has named the Bollywood actress as the brand ambassador in his campaign for improving sanitation [1].

According to India’s 2011 census, nearly half of population have no toilet at home, but more people own a mobile phone [2]. There are 2.1 million toilets in India which rely on manual scavengers to empty them [1].

The Minister hopes that Balan can help turn his campaign to end open defecation into a national obsession:

“it is going to be a very serious commitment on her part – she’s had a dirty picture in reel life, but this will be a clean picture in real life”. [1]

Vidya Balan has agreed to give support to Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan – the restructured version of the Total Sanitation Campaign – for two years [3].

The government is working on increasing the allocation for toilet construction from the current 3,500 Rupees (US$ 65) to 9,900 Rupees (US$ 183) per toilet, of which 5,400 Rupees (US$ 100) would come from the new Total Sanitation Campaign and the remaining 4,500 Rupees (US$ 83) from the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS). Minister Jairam Ramesh is requesting 360 billion Rupees (US$ 6.6 billion) for rural sanitation in India’s 12th five-year plan, which starts in 2012-2013. [4,5]

The Indian government’s ambition is to achieve total rural sanitation coverage by 2017. According to data available up to September 2011, 115.3 million rural households have access to toilets, leaving 40.8 million households without sanitation facilities. A parliamentary standing committee on rural development is sceptical whether all rural areas will be open defecation free by 2017. [6]

Jairam Ramesh is counting on the support of another Bollywood celebrity Shahrukh Khan to join the campaign to end open defecation [7]. Last year the “King of Bollywood” announced he would become a sanitation advocate at the Global Forum on Sanitation and Hygiene in Mumbai [8]. Earlier cricketer Sachin Tendulkar and actor/director Aamir Khan had lent their celebrity power to promote school sanitation and handwashing. Minister Ramesh’s dream is to

[1] Rupashree Nanda, IBB-CNN, IBNLive, 05 May 2012
[2] Sanitation Updates, 16 Mar 2012
[3] PIB, 03 May 2012
[4] IANS, Economic Times, 25 Apr 2012
[5] Deccan Chronicle / India Sanitation Portal, 21 Apr 2012
[6] Elizabeth Roche, Livemint.com, 04 May 2012
[7] K. Balchand, The Hindu, 19 Apr 2012
[8] WSSCC, Sanitation Updates, 10 Oct 2011

Indian NGO Gramalaya is organising a National level Workshop on Appropriate Toilet Technology from 9-11 May 2012 in Tiruchirapalli, Tamil Nadu, with the support of Arghyam, Bangalore and UNICEF, Chennai. In this participatory workshop, field workers will be joined by engineers and sanitation experts to arrive at better toilet models for different topographical and hydro-geological conditions in India.

In 2007, Gramalaya set up a Centre for Toilet Technology and Training with funding from WaterPartners International (now Water.org), USA.

Read the workshop brochure here

• Link to download publication

This factsheet book is a compilation of 13 thematic factsheets which were produced by the eleven SuSanA working groups. What makes these factsheets special is that they are multi-authored by people from different organisations and by free-lance consultants. The factsheets were developed in a long process involving many discussions and review loops which were mostly carried out in public, e.g. at working group meetings, with the working group mailing lists or, since July 2011, also in the open SuSanA discussion forum (http://forum.susana.org/forum/categories/6-susana-working-groups).

Table of Contents:

Executive Summary

WG 1: Capacity development
Capacity development for sustainable sanitation
Spuhler, D., McCreary, C., Fogde, M., Jenssen, P.

WG 2: Finance and economics
Financial and economic analysis
Parkinson, J., Hutton, G., Pfeiffer, V., Blume, S., Feiereisen, P.

WG 3: Renewable energies and climate change
Links between sanitation, climate change and renewable energies
Ingle, R., Sundberg, C., Wendland, C., Reuter, S., Jurga, I., Olt, C.

WG 4: Sanitation systems, technology options, hygiene and health
Sanitation systems and technology options
Zurbrügg, C., Panesar, A., Rüd, S.

WG 5: Food security and productive sanitation systems
Productive sanitation and the link to food security
Gensch, R., Dagerskog, L., Winker, M., Veenhuizen, R. v., Drechsel, P.

WG 6: Cities and planning
Planning of sustainable sanitation for cities
Luethi, C., Lehn, H., Norström, A., Panesar, A., Rüd, S., Saywell, D., Verhagen, J., Ulrich, L., Ingle, R.

WG 7: Community, rural and schools (with gender and social aspects)
7a: Sustainable sanitation for schools
Abraham, B., Fogde, M., Münch, E. v., Wendland, C.
7b: Integrating a gender perspective in sustainable sanitation
Wendland, C., Dankelman, I., Ruben, C., Kunze, I., Sommer, M., Mbalo, D.

WG 8: Emergency and reconstruction situations
Sustainable sanitation for emergencies and reconstruction situations
Johannessen, A., Patinet, J., Carter, W., Lamb, J.

WG 9: Sanitation as a business and public awareness
9a: Sanitation as a business
Groeber, K., Crosweller, D., Schroeder, E., Kappauf, L., Surridge, T., Panchal-Segtnan, A., Zurbruegg, C.
9b: Public awareness raising and sanitation marketing
Gröber, K., McCreary, C., Panzerbieter, T., Rück, J., Kappauf, L.

WG 10: Operation and maintenance
Operation and maintenance of sustainable sanitation systems
Müllegger, E., Freiberger, F., McConville, J., Samwel, M., Rieck, C., Scott, P., Langergraber, G.

WG 11: Groundwater Protection
Sustainable sanitation and groundwater protection
Nick, A., Foppen, J. W., Kulabako, R., Lo, D., Samwel, M., Wagner, F., Wolf, L.

Marking the 10th anniversary of the formation of the African Ministers Council on Water (AMCOW), the 4th Africa Water Week will celebrate AMCOW’s achievements and reflect on opportunities for achieving water security and adequate sanitation in Africa. Over 1,000 participants are expected.

Under the sub-theme ‘Water and Sanitation for Development” (lead convener USAID/Further Advancing the Blue Revolution Initiative), the following sanitation-related sessions are scheduled:

Three National Geographic Emerging Explorers have teamed up for a one-of-a-kind project in Africa.  Sasha Kramer of SOIL will integrate her group’s work transforming human waste into a valuable agricultural resource and Dino Martins’ natural pest control efforts into the farming communities in northern Benin where Jennifer Burney of SELF has installed solar powered irrigation systems. This collaboration is made possible by the Blackstone Ranch Institute which offers an annual challenge grant for the most innovative new projects proposed by two or more National Geographic Emerging Explorers.

Here are some highlights from the journey to date, written by SOIL visionary and Emerging Explorer Sasha Kramer for the official SOIL blog:

April 24, 2012 — Late last night and early this morning the SOIL team arrived safely in Cotonou, the capital of Benin, after a grueling journey across the world (more grueling for some than others).  Anthony Kilbride (one of the SOIL engineers) and I had relatively simple itineraries, flying from Port au Prince to Guadeloupe to France on directly on to Benin. Bobo Magloire, our Sanitation Director, on the other hand was unable to obtain a French transit visa (a common struggle for Haitians) and had to fly from Port au Prince to; Panama; Havana; Madrid; Casablanca; Lome; and finally to Cotonou – a journey which took nearly 55 hours!  Despite the challenging journey Bobo arrived in Benin looking as fresh as the moment he left Port au Prince.  In his words he “feels that he has come home to the land of his great great grandparents.”  Indeed, Benin was the birthplace of Haiti’s liberator Toussaint Louverture, who led the slave revolt which eventually defeated Napoleon’s army and made Haiti the first free black republic in the world, leading the way for the liberation of slaves around the globe.

Down the Toilet

April 25, 2012 — Today we had one of the highlights of our professional careers, or at least it was one of my finest hours.  In an attempt to demonstrate the possibility of converting human waste into compost the SOIL team, together with our hosts ADESCA, paid a visit to the local primary school.  But this was not your usual school visit.  We were looking for proof that human wastes can be transformed into soil, and what better place to find that proof than deep in the ground in an old latrine.

Sasha and Bobo descend into the Great Unknown. Photo courtesy of Sasha Kramer.

Because the conversion of poop to soil can take at least a year, and we are only here in Benin for 3 weeks, we thought the best way to show that the process works would be to excavate an old latrine that had been closed for at least one year.  After some research we learned that the local primary school had a set of latrines that have been sealed for the past 4 years.  We went out on a limb and did something that we have never tried before, climbing down into a latrine and digging in to see what sorts of riches might await us.

Into the Great Unknown

Usually when one thinks of exploration, one imagines traveling into an unknown jungle, discovering rare animals and plants, or diving into the depths of the sea.  This was quite a different type of exploration indeed, but for the SOIL team this was breaking new ground.  When we arrived at the school a local mason had already broken the cement slab leaving a hole with a 2 foot diameter, just big enough for little people like Bobo and me to climb in.

I arrived a few minutes after Anthony and Bobo, and Bobo was nowhere to be seen.  In his enthusiasm he had already disappeared into the small hole and was 3 feet below the surface digging away.  With Anthony wielding the video camera and an audience of young children rapidly gathering around the old latrine I called out to Bobo and lowered myself into the pit to join him.  Below the surface it was quiet and cool and Bobo had already burrowed through the surface layer and indeed struck gold!  The pit, once filled with fresh human wastes, was now a chamber of rich black soil, a color and consistency that was in stark contrast to the dry red dust of northern Benin.  As Bobo furiously shoveled away, I scooped handful after handful of rich humus into a bucket and, to the amazement of the crowd above, we sent up the first bucket of beautiful soil.  We had planned to only bring back one bucket to the office, but when we saw (and smelled) the fertile soil that filled the pit, we filled bucket after bucket, sending them to the surface, and soon we had a pile of black soil near the hole.

Human Wastes Aren’t Wastes At All

After about 30 sweaty minutes of digging we decided that we had enough soil to plant an experimental garden at the ADESCA office and Bobo and I emerged from the pit to wild cheers from the children at the school.  Everyone was standing around the pile of soil in awe, some hesitantly taking handfuls and sniffing it, amazed at the complete transformation.  Before long Anthony had all of the kids chanting “compost, compost!” and we filled our rice sacks with the booty and headed back to the office to plan the garden of corn that we will plant tomorrow.

Since this was the first time the SOIL team has attempted this sort of demonstration we were well aware that the results could go either way.  If what we had found below the surface was stinky poo, that could have been the end of our ecological sanitation experience in Benin–no one would have believed that poop could be transformed into SOIL and Bobo and I would have been washing ourselves for days trying to remove the smell.  But thank goodness mother nature is so reliable when it comes to decomposition and transformation.  Instead of a disaster, we made great strides in convincing the local community that human wastes are not wastes at all, but a valuable resource that, when treated properly, has the potential to revolutionize local agriculture.  The next step is demonstrating that potential in the office garden.

Read More on the Official SOIL Blog!

• Full-text (pdf)

by Frank Rijsberman and Alix Zwane and released by the Copenhagen Consensus Center.

The world has met the Millennium Development Goal on the provision of clean drinking water five years early, but is set to miss its goal on basic sanitation by almost 1 billion people. An astonishing one-third of the world population, 2.5 billion people, lack access to basic sanitation and over one billion people defecate out in the open. 

Inadequate sanitation caused a cholera outbreak in Haiti in late 2010 that has now made half a million people sick and cost some 7000 lives; smaller cholera outbreaks are still commonplace during the rainy season in Bangladesh or the low-lying parts of many Africa cities. Diarrheal diseases are still a leading cause of death for children under five, second only to respiratory infections. The World Bank concludes that the economic impact of poor sanitation can be as high as 7% of GDP for some Asian countries and on the order of 1-2% of GDP for African countries.

Copenhagen Consensus 2012 asked Frank Rijsberman and Alix Peterson Zwane from the Gates Foundation to establish the best ways to reduce the size of this challenge.

Development agencies over-emphasize safe water projects and under-invest in sanitation, according to Rijsberman and Zwane. They look at what it would cost to improve service for both the unserved population in developing countries, those one billion or so who must defecate in the open, and what it would cost to improve the quality of service for those people in urban areas who are nominally “served” but struggle to realize the gains from sanitation because of the challenges of emptying and safely disposing of latrine or septic tank contents.

An estimated 200 million latrines and septic tanks is emptied manually, by a worker descending in the pit with a bucket and spade, and subsequently dumped or buried in the immediate environment – often reintroducing pathogens previously contained in the pit or tank.

They propose three solutions as potentially worthy of large scale investment.

The first of these is ‘Community Led Total Sanitation’, the name given to various forms of an approach that emphasizes behavior change, particularly the community’s responsibility to share in the creation of open defecation free communities, particularly in rural areas. Rijsberman and Zwane specifically propose a large-scale program, reaching 23 million with a one-off delivery cost of $3-5 per person affected.

Given the rapid adoption of community-led total sanitation programs at a scale of tens of millions of people over the last ten years, and the relatively high rate of success in achieving ‘open defecation free’ communities, they consider this to be a comparatively low-risk intervention.

Their analysis implies that about 50 percent or 600 million people in rural areas that lack access to basic sanitation could be reached with an investment of US$3 billion, providing welfare benefits that are 4-7 times higher.

The second intervention they explore is ‘Sanitation as a Business’. A critical bottleneck for the existing over two billion latrines and septic tanks in developing countries, affecting particularly the urban poor, is that there are no affordable and sustainable services to effectively and efficiently empty them and process the fecal sludge safely and economically. Typically, the sludge is just deposited on the ground, negating almost all of the health benefits. Their solution is to generate innovation in sanitation services, reducing the cost to just $10 per household per year and that consists of emptying the latrine or septic tank, transporting the fecal sludge to a treatment plant, and treating it to acceptable levels prior to reuse and/or dispersal into the environment. While speculative, they provide illustrative calculations that suggest that an investment in innovation to develop these technologies, including an initial subsidized roll out, would provide benefits to some 40 million people at a cost of $320 million and a BCR of 27-46.

Thirdly, Rijsberman and Zwane propose ‘The Reinvented Toilet’ – one of the signature ideas of the Gates Foundation: efforts to stimulate technical innovation, particularly harnessing advances in physics, chemistry, and engineering, to create a radically reinvented toilet that recycles human waste into reusable products at the household scale.

Early in 2011 the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation challenged over 20 top universities around the globe to use modern science and engineering to come up with a radically different form of processing and recycling human waste that does not depend on sewers networks and large volumes of water for transportation. The challenge was to develop a system that is: off the grid, affordable for the poorest members in society (less than .05/day), and an aspirational product – something everyone will want to use and that over time replaces the flush toilet as the new gold standard. The foundation has awarded eight Reinvent the Toilet Challenge grants and funded another 57 small grants in 2011 that all aim to innovate all or part of the non-sewered value chain. All complete reinvented toilets are currently at the laboratory / proof-of-concept to prototype stage and therefore investments in the development of this solution are high risk. The foundation expects to review the first series of prototypes and proof-of-concept results for parts and processes in August 2012.
Assuming that this investment would lead to 100 percent coverage for all latrines currently emptied manually, this $125 million investment, would pay back $40 for each invested dollar, serving 1 billion people. In addition, if successful, the Reinvented Toilet would serve many more people of the other 3.5 billion people who currently don’t have access to a flush toilet. Presuming a reinvented toilet can be successfully developed, and can become an aspirational product – the smartphone of sanitation – the issues of high cost, slow adoption and limited benefits that variously plague the current generation of sanitation technologies will be overcome.

Still from Disney short film "Cleanliness Brings Health"

In the 1940s, the Walt Disney Studios produced a series of educational films on sanitation and hygiene promotion for developing countries. The films, in the Health for the Americas series, were aimed at Latin America. They were commissioned by the now defunct Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs (CIAA), which was later renamed Office of Inter-American Affairs (OIAA).

The U.S. State Department had sent Walt Disney and a group of animators to South America in 1941 as part of its Good Neighbor policy, and guaranteed financing for the resulting movie, Saludos Amigos. Disney’s popularity was seen to bolster US communication efforts to counter the influence of Nazi Germany, which had established close ties with several Latin American governments.

Several of the films in the Health for the Americas series feature Careless Charlie and his family to portray poor hygienic behaviour as in Cleanliness Brings Health – available on Youtube and the Internet Aechive.

In the Unseen Enemy, Careless Charlie is attacked by microbes in dirty water and carried by flies and mosquitoes. One of the recommendations he gets to build a latrine instead of defecating in his corn field.

In Insects as Carriers of Disease, typhoid-carrying lice have joined the flies and mosquitoes to make Careless Charlie’s life miserable. Available in English and Spanish on the Internet Archive and in Spanish on Youtube.

The film Water – Friend or Enemy can be seen on A/V Geeks. It shows techniques for spring and well protection.

Careless Charlie is absent in the final film listed here, as Environmental Sanitation is about urban rather than rural water and sanitation. It introduces technical solutions like piped water distribution, sewerage, communal laundry facilities, stormwater drainage and garbage collection.

HRH Willem-Alexander The Prince of Orange, Rhenen, 30 April 2012 Photo: NOS

A Dutch royal record for toilet bowl throwing was set today during the Queen’s Day celebrations in Rhenen. HRH Willem-Alexander threw an orange toilet bowl further than his fellow princes to clinch the royal title.

Willem-Alexander attributed his success to his experience in the sanitation sector. The Prince of Orange is Chair of UNSGAB, the United Nations Secretary-General’s Advisory Board on Water and Sanitation.

An annual toilet bowl throwing competition started in 2000 in the village of Achterberg, part of the municipality of Rhenen. The Prince of Orange’s throw was well short of the competition record of 10.56 m set in 2007.

Watch a video of the Prince’s toilet bowl throw here and a video of the 2008 toilet bowl competition below.

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Katherine Kinsted. Institute of Wastewater Management and Water Protection.

When responding to an emergency situation, ensuring safe excreta disposal is an urgent priority in the disaster relief effort. Aid organizations typically dig trench or pit latrines, but in some challenging environments, different methods such as ecological sanitation (Ecosan) must be employed. Ecosan is sanitation methods and technologies which promote the safe reuse rather than the disposal of excreta. Currently, Ecosan is mostly implemented in disaster relief for flood-prone areas and locations where excavation is not possible. In addition to meeting the sanitation needs of the affected population, Ecosan can be implemented to allow added benefits such as nutrient recovery, reforestation, and to help begin post-disaster recovery and the transition to peaceful and sustainable development.

Several examples of disaster relief situations where Ecosan methods are employed are investigated. Statistics about these case studies are presented along with successful and challenging aspects of the implementation. Four forms of Ecosan, urine diverting dehydration toilets (UDDT), Arborloo, biodegradable bags and composting toilets are discussed in six countries (Bolivia, Haiti, Chad, Philippines, New Zealand and Bangladesh). UDDTs had the widest extent of implementation and their flexible design makes them a good option for areas where excavation is difficult or there is a high chance of groundwater pollution (such as in flood prone regions). The composting processes offer the best success with reuse of excreta material as compost. Unfortunately though, these processes were quite complicated and do not necessary provide groundwater protection. The Arborloo provided a simpler solution with resource reuse, but this design is unfortunately not appropriate in regions where either excavation is not possible or where high groundwater is present. The Peepoo solution has shown itself to be successful in the preliminary trials, but the design still has many challenges such as cost effectiveness and user-friendliness.

In addition to exploring current case studies for Ecosan solutions, a sanitation decision flow chart is developed to compare different sanitation systems in different scenarios. In order to make a successful evaluation of the different technologies, the various design variables affecting the design of an appropriate excreta removal system are discussed. Unfortunately, the Ecosan solutions already employed have been rather expensive and timeconsuming to construct and/or they do not provide adequate groundwater protection.

USAID and the U.S. Department of State are committing a total of $1 million to the World Bank’s Water and Sanitation Program. The investment will support the SWA-led National Planning for Results Initiative, which promotes national planning efforts related to sanitation and water. The economic gains from investing in sanitation and water are estimated at $170 billion per year.

“The United States Government considers sanitation and water and our related partnering activities to be a critical component of our overall international development assistance effort,” Administrator Shah said during remarks at the SWA High Level Meeting. “We look forward to maximizing the potential of this partnership, which brings together such a range of tools, experience, and approaches. Working together, we can not only reach full coverage, but we can also do it in the most effective, efficient, and collaborative way.”

Established in 2010, SWA’s biennial High Level Meeting brings together Ministers of Finance from developing countries, Ministers of Development Cooperation from donor countries, and high-level representatives from development banks and other donor institutions.

Last month, the United Nations announced that the Millennium Development Goal for a 50 percent reduction in the number of people living without access to safe drinking water had been achieved in 2010 – five years ahead of schedule. Even with that target met, more than 780 million people, particularly those in fragile states and poor communities, still live without access to safe water.

Progress in sanitation has been slower. Today, 2.5 billion people still lack access to improved sanitation and it is unlikely that the Millennium Development Goal target for sanitation will be met by 2015.

This issue of the WASHplus Weekly contains resources on small-scale providers of WASH services. It is only in recent years that partnerships with small operators have begun to receive serious attention from researchers, planners and policymakers. Several of the reports below conclude that small-scale providers can deliverdynamic and responsive services to communities. One UNDP report, however, argues that small-scale providers in Kenya are predators who charge high prices and supply poor quality water. The resources below include overviews, country studies from Benin, Cambodia, Kenya, Nigeria, Philippines and Tanzania, and videos.

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Please let WASHplus know at any time if you have resources to share for future issues of WASHplus Weekly or if you have suggestions for future topics. An archive of past Weekly issues is available on the WASHplus website. 

“The dream of universal access to sanitation and water is within our reach, but it will require a tremendous increase in political will, adequate resources and coordinated efforts to get us there,” said His Excellency John Agyekum Kufuor, former president of Ghana and newly appointed Chair of the SWA partnership who will lead the Washington meeting.

The SWA meeting, convened by Anthony Lake, Executive Director of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), comes against the backdrop of an announcement in March by UNICEF and the World Health Organization that the world had met the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) overall target for access to safe drinking water in 2010, but that 783 million people were still missing out.

The UN report also said that the target for access to improved sanitation, calling for 75 per cent of the world to be covered, will not be met by 2015. At current rates of progress, not until 2026 would 75 per cent of the global population have access, and even then would leave a quarter of the world without improved sanitation.

The SWA Partnership notes that even though the drinking water MDG target has been met, the remaining 783 million people still without access are the hardest to reach, being mostly poor people living in rural areas or urban slums. Access to improved drinking water sources masks huge inequities, with regional disparities, and with coverage within countries varying according to geography, wealth and individual status. Women, children, the disabled and other marginalized persons are particularly affected.

The SWA partnership says the picture for sanitation is particularly bleak. Of all the targets in the eight MDGs that relate to improved health, sanitation is the most off-track. At current rates of progress it would take sub-Saharan Africa, for example, another 200 years to achieve the coverage for sanitation aimed at in the MDGs.

The group says there is a growing body of economic evidence that poor sanitation has a significant negative impact on the financial coffers of many developing countries. A 2011 World Bank study, for example, shows that India alone loses US$ 53.8 billion annually due to poor sanitation and hygiene. The economic cost from poor sanitation can be up to seven per cent of GDP in some countries, including costs related to premature deaths as well as losses in industry, tourism and health-related productivity.

The Partnership emphasizes that the efforts of the governments, donors and agencies must address both water and sanitation with equal vigour, and should target funds for sanitation and water so that the poorest countries receive greater support, and their institutional and technical capacities are strengthened.

The ministers meeting in Washington and the SWA partners are hoping that the 2012 meeting will build upon the success of the first High Level Meeting in 2010, which was a catalyst for increasing resources and efforts in water and sanitation at the national and international levels. Since then, nine countries have confirmed that they are meeting their commitments of increased budget allocations, and seven donors have met or exceeded the targets they set for funding. An increasing number of innovative solutions are being developed to overcome institutional barriers and provide aid to the poorest countries.

The April 20 SWA meeting will get commitments from individual governments, and the partnership as a whole, to target of funds for water and sanitation to where they are most needed, and ensure that national plans are developed to reach the un-served populations in each country.

More Information and Resources
The High Level Meeting “Virtual Briefing Packs”, which include Country Statements and Sanitation and Water Profiles, are available at www.sanitationandwaterforall.org/hlm2012virtualbriefingpack.html.

Posted by WSSCC on behalf of the Sanitation and Water for All Secretariat.

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Nadja Contzen, Hans-Joachim Mosler. Eawag.

In response to the devastating Earthquake of January 12th 2010 and the cholera outbreak of October of that same year Oxfam Great Britain, Oxfam Quebec and Intermón Oxfam conducted public health promotion and cholera response in Haiti. Different promotion activities were applied which aimed at changing hygiene behavior by changing perceptions and beliefs about healthy behaviors amongst people affected by crisis.

In February 2011 four Oxfam affiliates in Haiti in partnership with a team of behavior change researchers from Eawag launched the present research project to do an in-depth evaluation of the promotional activities that had been conducted with the goal of further improving the WASH situation for people in Haiti and worldwide by understanding how to make hygiene promotion more effective. The main focus of the research project was around the question which specific promotion activities were strongly associated with perceptions and beliefs about handwashing with soap and were thus capable of changing handwashing behavior at key times.

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When a massive earthquake struck Haiti in January 2010, followed by a cholera epidemic that broke out in October of that year, Oxfam rushed assistance—clean water, sanitation, and hygiene materials and information—to hard-hit areas to protect public health.

Hygiene promotion is arguably the most important intervention in a cholera epidemic: the route of cholera transmission is fecal-oral, and contaminated hands are often the principal vector. So Oxfam engages in a wide range of hygiene-promotion activities to encourage washing hands—specifically, washing hands with soap at key moments, such as before eating and after defecation.

But which of our interventions have been the most effective, and why? Is it more important to put resources into hygiene-themed theater productions or radio call-in shows? There is little hard evidence to suggest that—in Haiti or in emergencies anywhere—one hygiene-promotion activity works better than another. But lives, not to mention valuable resources, may depend on the answer, so in the spring of 2011, Oxfam engaged Eawag, the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology, to study the effectiveness of our hygiene-promotion activities in Haiti.

INVITATION
The United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS) and WSSCC invites qualified firms/organisations to submit proposals in the role of Executing Agency (EA) and Country Programme Monitor, respectively, for the GSF grant programme in Tanzania. The application deadline for proposals to be the Country Programme Monitor is 30 April 2012. The application deadline for proposals to be the Executing Agency is 21 May 2012. For more information, see the attached or visit: http://www.wsscc.org/global-sanitation-fund/opportunities

For the latest about Global Sanitation Fund implementation, download the recent progress report: GSF Progress Report,  Le rapport d’avancement du GSF.

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Where it has been introduced, CLTS has been integrated with other development initiatives. Besides ending open defecation, the focus is on a more comprehensive package which includes wastewater management, solid waste disposal, overall hygiene and more. The approach has also been modified in some countries to ‘School-led Total Sanitation (SLTS)’, whereby schools are the prime drivers in achieving ODF status. This has widened the spread of CLTS and its impact, both among adults and children. Plan, Water Aid and UNICEF have become important disseminators and champions of CLTS. Today, it is present in many countries in Asia, Africa, Latin America, the Middle East and Africa. In sub-Saharan Africa, it has taken root in 28 countries and gained the support of decision makers and professionals, who have recognised it as a successful, cost-effective approach and have issued a declaration to urge governments to take more decisive steps to ensure ODF environments among local communities.

This new film shows how composting toilets are helping to address the serious water issues facing Tuvalu.

The tiny Pacific island nation of just 10,500 inhabitants, recently experienced a devastating drought. Existing septic tank systems are polluting the groundwater and destroying the reefs in lagoons, forcing fishermen to spend more on fuel to travel further away to catch fish.

The Global Environment Facility supported Pacific Integrated Water Resources Management project (GEF Pacific IWRM) is working to address these problems by installing composting toilets on the main island of Funafuti. Composting toilets use almost no water and produce compost that so families can plant their own vegetables, making them less dependent on expensive food imports.

Getting people to adopt composting toilets was difficult, admits Pisi Seleganiu, project manager for Tuvalu’s GEF Pacific IWRM demonstration project, but that once people understood the benefits, demand for the toilets increased.

“Of course when you talk about new toilet technology, people are concerned about whether or not they smell, if the compost is safe and if they are easy to maintain,” Mr Seleganiu explained. “But the GEF Pacific IWRM demonstration project held workshops, ran awareness campaigns, and have so far constructed 29 demonstration toilets out of a planned 40. People now want these toilets and we have co-financing to construct another 60, so 100 all up.”

The project in Tuvalu has generated a lot of interest around the Pacific. Tonga has built demonstration toilets, Nauru has installed them in schools and the Marshall Islands are planning construction soon, the project web site says.

The GEF Pacific IWRM project is managing 13 national demonstration projects in 12 Pacific countries. It is being executed by the Secretariat of the Pacific Community’s Applied Geoscience and Technology Division (SOPAC), in partnership with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

Related web site: GEF Pacific IWRM Project

For more on sanitation in the Pacific see: Sharing experiences : sustainable sanitation in Southeast Asia and the Pacific, Sanitation Updates, 18 Apr 2008

Source: GEF Pacific IWRM Project, 05 Mar 2012

The informal waste sector provides a much needed service in the developing world; the work of this sector reduces waste in communities, increases the reclamation and reuse of materials, and helps to lower greenhouse gas emissions. This issue of the WASHplus Weekly contains recent reviews on the economics of the informal sector and the diseases and injuries that waste pickers endure. Also included are case studies from Bangladesh, Brazil, Pakistan, the Philippines, and recent videos.

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Please let WASHplus know at any time if you have resources to share for future issues of WASHplus Weekly or if you have suggestions for future topics. An archive of past Weekly issues is available on the WASHplus website. 

Global Sanitation Fund Progress Report, February 2012

The Global Sanitation Fund is being implemented actively in Cambodia, India,Madagascar, Malawi, Nepal, Senegal and Uganda. In those countries, 68 sub-grantees have deployed a creative range of sanitation and hygiene awareness-raising and promotion activities nationally and in a number of regions. Because of their work, some 102,970 people have access to and are using improved toilets, among other leading indicators of progress. This bi-annual progress report, with a companion video, presents the ongoing results of GSF programme implementation. Download or view by clicking below:

• GSF Progress Report
• Fonds mondial Pour l’assainissement – GSF rapport d’avancement
• GSF Progress Report Video: Bringing Change (7 minutes)

WSSCC DVD Toolkit 101 for Leadership, Action and Change on Sanitation and Hygiene

The popular training courses at the Global Forum in Mumbai have been refashioned as individual learning modules on the “WSSCC Toolkit 101” DVD. The DVD includes six interactive modules: Communication for Behavioural Impact; Community Led Total Sanitation; Inclusive Design;

Monitoring for Equity Using DevInfo; Outcome Mapping; and Sanitation Marketing. In addition, the DVD contains reference materials and other resources from the Forum, including session presentations and videos and a special section on menstrual hygiene management.

To request a copy of the DVD, send a mail to wsscc@wsscc.org.

An online version of the six training modules is also being developed and will be published shortly.

Insights on Leadership, Action and Change: Final Report from the WSSCC Global Forum on Sanitation and Hygiene

The first-ever WSSCC Global Forum on Sanitation and Hygiene took place in Mumbai, India. From 9-14 October 2011, WSSCC brought together some 500 sanitation and hygiene professionals and WSSCC members, as well as communicators, educators, health professionals, architects, academics, social entrepreneurs, philanthropists, leaders and professionals from other disciplines.Insights on Leadership, Action and Change has been developed as a comprehensive work of reference from the event and is centred upon the key themes of the Forum: Leadership, Equity and Inclusion, Behaviour Change, Accelerating Change and Partnerships. It also builds upon the aide memoir entitled Highlights of the Forum report, published immediately in October 2011. Download or view:

• Insights on Leadership, Action and Change: Final Report of the WSSCC Global Forum on Sanitation and Hygiene
• Summary video of the WSSCC Global Forum on Sanitation and Hygiene (7 minutes)
• Highlights of the Forum: First Report

Based in its Secretariat in Geneva, Switzerland, WSSCC seeks a visionary, highly motivated, and respected individual to lead its organization.

This is a unique opportunity to head a global organization known for its voice and integrity. Since 1990, WSSCC has worked to achieve its core mission of achieving water, sanitation and hygiene for all and contributes significantly to global collective leadership on sanitation and hygiene.

WSSCC is looking for a candidate with at least five years’ experience as a Chief Executive or equivalent and substantial professional experience in the field of international development.

The application deadline for this position is 6 May 2012.The job description can be accessed on the WSSCC website via the following link: http://www.wsscc.org/about-us/jobs

Kindly note, WSSCC is hosted by the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS). The application process  therefore takes place via the UNOPS website. Encouragement of applications should not be interpreted as an endorsement of candidacy or any form of preferential treatment.

For additional  information on the role and details on how to apply please click here.