The Stanford Social Innovation Review Magazine
FLUSHING TABOO: THIS ECO-TOILET CAN END OPEN DEFECATION IN THE WORLD
We don’t feel shame anymore to use our toilets,” says Bhawarji Sanjay Laljeet, a 37-year-old farmer from Dholighati, a village located in Rajasthan, India. “We have accepted sanitation as part of our lives.”
These sentiments might not seem surprising, but in India, where open defecation is common, they are nothing short of revolutionary.
According to a 2018 report by the Research Institute for Compassionate Economics (RICE), there has been a 60 percent increase in toilet ownership in India between 2014 and 2018. Yet the percentage of people who defecate in the open—70 percent—has remained unchanged. Indians don’t want to clean their own latrine pits, the report revealed, because it is a task that Hindus associate with Dalits, the community on the lowest rung of their religion’s caste system. However, a urine-diverting dry toilet (UDDT)—a flushless toilet popularly known as ecological sanitation, or EcoSan—offers a solution.
Not only does EcoSan circumvent the social stigma of cleaning toilets, but its zero-waste technology has several advantages. In India’s nutrient-starved soil, diverting urine to fertilize fields and subsequently avoiding the use of chemical fertilizers can save farmers INR 45,175 ($627 USD approx) per hectare, according to a report by journalism nonprofit IndiaSpend. And with India facing its worst drought in history, EcoSan advocates believe that its water-conserving benefits could be another of its most valuable features. Moreover, with 93 percent of sewage in India finding its way to ponds, lakes, and rivers without treatment, EcoSan could prevent a range of water-borne diseases, including diarrhea, which kills 350,000 Indian children annually.
And with India facing its worst drought in history, EcoSan’s water-conserving benefits could be another of its most valuable features. Moreover, with 93 percent of sewage in India finding its way to ponds, lakes, and rivers without treatment, EcoSan could prevent a range of water-borne diseases, including diarrhea, which kills 350,000 Indian children annually.
Meeting a public need
In 1995, British engineer Paul Calvert invented the EcoSan toilet while living in Pulluvila, a village in the southern Indian state of Kerala. As a technical manager at Intermediate Technology Development Group, Calvert was responsible for managing the sewage of conventional leach pit toilets—a hole in the ground that collects human waste. However, the leach pit toilet failed in Pulluvila because in the village’s high-water-table region that type of toilet contaminated the groundwater.
For years, Calvert managed the problem with a lagooning system for treating the sewage from the latrine and preventing it from entering the groundwater. However, the system did not work well because, Calvert notes, “nobody wants to clean other people’s excreta.” Calvert’s idea for a new waste system was spurred by local women.
Men were not shamed for open defecation, but women faced public shaming and sexual harassment—even as they walked to a spot to relieve themselves. “They were deprived of the basic decency and dignity to be able to defecate in privacy,” says Calvert.
“I had to do something.”
Inventing ecosan
After a series of trial and error sketches that were drawn in consultation with the female villagers, Calvert built the first EcoSan toilet. The original design consisted of two units, each with a defecation chamber and a urine bowl in front of it. A deep washing pan was placed in the center of the two toilet units.
Today, the primary model consists of two defecation chambers, a urine bowl with a drain, and a basin or pan for anal cleaning using minimum water. After using the toilet, the user must add ash to the defecation chamber, so that moisture is absorbed from the fecal matter.
This practice eliminates odor. When one chamber becomes full, it is closed off for six months, during which time the excrement composts into farm manure. Meanwhile, the other defecation chamber is opened for use, and the process is repeated once the second chamber becomes full. Urine is diverted to a can placed under the drain, which, when filled, can be used as an ecofertilizer by mixing it with water or cow dung.
In cases where there are plants or trees near the toilet, the urine and wastewater need not be separated and can be diverted through a single pipe to the root zone.
Materials used for the EcoSan in rural and semirural areas—including bamboo, brick, sandstone, and rock—are mostly natural, depending on local availability. Over the years, Calvert, now director of Eco-Solutions, an ecological engineering organization, has experimented with the design to suit the geography, usability, and budget of the toilet owners.
After the success of the first toilet, six more toilets were built in Pulluvila. Calvert also created a Hygiene Awareness Team (HAT) that promoted general sanitation education and outlined EcoSan’s benefits. HAT distributed leaflets that explained both the mechanics of the compost toilet and its need. They also conducted home visits with EcoSan owners to gather feedback.
Calvert employed this feedback model in rural Thiruvananthapuram, the capital city of Kerala, which led to the installation of 250 EcoSan toilets. The early model cost INR 5,000 ($116), with the local women of Pulluvila contributing INR 1,000 ($23).
Ecosan travels to India
Salt Lake City, Utah-based Thrasher Research Fund, which gives out medical research grants to improve the lives of children, funded the remainder. Thrasher’s early investment led to the installation of 110 EcoSan toilets across fishing villages of Kerala in 1995. “With poor sanitation and hygiene, children in the fishing villages where Calvert worked were suffering from high rates of polio, cholera, dysentery, and diarrhea,” says Justin Brown, president of Thrasher Research Fund.
“Compost toilets promised to prevent children from constant exposure to low-grade chronic infections.” In 2002, Calvert toured 11 Indian cities across 10 states, bringing EcoSan to the nation’s attention. Cofunded by United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef), this tour was attended by more than 400 senior Indian government officials and self-help groups, and ultimately led to a national discussion on the concept of ecological sanitation.
The tour caused a ripple effect in India’s sanitation-related organizations, encouraging them to build EcoSan toilets and provide technical support on how to use them. Soon after, Marachi Subburaman, director at the Society for Community Organisation and People’s Education (SCOPE), an NGO based in Tiruchirappalli, in the state of Tamil Nadu, modified the design by placing the defecation chamber, urine bowl, and washing basin (far shallower than Calvert’s design) in line alignment, with one unit placed behind the other.
SCOPE built the first EcoSan toilet outside Kerala, and today Subburaman’s design is widely used throughout India—bringing the number of EcoSan toilets used to approximately 175,000. Due to inflation, EcoSan now costs INR 20,000 to 30,000 ($280 to $422). In some cases, the total cost depends on geographical factors, specifically to floodwater level. NGOs like SCOPE cover part or all of the expense through donor funds.
Some of the costs are also alleviated by the government’s sanitation program, Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM), which offers the same amount, INR 10,000 to 12,000 ($140 to $168), that it contributes to its flagship leach pit toilets.
Overcoming public obstacles
Cultural norms also present a challenge to EcoSan. The toilet demands a significant shift in sanitation practices. “People were scared of the toilet’s technology. They were so sure that when they opened the [defecation chambers] they were going to be full of shit,” Calvert explains. “You can’t blame them, though, for being disgusted by it. They’ve never used a toilet before.”
To build confidence in this new technology and promote the toilet’s long-term usage, EcoSan advocates find that “follow-ups,” especially during the first year of toilet construction, are crucial. This form of contact includes repeatedly encouraging beneficiaries to use the toilet, giving valuable feedback on any misunderstandings about the technology, being present and supportive when the defecation pan is opened for compost, and even helping with the cleaning of the toilet at times when the water mixes with the feces or urine.
“All my problems were solved with phydeman sauchalaya [beneficial toilet, the local name for EcoSan],” says Geeta Devi, a 30-year-old rural farmer from the state of Bihar. “Before EcoSan, [the village residents] had to wade through floodwaters and spend days without food on highland, just so we could relieve ourselves.”
Devi holds a minority opinion in her village, where only 8 of 90 families agreed to use EcoSan toilets. The rest have chosen SBM’s free leach pit toilets—despite the fact that Devi’s village is in Paschim Champaran, a district prone to frequent flash floods, which cause waterlogging in pit toilets and further contaminate groundwater.
“The villagers know that pit toilets aren’t good for us,” Devi says. “But many can’t afford the cost of phydeman sauchalayas, or they’d just rather have the free toilets.” EcoSan advocates find it difficult to compete with SBM’s free toilets—six million of which were built in the past year.
EcoSan needs a comeback
In addition, unlike leach pit toilets, EcoSan technology needs at least a year before the success of the composting process can be determined. Consequently, donors have reduced their support for EcoSan, arguing instead that toilet construction is the government’s responsibility. For these reasons, many EcoSan-supporting NGOs have struggled to construct EcoSan toilets in the past two years.
In 2019, SCOPE constructed 100 EcoSan toilets in four villages across the Perambalur district of Tamil Nadu. “Due to the dry and rocky region there, the state government wasn’t able to dig the ground to construct their usual leach pit toilets,” Subburaman says. “That is when they contacted us.” EcoSan fills a void that the government’s leach pit toilet cannot meet.
“With the many problems awaiting sanitation in India, it is easy to promote EcoSan,” says Eklavya Prasad, the founder of Biharbased NGO Megh Pyne Abhiyan, which has built EcoSan toilets for a decade. “Will the people be able to manage their excreta from SBM toilets? What are they going to do with it? Will it harm groundwater? This is where EcoSan and other alternative sanitation technologies will play a big role.”
This article was first published here.
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