Our company is a well established group of humanitarian engineers. We develop technology and provide training for regionally specific sustainable development. Though our primary focus is cookstoves, we are now moving into providing sanitation solutions for the developing world.

While on a humanitarian relief mission in Haiti in 2010, out of necessity and need WorldStove developed and introduced its first separating, odor free, low cost community toilets that are still being successfully used today. Because the waste can be processed in the same day that it is excreted, it can be rendered safe and free of many of the pathogens that plague developing countries’ water supplies. We built the first three toilets because in the camps we were working in there were no sanitation options. To our surprise we found them being used far more often than other options in other camps. When we asked why, we were told that because of the specific design that incorporated the use of biochar there was no odor, making the latrine experience less offensive. Because of the lack of odor, it allowed for people to maintain their dignity in a crisis situation providing them privacy and sanitation. What we had originally designed to be a temporary stopgap application has proven to be a long-term sustainable solution. This has driven us to elaborate on our original designs to create evermore durable and permanent solutions. Lack of odor and ease of operation have clearly been the driving forces behind the acceptance of our early prototypes, and therefore are the driving design parameters of our next generation versions. Realizing the greatest need for sustainable sanitation, because of high population densities and high concentrations of infectious disease, we have focused our greatest efforts in developing sustainable sanitation options specifically for hospitals and relief clinics.

Problem

According to Dr. Paul Farmer, Haiti is currently facing the world’s largest cholera epidemic due to a profound lack of sanitation that can be directly linked to human waste and improper treatment or disposal of excrement. (Meeting Cholera’s challenge to Haiti and the world: A joint statement on cholera prevention and care (2011) PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases, 5 (5), art. No e1145) Haiti also suffers from extensive deforestation, which has lead to a litany of environmental concerns. In the northern part of the country the loss of topsoil has been so extensive that the region has been certified as desertified. The new iteration of our biochar toilet reduces the time needed to eliminate waterborne illnesses from poor sanitation while the processed waste can aid in soil restoration.

Solution

By utilizing biochar toilets we can already compost fecal matter at twice the rate of tradition fecal decomposition processes. (Proceedings 2004, Organic Waste Treatments: Safety Implications. Vinneras, B., Comparison of Composing and Urea Treatment for Sanitising of Faecal Matter) In our laboratories we have developed, tested and verified new prototypes that employ a system for rapid processing. This new method can render fecal matter free of pathogens on a daily by-need basis through a practice that eliminates the need for any chemical treatments or additives. By doing this on a daily basis we are reducing the risk of waterborne illnesses from pathogenic microorganisms that arise from fecal matter. An added advantage of this process is the reduced volumes that need to be handled. By utilizing our new biochar toilets, we can reduce the number of waterborne illnesses that currently kill approximately 1.5 million children per year globally. (WHO.org Fact sheet N 330, August 2009). Each toilet provides sanitation options to fifty to one hundred people a day, meaning that over the course of five years this component of our work will be bettering the lives of over 36,500 to 182,500 people

Example

Our specific objective in requesting this grant is to build, deliver and install one of our latest generation institutional scale biochar toilets at a partner health institution. Over the past decade our primary activities have focused on cleancook stoves. We have found in many cases that by reducing the cost of cooking many people have had more income available for the purchase of additional food. In addition to our stove programs, biochar produced by the stoves is being used to increase crop yields for subsistence farmers. This increase access to food has created a greater need for access to sustainable sanitation options. In this specific example, by locating our next generation of biochar based toilets designed specifically for use in clinics or institutions, we provide sanitation to higher population densities found in institutional settings. We provide this in a way that is appropriate for both rural and urban settings and perhaps most importantly providing sanitation to patients who pose the greatest risk due to increased pathogen levels in their excrement. The greatest advantage of this next generation institutional biochar toilet is the ease of operation and the fact that all surfaces can be sterilized on a daily basis. This increases the assurance that it will be appropriately operated. The fact that it can provide an odor free experience will hopefully increase the rate of acceptance and use. This unit will render safe-for-handling its contents on a daily basis eliminates the need for large and potentially hazardous storage chambers.

Marketplace

Currently, there is a movement towards building and implementing composting toilets and pit latrines in the developing world. Though these methods provide an improvement upon existing sanitary conditions by reducing the number of people who defecate in the open air, they still possess the profound risk of contaminating local water supplies because of the length of time needed for human fecal matter to decompose to the point of being safe to handle. Pit latrines also possess a risk due to collapse during rainy seasons, with many pit latrines being rebuilt every one to two years. There is no easy way of disposing the fecal matter from these latrines once they fill up, as communities that use them often lack resources to adequately dispose of the fecal matter. Our biochar toilets eliminate these issues. Though our first goal is to establish the next generation of these toilets in Haiti, we are planning on refining this technology (through user feedback) and deploying them in up to ten of the other countries that we currently work in, or where our other partnering organizations reside.