Not Flush with Cash
Simple, affordable sanitation innovation in Durban
I met with sanitation experts in Durban who have developed a safer and inexpensive alternative to the pit toilets used by many poorer families around the world.
In 2009, during a foundation trip to South Africa, I met with Neal Macleod, head of Durban Water and Sanitation. Neal is a health expert working to improve sanitation so people no longer have to use pit toilets such as the one in the photo.
The typical developing world toilet is just a pit. You dig a hole in the ground, you put up a shack around it, and in some cases you put some kind of seat in there. There may or may not be water or toilet paper. It’s pretty unattractive, particularly the smell.
Neal showed me an improved toilet model called a Ventilated Improved Pit latrine or V.I.P. The Ventilated Improved Pit latrine is set up so that air flows down through the toilet, down into the pit and up through a pipe which dramatically reduces the smell problem. And by putting the right mesh wiring on the top of the pipe, flies can’t get in.
One challenge is that you’ve got to empty the pit. In preparation for emptying a pit latrine, large plastic containers are lined up behind the toilet.
The workers have to wear gloves and protective masks to empty the latrines.
Workers pump out waste from a pit latrine. They would remove the liquid waste by using a hand pump.
Workers empty the waste from a pit latrine into large plastic containers. Each pit would yield 25-60 of these huge buckets full of waste.
