Africa wide WASH technology review published

The WASHTech project has published a literature review [1] focusing on 14 technologies used in Africa in the water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) sector.

Descriptions for each technology include a selection of interesting case studies, and an explanation as to whether the technology meets technical, financial, social and institutional success criteria.
Only two technologies met all four success criteria: hand dug wells and the India Mark II pump, and the latter only with the caveat that there was a functional maintenance system.

The least successful technology was the Playpump. Pending further research, jerry cans and the gulper were only found to meet one success criteria (technical success). Except for bio-additives to pit latrines and Playpumps, all other technologies were technically successful. The other success criteria were met by roughly half of the technologies.

Core issues that WASHTech plans to take up further include the appeal of inappropriate technologies like Playpumps and Lifestraws to naive donors, and ways to get government approval for low-cost, locally managed technologies like rope pumps, biosand filters, constructed rainwater harvesting jars, water jetting and tippy taps.

[1] Parker, A. et al., 2011. Africa wide water, sanitation and hygiene technology review. (WASHTech Deliverable 2.1). The Hague: WASHTech c/o IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre and Cranfield: Cranfield University. 93 p. : 1 box, 9 fig., 1 tab. Includes references.
Available at: http://wp.me/a1szDW-1o
The aim of the WASHTech project (2011-2013) is to introduce a robust Technology Assessment Framework (TAF), with local partners in Burkina Faso, Ghana and Uganda, that will assess the potential of new innovative WASH technologies. WASHTech is co-funded under the 7th Framework Programme of the European Commission’s Africa research programme. To learn more go to washtechafrica.wordpress.com

Gates Foundation awards grants for 26 sanitation technology projects

A reusable self-decontaminating sanitary napkin, a children’s latrine training mat and a latrine using urine to flush instead of water are among 26 sanitation technology projects that have been awarded Gates Foundation grants. The topics of the wining projects range from hygiene, to household  latrines, ecological sanitation, and wastewater/sludge treatment and reuse for fertiliser and energy.

On 28 April 2011, the Gates Foundation announced that 88 new global health projects received grants, each worth US$ 100,000, in the 6th round of the Grand Challenges Explorations initiative. Out of these 88 projects, there were 26 winners in the category “Create the Next Generation of Sanitation Technologies”. See the full list of 26 sanitation awards. Projects with demonstrated success in their initial phase of research have the opportunity to receive Phase II funding of up to US$ 1 million.

There is another opportunity to submit proposals for sanitation technology grants in round 7 of the Grand Challenges Explorations (deadline 19 May 2011).

India, New Delhi: using Facebook and SMS to keep the city clean

With this photo on Facebook local resident Akshay Arora asks the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) to "kindly send some one and get it clean this Toilet/Urinal". One day later on 7 April 2011, MCD replied: "Your complaint reference no. is 02/0704/SP"

The Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) launched its Facebook page in January 2011 and an integrated SMS service in March 2011 to enable public monitoring of garbage collection sites and public urinals/toilets in areas under its jurisdiction.The first experiences were positive as illustrated by the example of 22-year-old Piyush Goyal posted his complaint of garbage spilling over from the dump in his area.

On January 8, he clicked pictures of the seven dirty ones in South Delhi’s R K Puram area and posted them on Facebook. And the next day, he says, he saw the pictures of clean dhalaos uploaded by the MCD.

“There is lot of transparency through this way. The man who actually cleans it asked me why I uploaded the pictures. So the information is going from top to the bottom,” says Goyal.

MCD additional commissioner (engineering) Anshu Prakash added:

“This system is increasing transparency, fixing accountability and putting everything under public scrutiny. And none of us like to be ashamed in public. So people have started working at the bottom”.

Akvopedia Sanitation portal – now in Spanish

Through the invaluable support of our intern Niharika Joshi, our Sanitation Platform is now also available in Spanish. After we included the French version last year, this is another step on the road to making Akvopedia a true multi-language platform. We hope it will be useful to Spanish-speaking people around the world.

The new Spanish portal contains 54 detailed articles on a wide range of sanitation technologies. The material was adapted from the extremely useful Compendium of Sanitation Systems and Technologies (2008, Spanish version here), written by Elisabeth Tilley and colleagues of Sandec, the Department of Water and Sanitation in Developing Countries at eawag, the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology, Dübendorf, Switzerland. The authors eventually have plans to make that publication available in Swahili. I’ll look forward to that.

The Spanish version of the Sandec Compendium of Sanitation Systems, produced by Sandec.

Mark Westra is editor of Akvopedia, and is based in The Hague.

Guatemala: construction guides for rural WASH facilities

Five Cabin Latrine, Aqua Para La Salud (Guatemala). Photo: Global Water

NGO Global Water provides instructions for building rural water, sanitation, and hygiene-related facilities that were developed by its partner in Guatemala, Agua Para La Salud (Water for Health). The facilities include:

• Ferro-Cement Water Storage Tank
• Hand Washing Stations (Lavamanos)
• Complete Spring Catchment System
• Five Cabin Latrine
• Gray Water Seepage Pits

View the designs at www.globalwater.org/how-to-build.html

India, Uttar Pradesh: floodproof handpumps and toilets

Floodproof handpump in Bahraich. Photo: District Administration, District Bahraich, Uttar Pradesh, India

In Bahraich district of northern Uttar Pradesh, India, handpumps fitted on a raised platform were the only source of drinking water to the 400,000-odd people during floods. The idea for the raised handpumps was promoted by District Magistrate Rigzin Samphel and now serves as a model for other flood prone districts of the state. Samphel also helped to build flood-proof toilets for women in Bahraich.

Every year during the monsoons, when the Ghaghra river brims over, [and] desperate villagers end up drinking turbid floodwater. “The floods inundate all the wells, tube wells and hand pumps. So there’s no drinking water,” says Dharamraj, a 40-year-old farmer in [Sohras] village.

The result: widespread illnesses and even some deaths.

This year has been better.

Exactly 200 flood-prone villages in Bahraich district were fitted with four hand pumps each, the crude water fetching devices mounted on raised platforms rather than at ground level so they wouldn’t be submerged during floods. When the floods first came this year in mid-July, these hand pumps —the only source of drinking water to the 400,000-odd people in these villages — delivered clear and potable water.

Raised handpumps

District Magistrate Rigzin Samphel said he got the idea for the raised handpumps at a meeting with villagers when they asked him “If the flood water goes high why can’t our existing hand pumps too go high’?”

Following a survey, Samphel decided to raise four existing hand pumps in each of 200 flood-prone villages.

Then came the design.

Jal Nigam, a government body to oversee water supply in the state, proposed a 1m-high rectangular platform. The idea was debated in an open forum of block development officers (BDOs) from flood-affected areas, engineers from the state’s flood division and Jal Nigam officials.

At the end of the meeting, they decided on flat top platforms with sloping bases for the hand pumps. The slopes would diminish the force of the floodwater and the 2.9m-high platforms would offer a safe spot for people to stand on and draw water.

There was a bigger problem now. The refitting would need Rs 14,000 [US$ 315] per hand pump, or Rs 1.12 crore [US$ 252,000] for 800 of them. After pondering over several options, Samphel and the team decided to finance the project with funds from the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, or MGNREGA – a flagship scheme for providing 100 days of employment to one member in every poor rural household.

To prevent leakages [corruption], Samphel decided against transferring the budget to Jal Nigam, saving on the department’s charges, and instead handed over the funds to the BDOs.

“This was because the project had to (be) accomplished swiftly. So instead of giving funds to 155 village pradhans (village heads), we gave the money to four BDOs. This way I could have better control over the project,” he says.

Uttar Pradesh’s relief commissioner has now asked other flood-affected districts in the state to adopt the model.

Raised toilets

And under the government-funded Sampoorna Swachata Abhiyan (SSA) sanitation scheme, Samphel also helped to build flood-proof toilets for women in Bahraich. Since the scheme had no provision to fund such a project, Samphel used SSA’s 15% publicity budget instead. Samphel gave instructions to paint ‘safe sanitation’ messages on the toilet walls.

The Economist magazine, in 2008, rated Samphel one of the most hard-working bureaucrats in the world. The same year, he won an award from the rural development ministry for his implementation of MGNREGA.

Samphel is single. The demands of his work, he says, don’t leave him much scope to get married.

For more information read the case study “WAT-SAN: Bahraich Model“

In 2005 raised handpumps were also introduced in flood-prone areas in Assam by the Rural Volunteers Centre (RVC) at a cost of INR 10,000 (US$ 225) per handpump, see the case study “Flood resilient WatSan structures : community hand-pumps on raised platforms”.

Source: Pankaj Jaiswal, Hindustan Times, 23 Sep 2010

Akvopedia sanitation portal – now in French

The Akvo Sanitation Portal is now also available in French. This presents Akvo’s first step on the road to a true multi-language platform, and hopefully this new effort will be useful to french-speaking people around the world.

The new French portal contains 54 detailed articles on a wide range of sanitation technologies. The material was adapted from the extremely useful Compendium of Sanitation Systems and Technologies (2008, French version here), written by Elisabeth Tilley and colleagues of Sandec, the Department of Water and Sanitation in Developing Countries at eawag, the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology, Dübendorf, Switzerland. At a later date, the publication will also be made available in Spanish.

The French version of the Sandec Compendium of Sanitation Systems

Elephant pumps and Elephant toilets

Zimbabwe – In 1999, when Ian Thorpe was teaching English in rural Zimbabwe, two pupils at his primary school died of dysentery after drinking water from a local well into which a snake had fallen and decomposed. The shocking incident drove Thorpe – with two former teacher colleagues, Tendai Mawunga and Amos Chiungo – to develop an inexpensive (US$400) contamination-proof pump.

Thorpe’s team adapted an ancient Chinese technology that used bamboo for pipes and sisal rope and discs of leather to bring buckets of water from hand-dug wells. The “Elephant Pump” has a concrete casing protecting water from contamination. It is simple enough for a five-year-old to use.

Winning a Development Marketplace grant of US$120,000 in 2006 allowed Thorp’s PumpAid – a U.K.-based international charity – to expand its nascent program beyond a few schools and villages and install 1,000 pumps that benefited 250,000 Zimbabweans.

Development Marketplace funds were also used to create the Elephant Toilet, an innovative, low-cost, low-maintenance approach to sanitation.

Below are links to “Elephant Pump” and “Elephant Toilet” videos:

• Pump Aid – The Elephant Pump
• Pump Aid – Elephant Pump Animation
• Pump Aid – How to Build an Elephant Pump
• Pump Aid’s Elephant Toilet featured on CNN
• Pump Aid and the Elephant Toilet

Source: Sanitation Updates, 11 Jan 2010 (includes a comment with an update on PumpAid’s activities)

POOSH: bucket mounted ecosan toilet

Students from the Korean Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) have designed a bucket-mounted ecosan toilet for developing countries.

The main features of the design are:

• a toilet seat with a rubber resting surface that fits on a wide variety of buckets, including the common five-gallon bucket standard
• a biodegradable bag,  which collects the waste and includes some chemicals that speed up the decomposition of the human waste (modeled on the Peepoo Bag) for use as fertilizer
• automatic sealing when the bag is full and the seat is removed.

The students presented the POOSH during the RedDot design awards ceremony in November 2009 Singapore.

Source: Yanko Design, 08 Jan 2010 ; Mark Whiting’s posterous, 30 Nov 2009

Big John: US company produces toilet seats for the hefty-sized

The fact that two-thirds of Americans are overweight inspired two Californian entrepreneurs to design a larger, stronger, and more durable toilet seat: “Big John”.

As we say, ‘Your butt's not too big, your seat's too small,’" said “Big John” creator Scott R. Kramer. (NBC News)

“As we say, ‘Your butt’s not too big, your seat’s too small,’” said “Big John” creator Scott R. Kramer.

Scott Kramer and his partner John Weisman are in the bathroom business.

Their idea, the “Big John”, is a sort of a ‘big ‘n’ tall seat’ for public restrooms, hospitals and health care facilities. While normal toilet seats are 13 inches (33 cm) wide, a “Big John” measures 19 inches ( 48 cm).

Since the launch of the Big John 5 years ago, revenues have skyrocketed: they’re up 60 per cent in 2009, both in the US and abroad.

Retail costs for a “Big John” seat cover range between US$ 158 to US$ 178, but you can buy one (new I hope) from Amazon.com for as low as US$ 107.

“Big butts” don’t only require a bigger toilet seat, but also more support. That’s why there is also a ‘Big John Toilet Support” that can increase the weight capacity of a wall-mounted toilet from the standard 300 lbs (136 kg) to 1,000 lbs (453 kg). It also helps avoid lawsuits, the web site adds.

““My husband required a little more room and he was breaking many toilet seats a year. The Big John put an end to that. Well Done.” [web site testimonial from a happy Estelle L. Manchester, England]

Web site: Big John Toilet Seat and Support

Source: NBC News / WOAI.com, 30 Nov 2009