Dear all,

I am happy to announce that the videos that we took from the fair (interviews with grantees, tours of their exhibits) are now available online. You find them all in this one convenient location, which is a Playlist in the SuSanA Youtube channel:

www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0gMdVBup...H-6zco4XpTjxKcsB7UDW

Please help to spread this link widely.

The first video in this Playlist is actually a thank you note from no other than Melinda Gates who is thanking all the participants at the fair and is stressing that this kind of work is being valued in the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation at the highest level of leadership!



The second video in the Playlist gives just a visual overview of the exhibits (without sound):




The 17 projects that are featured (a random selection of all the exhibits) include (I didn't hyperlink each video one by one here, but you can easily access them all in alphabetical order in the Playlist link: www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0gMdVBup...H-6zco4XpTjxKcsB7UDW):

1. Alison Parker: The Nanomembrane Toilet (Cranfield University, UK)
2. Andrew Larsen: Low-cost sanitation for emergencies (Aerosan, USA)
3. Andrew Whitesell: The Fecal Sludge Omni-Ingestor (Beaumont Design, USA)
4. Bincy Baby: eToilet Imperial Model (Eram Scientific, India)
5. Brian Stoner: Toilet with self contained waste treatment system (RTI, USA)
6. Brian von Herzen: Biochar reactor for human solid waste processing (Climate Foundation, USA) + tour provided by Hamish Fallside
7. Chip Fisher: Sol-Char Toilet (University of Colorado Boulder, USA)
8. Clement Cid: Self-contained PV-powered wastewater treatment system (Caltech, USA)
9. David Auerbach: Sanergy - Sustainable Sanitation in Africa's Urban Slums (Kenya) (not strictly a grantee but large-scale laboratory for many grantees)
10. Eberhard Morgenroth: Blue Diversion Toilet (EAWAG, Switzerland)
11. Francis de los Reyes: Pit Excravator (power auger), North Carolina State University (USA)
12. How Yong Ng: Low-cost decentralised sanitary system (National University of Singapore)
13. Ioannis Ieropoulos: Urine-tricity: Electricity from urine (University of the West of England)
14. Marcos Fiovaranti: Earth Auger: Urine diverting dry toilet (Fundacion In Terris, Ecuador) + demo by Chuck Henry
15. Sherina Munyana: Catalysing sanitation as a business (Water for People, Uganda)
16. Thammarat Koottatep: Solar septic tank and hydrocyclone toilet (AIT, Thailand)
17. Paul Mackereth and Andrew Wheatley: "Reinvented toilet @ lboro" - User interface / processing (Loughborough University, UK) (Loughborough is a large team and only two members were interviewed to due to convenience and availability at the time. The team is led by Professor Sohail.)

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Description text about the Playlist:

The videos in this Playlist include interviews about 17 sanitation research projects funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. For most of the projects, the footage is split in two separate video clips: one is a pure interview to get the overall project "story" and the other one is a technical tour of the exhibit. It should be pointed out that these interviews were done "spontaneously" with a hand-held video camera. Nevertheless, they do contain a wealth of information and provide an excellent overview of these projects.

We thank all grantees who were willing to be interviewed and filmed!

The five questions asked in the interview were:

1. What is the most unique aspect about your project, what makes it stand out amongst the others at this fair?
2. How successful has it been in your trials so far, or what are your major achievements to date?
3. What have been your main frustrations or hurdles that you have had to overcome or that you are still struggeling with?
4. What is the Technology Readiness Level (TRL) of your research project or how many more years before this can be implemented in practice at a large scale?
5. Have you had any collaborations with any of the other grants that are present at this fair?

If you have further questions on any of the projects or want to give feedback to the researchers, please make use of the SuSanA discussion forum here: forum.susana.org/forum/categories/96-inn...ience-and-technology The videos and this Playlist were created by Elisabeth von Muench (Ostella, Germany) and Arno Rosemarin (SEI, Sweden), as part of a grant by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which is described here: susana.org/lang-en/research/funded-by-bi...nda-gates-foundation

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Arno and I hope that some of you will find these videos useful and that it captures a bit of the spirit around the fair which was about innovation, passion for sanitation, thinking out of the box and collaborating and sharing results. Thank you to all those people that agreed to be in front of our camera and thanks for the staff from the BMGF for making this event, and all the research and development work behind it, happen!

Regards,
Elisabeth and Arno

P.S. The last video shows you what it looked like when the exhibits were dismantled. I like this video because here you realise what a logistical challenge this was!:



Second P.S. Podcast produced by the BMGF: "Inside the Gates, Episode 15 - Reinventing the toilet"

Prakash:

Thanks for the comments and your insight.

As Elizabeth and Arno discuss above, the Fair in Delhi looked beyond the Foundations efforts in sanitation to Indian contributers as well. If you download the Technical Guide that Elizabeth links to in this thread, look through the descriptions, you'll see Indian entrepreneurs working on the dual pit designs, solid waste mechanical separation linked to septic tanks and business service implementation. These are all things working in India, right now.

I would also point you towards the Parry Modular Pit (page 67 in the tech guide *), initially started in Africa and being further developed in India (PSI/WfP/PATH).

So, I would encourage you, rather than lament your concern of "countries like India at this moment which is terribly slow in development sector in picking new ideas", embrace your countries entrepreneurs who see the potential business opportunity that sanitation can bring. Ultimately, it is likely that we will see public-private-partnerships bring the vision of good sanitation practices for all to reality, but champions like yourself are needed to make this happen.

Carl

* See: susana.org/lang-en/library?view=ccbktypeitem&type=2&id=2001

As far as India is concerned, impatience never worked here. This country is evolving and one thing which is constant is that lots of patience is required to push anything and more importantly when it comes to behavior and mindset change.

Many of the bilateral /multilateral organizations are supporting City sanitation plans (CPSs) in India and they are aware of the pit falls of big centralized sewerage system but still all CSPs have centralized sanitation plan.

I remember one conversation at Delhi long back with very high official in sanitation ministry who asked me to show any innovation on scale and we will assure you that it will be part of TSC (Total Sanitation Campaign). We have we not created any such system for large scale replication?

We need to keep being involved in developing alternative solutions but countries like India at this moment which is terribly slow in development sector in picking new ideas, let us not derail the program which has taken ten years to realize that toilet is not sanitation.

Countries like India with more than 70 % rural population need simple solutions with innovations in supply chain and delivery, availability of skilled persons and economic sense. A household has to visit 32 places to procure material for toilet. We need technology breakthrough in ready to install pit toilets with combination of building materials, better supply chain to deliver the toilet and more research in twin pit sanitation system. And the more important is to use technology to reach out continuously to the people for behavior change.


Prakash Kumar
Patna Bihar India
Skype: prakaash_k
Twitter: twitter.com/prakaash_k

Hi,

Just to revert back to the original topic: why have such a toilet fair in Delhi, and could it possibly have been harmful for the sanitation progress in India?. It was Prakash's opinion that it probably does more harm than good to have such a toilet fair in Delhi (see his tweets above).

Rahul, I take your point about revealing sanitation alternatives for urban India which are more off-grid and reuse-orientated, as opposed to "same old" large infrastructure projects with sewers and treatment plants, without reuse.

But Prakash was more referring to the rural situation (where 80% of Indians still live). Prakash spoke about his work with currently 50,000 self-help groups in villages in India here on the forum (including a video interview we did with him last week): forum.susana.org/forum/categories/92-nut...s-to-help-themselves

If I understood him right, he felt that Indian government officials could take these technology development time frames as an excuse for further delays for doing something on the ground ("if we wait another 2-3 years, then some magic sanitation technology will be there to solve all our problems"). Prakash felt that in rural India the twin pit pour flush toilets worked just fine and no other technology was needed, really.
(Prakash, please correct me if I interpreted wrongly what you said).

Prakash said to me that such a fair would be better held in the Global North countries (the "fat countries"), e.g. simply in Seattle again like last time. Or London, Berlin etc., and that these technologies should first be tested and proven in the Global North before testing them in the Gobal South. They make more sense there, he said. He was here referring more to the "high tech" on-site solutions for resource recovery, like for example this one (I just picked one arbitrarily from those that we interviewed last week):



More video clips of interviews and exhibits of 16 projects from the fair, are now available in this Youtube Playlist:
www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0gMdVBup...H-6zco4XpTjxKcsB7UDW
(take this is a sneak preview, we will announce this Playlist more widely next week).

Interesting is also that the Indian government was present in the form of the Ministry for Science and Technology but not in the form of Ministry for Rural Development, Ministry for Urban Affairs (I don't know the exact titles of the relevant ministries).

Interesting is also the recent blog post of Christopher Elias who was at the fair (Christopher J. Elias is President, Global Development at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; the BMGF is structured into "Global Development" and "Global Health")):
www.impatientoptimists.org/Posts/2014/03...nnovation-Excitement

I quote one part from this blog post:

Why did you have the fair in India?

When we were trying to figure out where to hold a second Reinvent the Toilet Fair, we immediately thought of India. India is known for its entrepreneurship, its innovation, its energy, and its ability to think outside the box. As one of the most vibrant emerging economies in the world, India is a natural place to have a fair that’s focused on innovation.

And we had a great partner with the Government of India’s Department of Biotechnology. Secretary VijayRaghavan and his team have been integral to finding more innovators in India to move along this work. In fact, together we have six new grantees now in India focusing on finding innovative solutions to the sanitation problem.

At the foundation, we say we’re impatient optimists. We challenge ourselves and our partners to deliver new innovations that can really make a difference in people’s lives. After the last few days, I think you can say we are excited and enthusiastic impatient optimists.

So, I guess it has pros and cons to hold such an event in a place like Delhi, as it creates certain expectations and one should be aware of those pros and cons.

Kind regards,
Elisabeth

P.S.
A photo of Christopher Elias (left) and Secretary VijayRaghavan (middle) when they were taking a tour and looking at the light-weight superstructure of Aerosan (this project is described here on the forum: forum.susana.org/forum/categories/106-us...ion-norway-and-haiti):
www.flickr.com/photos/gtzecosan/13359394234/

Some important people visiting the exhibit of Aerosan (Chris Elias from BMGF on the left) by Sustainable sanitation , on Flickr

I think it is largely about people wanting better sanitation. If someone desires something better, I think they're much more likely to be prepared to change, try new things and so on.

I was thinking about this in another context yesterday with regard to social disgust. If something is seen to be disgusting, even if it is proven that an alternative is much better (say using an argument about health outcomes) users may well be unwilling to change. Social disgust is a very strong thing, it seems.

I'm not sure about this analogy with computing. Whilst it is true that people need to have the hardware on which to innovate new software, computing has the pull of being able to do something that people want. In contrast, sanitation isn't often something most people want to think about (it seems). It is like offering someone a computer and training, but them not understanding what it is for nor seeing any practical use for it. To me, that is some way before the idea of sanitation as software - and into selling a basic concept or idea.

Bottom-up ideas seem to feed into the idea of opensource computing - give people the materials and they'll work it out for themselves. But it seems to me that the reality of most working large scale infrastructure in sanitation is that it is imposed on populations. Even in computing, where opensource is actually taken off on a big scale, it required large corps to decide to use it (for example using linux on cloud servers).

PCs and Toilets

This question of software is all about people, their behaviour, attitudes, ideologies and willingness to learn. The parallel between toilets and PCs is something worth pursuing. The success of Microsoft was the genius of understanding people, their needs and aspirations and their ability to learn and adapt to new tools. One could say that toilets are very similar with one major exception, and that is the topic is generally taboo. But this can be overcome. The other aspect is the linkage between the user and the system or network of services - ie the value chain. Here again the parallel with PCs and the Internet system should hold. System solutions will impact the user interface. Resilience can be improved again as long as the user interface is properly managed. The software side is the critical link to success.

muench wrote: Prakash Kumar (an independent consultant in India currently working on community health club projects) pointed out on his twitter account:

Reinvent the toilet will give excuse to many govt departments that sanitation is technology issue. Prakash Kumar (@prakaash_k) 21 March 2014

Nobody knows better than Bill Gates about software and it is software that leads revolution in hardware. Prakash Kumar (@prakaash_k) 21 March 2014

Technology and innovations is very much required but it will come later when people start using existing system. Prakash Kumar (@prakaash_k) 21 March 2014

Reinvent toilet fair at Delhi missing the vital link and taking the entire sanitation movement again to hardware. Prakash Kumar (@prakaash_k) 21 March 2014

I think he has made some good points about the fair, which we can also discuss further in this thread here on the forum.

Related article (featuring also a comment by Rahul Ingle from SuSanA/giz).

Personally I am starting to think it is neither a question of technology or 'software' (although both do play a role, technology for example in driving down costs). It seems (bad) sanitation is so tightly intervened (and maybe even a prime symptom?) with unequal economic development, i.e. "the larger picture" that any direct micro intervention is bound to fail.

Thanks Elisabeth for the interesting update on the event and looking forward to more updates through videos, fotos and articles.

Personally, I do partly agree with the comments from Prakash Kumar but I don't see how it would have made any difference if it was organised in a city other than Delhi or any other country. His comments question the concept of the 'reinvent the toilet' which have been raised time and again on the forum.

In my opinion, it was strategically very wise of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to focus on a very densely populated country like India where the usual perception is that centralised solutions that serves part of its population is the best possible solution for everyone. This event has questioned this perception and will caution the governments that are blindly pumping money into infrastructure intensive solutions. This event will surely help raise awareness towards sanitation.

kind regards

Rahul

Thanks for putting up these links, Roslyn.

I am attaching below two documents which give a good overview about the exhibits at the fair:

• Technical Guides
• Program and list of exhibitors

Arno Rosemarin and I also were invited to go to the fair (as part of our grant with the BMGF to foster knowledge exchange of the grantees here on the SuSanA discussion forum), and we did videoed interviews with as many grantees as we managed to get in front of our camera, as well as filming their explanation of their exhibits. These videos will be uploaded and posted to the forum over the course of the next week or so, so please stay tuned.

It was very hot because the exhibition was outside and shade was short in supply, so you will see that we were struggeling a bit with the sun (apologies in advance for my dodgy sunglasses which you will see in the videos!).

I think there may also be some videos from the fair coming out from the BMGF. For me, my main aim was to bring back as much as possible to the wider sanitation community - therefore the videos, photos and now forum posts.

It was a really excellent event, amazingly well organised. The grantees were super-enthousiastic and very willing to answer all the questions thrown at them. There was plenty of food for thought there in the discussions. On display were "high-tech" as well as more "low tech" or even "no tech" projects (i.e. projects more around the software aspects). With almost every project one could find certain components or aspects which were pretty special and perhaps something to pursue in the future (Arno calls them the "golden nuggets").

So I encourage you to be open-minded when you look through the information about the exhibits, rather than condemning them straight away as being "impossible to maintain in practice" and rather look for those gems... The whole thing has certainly provided a platform for innovative thinking and brought new people onto the scene.

On the other hand, putting this fair on in Delhi also had certain disadvantages, which we also discussed.
Prakash Kumar (an independent consultant in India currently working on community health club projects) pointed out on his twitter account:

Reinvent the toilet will give excuse to many govt departments that sanitation is technology issue. Prakash Kumar (@prakaash_k) 21 March 2014

Nobody knows better than Bill Gates about software and it is software that leads revolution in hardware. Prakash Kumar (@prakaash_k) 21 March 2014

Technology and innovations is very much required but it will come later when people start using existing system. Prakash Kumar (@prakaash_k) 21 March 2014

Reinvent toilet fair at Delhi missing the vital link and taking the entire sanitation movement again to hardware. Prakash Kumar (@prakaash_k) 21 March 2014

I think he has made some good points about the fair, which we can also discuss further in this thread here on the forum.
(previous related discussions are here: forum.susana.org/forum/categories/139-in...-cant-build-a-toilet)

Kind regards,
Elisabeth

P.S. We also had a small SuSanA citites group meeting the day after the fair with the aim to bring together grantees and practitioners in India. Some results from this meeting will be made available soon as well.

From March 20-22 the Reinvent the Toilet Challenge was held featuring innovations in toilets and sanitation around the world. See below discussion for more information, as well as www.impatientoptimists.org/Posts/2014/03...-India-and-the-World

IMG_4362 by Sustainable sanitation , on Flickr

The Reinvent the Toilet Challenge has become news internationally - check out some of the articles written so far, and please feel free to add more to this discussion:

Washington Post: Toilet tech fair tackles global sanitation woes
www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacifi...1d1cd4c1f_story.html

Innovations in Sanitation Come in All Shapes and Sizes:
www.impatientoptimists.org/Posts/2013/12...Complex-or-Expensive

Indian Researchers Selected to Develop Next Generation Toilets
www.gatesfoundation.org/Media-Center/Pre...t-Generation-Toilets

Inventors Aim for Better Toilets
timesofindia.indiatimes.com/City/Delhi/I...cleshow/32575891.cms

Six new grants announced for Indian research under the Reinvent the Toilet India grant scheme:
www.birac.nic.in/news_desc.php?id=112

A partner in one of the six projects is the research group from University of South Florida, USA with their anaerobic membrane bioreactor:
forum.susana.org/forum/categories/98-res...in-kerala-india#7931

Meet Raya, the Newest Member of the Sesame Family
www.impatientoptimists.org/Posts/2014/03...of-the-Sesame-Family

Some visual impressions from the Fair:

Photos from Elisabeth von Münch
www.flickr.com/photos/gtzecosan/sets/72157642797170955/

Photos from Water for People Day 1-3 at the Fair
www.facebook.com/MarketBasedSan/photos_albums

Use the hashtag #Toilets4all for more updates from Twitter about the fair. Here are some tweets about the fair:

After the Fair: Invalid consumer key/secret in configuration


Some special appearances: Invalid consumer key/secret in configuration


Stories from the fair: Invalid consumer key/secret in configuration


(Posted by Roslyn)