Thank you christoph

Am interested to learn more about all the various options such as eco let but maybe we take this discussion onto different thread?

Else hijacking iDE news and getting off the thread title:)

Will set up new thread and advise link here

Dear Blake and Dennis,
Let me try to answer something to your concerns.

Compexity ... yes the whole service model is complex as you attend separately urine, feces and grey water - therefore it is a service model for a utility. But as a utility service it is farily easy comparing to the compexity of operating a sewer and a treatment plant.
BUT
if you do it like iDE for rural areas (and the water table is not high than you can do an ECO let) as you can see here. Costs for this are in Perú about 60 US$. The knowledge to build that is the same as for a pit latrine. Might be an option. As much safer fecal handling and higher user comofort. Have a look (page 29 of the manual).



Feel free to ask just did not want to do seremons.

Yours
Christoph

Excellent points Blake - cost and complexity of the solution is a negative as is the suitability in high rainfall / high watertable areas (along the mekong and tonle sap for rxample) without flood proofing and urine storage rather than ground disposal, but northwest and southwest provinces may be worth considering

And you are quite correct that solutions need to be based on user requirement and preferences or they won't be used anyway

Still the fsm issue if unresolved obviously creates unwanted impacts that need to be addressed particularly in high watertable and flooding areas

Thank you for your interaction on these questions blake

I am familiar with the UDDT solutions, but just through research/videos/case studies/etc. To me, they seem like a great technical solution to the problem. The hard part would be developing a market around them and I have some concerns.

• They are often significantly more expensive than the Easy Latrine - which costs $40-$50 - making them difficult to sell and out of reach for many people.
• The customers that iDE works with currently do not want a UDDT product. Course its possible to market them and try and change this, but that is another challenge. iDE typically prefers to design solutions around the desires of our customers, and not necessarily introduce solutions we 'think' they want or should have.
• These technologies look like they require quite a bit of skill to build. This makes local production by small businesses difficult. Of course there are other bus models you could use, but the skill required to construct these properly would be an important consideration
• Lastly I worry about transportation. That is a challenge with any latrine, but these are larger, heavier, more complex.

So in general, great technological solution and something we might be able to learn from but at this point we don't believe that we could create sufficient supply and demand for UDDT style toilets.

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Thank you Blake I look forward to it

Have you seen the thread in UDDT's in Peru?

Forum thread here forum.susana.org/forum/categories?func=v...060&limit=1000#10621

and video available here

Your thoughts on this as an alternative to the latrine / pit toilet approach? May have the FSM issue in a different light (less management required potentially)

Hi Dennis,

Thanks for engaging on the forum. The SMSU project in Cambodia is wrapping up as we speak, last day is end of Oct. We take our M&E very seriously, so after the project is completed we will need a little time to verify sales, confirm % increase in coverage, etc. After which we will be producing a report for our donors as well as a separate report for the sector at large which will include results, Lessons learned, challenges, next steps, etc.

So - we have more info coming out soon (Dec or Jan) and I will be sure to share with SuSanA, twitter, etc.

Best,
Blake

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Great work Blake; read about the programme on your website and also on Watershed.

Do you have updates on progress across the whole country (%) or in the provinces you work in?

Sorry could not see the % uptake on the site (may have missed it)

Dear Blake,

A recent publication is mentionning the following :

"Some pioneer organizations already started to invest in the development of shelter solutions. WaterSHED developed a zinc-based shelter priced at $75, which met limited demand however, as the material is perceived less durable than concrete. It is now exploring the possibility of designing a concrete shelter that would be cheaper than current alternatives."

Could you tell us a bit more about this concrete shelter, is IDE participating to this research, I'm very interested !

Ben

BlakeMcK wrote: This program did not provide any hardware subsidy for the toilets.

Dear Blake,

I already understood that there was no subsidy, but now I'm reading iDE's blog and saw there is...

"an output-based aid (OBA) project in 2 provinces, Prey Veng and Kandal. This program helps the poorest families have access to latrines by lowering the cost through a small rebate after purchase."

Can you clarify if this fund is for hardware then or something else? How many many toilets have the lower cost? Is this extra funding to amounts you said above?

Best, Hannah
Clean Water 4 All

Hi Ben,

The DEWAT system is already functionning and was also design by GRET and BORDA just for clarification...

Best,

Clément.

Dear Hriley,
There seems to have been some confusion between all these posts. Let me do my best to clarify. iDE received a TOTAL of $6,637,711 from 3 donors (nearly 7M) to implement the Sanitation Marketing Scale Up (SMSU) Project. SMSU was implemented over 3 years. The 100,000 latrines that were the focus of this press release were all sold in this project. In fact, sales have continued since this post and are now around 135,000 latrines sold. We are wrapping up SMSU shortly and will have our final figures/etc. in the coming months. Please stay tuned

This program did not provide any hardware subsidy for the toilets. The $6.6M was used for capacity building of local entrepreneurs/businesses (as sales agents and latrine manufacturers), demand creation activities, etc. These funds were NOT used to cover the cost of the toilet it self. The toilet (not including the shelter) sells for between $40-$50 a piece including transportation (price varies as businesses are allowed to set the price as they see fit). This price is raw materials, cost to manufacture, cost of sales agents, margin, etc. The customer pays the full price of the toilet (set by the business) and all funds go to the business (NOT iDE). Thus, iDE does not generate revenue from the toilet sales - the local businesses do. iDE does also not cover any portion of the cost of the toilet - the household pays for all of it.

The project has not been completed yet, so we dont have final sales figures. However, here is a rough estimate based on our current figures (these are not final - so please dont take them as that). $6.6 million of donor funds / 135,000 toilets sold = $48.88 of donor funds / toilet or approximately $10.38 of donor funds / person (4.7 people per household in Cambodia). As this is a market-based project, we expect more donor investment initially as we are getting the market started followed by less donor funds in the long run once the market takes off - so the cost/toilet should continue to decrease.

Hope that helps

Best,
Blake

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Dear all,

I wanted to comment the complexity of establishing a market-based solution for pit latrine emptying + treatment in Cambodia, having participated to the program in its early years.
Being a country where law enforcement is particularly low, there was no hope that people would desludge properly from the fear of getting a fine. We therefore tried at the time to find how could we get a viable business not only charging the emptying service but as well create a financial interest in treating sludge properly.
We end up proposing a treatment plant to a Farmer rather than looking for emptying entrepreneurs. This way the man would have an incentive to actually treat the sludge rather than dumping it anywhere. We faced pretty quickly several problems :

On the contrary of a truck pit emptier, the farmer (was it him or can we gerealize ?) isn't really a business man and was struggling to run it as a proper entrepreneur

We turned the economic upside down and the gas expenses can't be covered in a rural area, it can only barely work in a peri-urban set-up where pits are very close one to the other

I join you the survey, we tried at the time an even more compact DEWATS system on two floors.

From what I heard the plant has been abandonned ... I'm really sad I'm now part of these engineers who design and construct things that don't work. We tried and I hope people on this forum can learn from our mistakes and difficulties at the time.

Big congratulation to IDE and Watershed and many others there developping programs without any hard subsidies. Florian you were talking about proposing other products, this is the beauty of this approach, the market becomes organic cause it's not anymore ruled by a funder agency, if people ask for tiles or nice sheds the mason will make it for them because offer and demand rules.

Good luck in your program and thanks for sharing the results with us !

Ben