There are some good points here, perhaps most importantly about scavenging. Early liaison with the local authorities to explain about ecosan is vital.

I would also say that you need to have a model village to which you can show future villagers. Work in clusters that are adjacent to each other and peer groups become your best motivators. Train and educate your first group, build your ecosan, wait a few months and start to take in SHGs and councils. Once they see the difference between a pit toilet (even twin pits) and an ecosan our experience is there is only one winner.

Hi everyone
i have enjoyed your discussions about this toilet and business around this. I would love to know your experience about the relation between acceptability of this toilet and culture of people or communities where you apply this. Especially in rural India, it seems quite heard to push such toilet as people do not want to see their shit after they leave. There are two key aspects in rural areas which play big role in sanitation behaviors and application of technologies. People who have place in house always want permanent toilet of their won. These people look for two kinds of design (1) septic tank and (2) pit latrine. The pit latrine ( twin pit) are good as it decompose on site and likely to be sustainable mainly for areas where water table is not high and not flooding. it might be similar to many other countries. the other thing that people do not like in India is dry toilet as the culture is using water after defecation. I think toilet in rural areas ( like India) only when majority of people have toilet and do not allow the poor to defecate in their land. In such social pressure poor have no choice other than such toilet.
i see the chances of trying this in India is in urban communities where people do not have space at all in home for constructing toilet, neither they can go out for defecating. i also would love to know your experience in reducing the cost of this toilet if it is made of fiber. In urban areas, the business could be around collection and transportation if it is mechanical in India. It needs to be completely mechanical here in India because the low against manual scavenging.


regards

satya

The issue in India is certainly disposal. We collect from circa 4,000 people daily (and growing) using a communal unit. There is no mature organic market and so the price you can receive for the compost is minimal. We are looking at options for a value added product and are trialling this. We collect both solids and liquids.

We are currently doing the same thing in villages with single chamber UDDTs and a collection service, but it is too early to discuss the sustainability.

As for the units, we currently have an urban (slum) system that doesn't give us the life/cost ratio we want. We are trying to get the price down to $300 with a life cycle of 30 years, and are working on a 'virtual' final design as I write. Our model is self-sustaining over this kind of life-cycle.

We will have more information later this year or early next.

Thank you Kory and Sasha for your comprehensive replies. I think we can proceed in India with a little more confidence in the economics of collection, although disposal still seem to be an issue.

Black Solder Fly - I recently heard from elsewhere that they prefer other forms of organic waste to shit, and who can blame them?

Cost of unit production - seems to be recurrent issue and I wonder if the wooden / concrete versions have the same appeal. We really need to agree on one design and then approach a single supplier and encourage them to invest in a mold. They usually talk in selling 10s of 1000 of units to enable them to recover their mold costs, so even if we got together, it would be a hard sell. Tim at Envirosan in South Africa may be interested and the may even have an existing design which could be used.

Hi Kory, hi everyone!

Thank you all for this very interesting thread. I am learning a lot from it.

@Kory, I watched the video of your presentation at the webinar and there you mentioned that you were considering other treatment technologies and back-end products besides composting, such as the DEWATS and biogas. I am wondering how your research evolved in this regard. Would that be technically feasible considering that you are adopting UDDTs? I suppose you are using sawdust or some other dry material, wouldn't that interfere in other treatment processes?

Kind regards,
Cecília.

Hi Everyone,
I'lll try and fill in some additional responses, though Sasha has pretty much answered most of the questions already. Thank you Sasha!

From Steve Sugden
First off, thank you so much for the positive words.

1 The viability of the collection, composting and reselling process can be troublesome. Transport for collection is usually one of the larger costs components and the more money that can be made from reselling the humanure / vermicompost the better. This is a tough market with low margins, but how are the economics stacking up to date?

The transport is indeed one of the biggest cost drivers. SOIL has explored various creative ways to drive this cost down, including using three-wheeled cargo motorcycles instead of cost- smaller capEX on the vehicle, coupled with a higher utilization rate of the vehicle's capacity, help make the costs more tractable at smaller scale.

2 If I was a customer I can see the advantage of a box and taking control over my families excreta management and the privacy and dignity this brings. However, if I was poor and wanted to save money, I would also be tempted to dump the bucket in the local river and avoid the collection service charge. Have you noticed this as problem?

It has not been a challenge for us at the scale of operations we have observed so far, but we do anticipate that it could become a problem when the service area is larger and it is harder for the service operator to verify that all toilets are being serviced. For this reason, we believe it's important to build monitoring and cartridge tracking tools now that can easily scale with the service. We are exploring paper-based and mobile-based tools.

The mobility of the toilet and the subscription model also help discourage this behavior. Like Sasha said, after a certain grace period, the toilets are removed from users who do not pay the subscription fee.

Of course, if a user no longer has a toilet, then they are likely left with the inadequate sanitation options previously available, which is the same situation they would face if they could not afford to have a pit latrine emptied. This is of course not a desirable outcome, but the fact that payments and expenses associated with this service are regular and predictable can help prevent "defaults" and associated lapses in access to sanitation. Costs for the poorest of the poor are a challenge confronting all market-based solutions, and we continue to seek more ideas to improve access. In the future, we are interested in exploring different incentive programs that could help reduce the cost of the service and increase its accessibility to poorer residents, but those ideas are in their infancy.

3 Have you thought of Black Solder Fly larva for processing. They love fresh shit and have real value. Also wood ash capture for the nutrient in the urine?

We have actually followed your work on BSF with keen interest, because of what we see as a great potential. With the SOIL team in Cap Haitien, we attempted to raise BSF on the shit/peanut shell/bagasse mixture from our toilets in some BioPods in Haiti. While we could get vigorous colonies of BSF on kitchen waste, we had trouble with the fecal mixture. We are very excited at the prospect of higher value ways to extract the resources embodied in waste!

Questions by Elizabeth:
-The mobile toilet costs 75 USD (locally produced). (my question: that's not so cheap? Is there a cost-breakdown available?)

You are correct that the toilets are not as cheap as we would like it, however it is still cheaper than most available designs. The big cost driver is the price of materials in Haiti. Specifically, the model used in the pilot study was coated in Formica which made the toilet easier to clean, somewhat water repellent and much more attractive. However, the Formica was about 50% of the materials cost.

SOIL later phased in monthly payments (still operating today) (would be good to know details of their payment collection scheme; if someone fails to pay, is the toilet taken away again? This is how Sanergy does it.)
(so you already have a secondary revenue stream? But I guess this compost is not solely from these toilets but also from others?).

Sasha answered part of this question but, yes, there is a secondary revenue stream in the Haiti context. Moving forward however, we are interested in finding where the price floor for complete cost recovery (O&M as well as Treatment) with and without secondary revenue streams lies.

Continuing on to answer Sasha’s question: I thought that most of these innovative projects (Sanergy, X-runner etc.) relied on a similar model of mixed revenue from user fees and compost sales. I would be interested to hear how all costs can be covered through user fees and what "all costs" means, ie: does this include organizational overhead and waste treatment?

These other innovative projects are trying to integrate secondary revenue streams. However, I was simply noting that there are user fee price points that could cover all costs. Now whether those user fees are still attainable by the poorest of the poor remains a very open question. This is especially interesting considering these backend product markets can be very tough markets with low margins as Steve pointed out. While we've had good conversations with Sanergy and x-runner about their strategies for cost recovery and profitability, we don't want to speak on their behalf and risk making inaccurate statements. It would be best to have the breakdown of their cost structures directly from them.

All the best
Kory

Sasha Kramer from SOIL here, hi Steve! I just wanted to take a crack at some of your questions:

1 The viability of the collection, composting and reselling process can be troublesome. Transport for collection is usually one of the larger costs components and the more money that can be made from reselling the humanure / vermicompost the better. This is a tough market with low margins, but how are the economics stacking up to date?

Response: The collection and transportation are covered by user fees and not compost sales (the compost sales go towards recovering costs for composting). You are indeed right that transportation is the largest cost driver, especially in Haiti where roads are terrible and there is a frequent need for vehicle maintenance. However we believe that at a break-even point of ~500 toilets we could cover collection and transportation costs from user fees. The composting end is another story. We have yet to see a composting operation that fully recovers costs, generally it is just a more cost-effective way of treating waste when compared to more traditional methods. We predict that compost sales and tipping fees could result i complete cost recovery but we are not there yet.

2 If I was a customer I can see the advantage of a box and taking control over my families excreta management and the privacy and dignity this brings. However, if I was poor and wanted to save money, I would also be tempted to dump the bucket in the local river and avoid the collection service charge. Have you noticed this as problem?

Response: We avoid this problem by renting out the toilets for a monthly service fee rather than selling people the toilets. As long as people are paying the fee they are certainly going to insist that they get the collection service (disincentivizing dumping in ravines) and if they stop paying the monthly rental fee for more than one month the toilet is taken away.

3 Have you thought of Black Solder Fly larva for processing. They love fresh shit and have real value. Also wood ash capture for the nutrient in the urine?

Response: We do use black soldier flies at our composting sites, but we have found that for some reason they don't seem to like our shit, they prefer vegetable wastes. We mostly use them for composting of other organic wastes and then feed the larvae to chickens and ducks. I like the idea of wood ash for capturing nutrients from urine and this is something we may try in the future. For now much of our urine is used to keep the compost piles moist and the rest is soaked away at the toilet sites.

Hi everyone, This is Sasha Kramer from SOIL. We were sorry to miss the webinar the other day but excited to see all the buzz it has generated and grateful to our colleague Kory Russel for his great presentation of re.source's collaborative work with SOIL. I wanted to take a moment to respond to some of the questions I see in this post to the best of my ability.

Cost of the toilet model: Kory mentioned that it is currently $75. We have some good news which is that we have been able to bring the cost of the wooden model down to $50 and our cement models cost less than $30 USD (see image below), all made of local materials. Although we have been able to bring the cost down the toilets can be challenging to keep clean because of the materials and we are looking forward to testing the plastic models that re.source is working on as well. Our goal is to be able to provide our customers with as many toilet design options as possible so that they can choose a model. Since they all operate with the same service system it is not a a problem to have a wide variety of models out there.



Concrete design: This is indeed heavy, but still portable, it just takes more effort and care than the wooden one and would not be as easy to move around often.

Payment collection scheme: People have a three month grace period to pay before their toilet is taken away. They receive a bill each month and on the third month of non-payment the toilet will be removed. We do try to meet with people individually before taking away the toilet.

Cost recovery through user fees: We are getting there. Preliminary estimates show that the fee of approximately $5 USD per month per household would recover all service costs at a level of 500 households. Since we only have 143 households currently this model has yet to be fully tested. The user fee covers the servicing and maintenance of the toilets but not the waste treatment. Waste treatment costs will have to be recovered through a combination of compost sales revenue and tipping fees from waste treatment for other sanitation providers. I thought that most of these innovative projects (Sanergy, X-runner etc.) relied on a similar model of mixed revenue from user fees and compost sales. I would be interested to hear how all costs can be covered through user fees and what "all costs" means, ie: does this include organizational overhead and waste treatment?

Household toilet model in IDP camps: SOIL is currently working in IDP camps in Port au Prince and we have not yet tested the household model in these situations. As Kory said it is theoretically possible but we have used larger public toilets to serve a greater number of people with less space requirements. It would be possible to use the household toilet but the financial model would be different as people in IDP camps are not in a position to pay for sanitation.

Compost sales: SOIL has sold over 70,000 gallons of compost to date (www.oursoil.org/october-2013-newsletter-...-gallons-of-compost/), all from our toilets. We have recently started to treat waste from other toilets (www.oursoil.org/soil-caracol-waste-treatment/)> This has generated some cost recovery for the composting process but to make it sustainable we will need to increase our paid treatment services and sell more compost. Stay tuned!

Good questions by Steve, looking forward to Kory's reply.

The purpose of my post today is to provide people who don't have access to Youtube videos with a quick overview of what Kory presented and the questions that followed during the third webinar that SEI organised on 7 November (see Arno's post about it here: forum.susana.org/forum/categories/139-ge...g-now-available#6312).

Kory was the third presenter. His presentations starts exactly here in the Youtube video:



Mobile Sanitation Services for Dense Urban Slums
by: Kory Russel, Stanford University, Stanford, USA
Location of research: With SOIL in Haiti

The short presentation that he used for the webinar:



One screenshot as a visual input:



Some important points from his presentation:

1. The mobile toilet costs 75 USD (locally produced). (my question: that's not so cheap? Is there a cost-breakdown available?)
2. We are working on a scalable design - to cost 30 USD, made of concrete (won't this be too heavy though?).
3. There was initially a free trial period, where users didn't have to pay.
4. SOIL later phased in monthly payments (still operating today) (would be good to know details of their payment collection scheme; if someone fails to pay, is the toilet taken away again? This is how Sanergy does it.)
5. Low monthly fee, no upfront costs.
6. There is currently a waiting list of 550 households who want to get such a toilet. There is a strong demand for a pleasant, convenient, aspirational toilet; with a service that is professional and reliable.
7. This was funded via a GCE Phase 1 grant by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; we are hoping to get a Phase 2 grant.
8. The aim is to reach the poorest households, and to fill the gap which public toilets cannot provide (dangerous at night), or where pit latrines fail (e.g. when there is flooding).
9. Working in illegal/informal settlements; high turn-over of people.
10. We wanted something that's with the user throughout the entire sanitation experience (i.e. also emptying and transport and reuse - the whole chain).
11. Cartridge based system (container based).
12. The content is taken to outside of the community, SOIL has a composting facility, where soil amendment is made from it (could create a secondary stream of revenue).
13. User-centred design
14. Tracking of all waste streams
15. Started 2011.
16. In India there is a legal framework (ban on manual scavenging) which could prohibit a solution like this (see also this discussion on the forum about it: forum.susana.org/forum/categories/39-mis...man-waste-scavenging)
17. Aim is for a mass-producable product design.

Questions from the audience:

(1)
Question by Dorothee Spuhler:
Can this be funded completely from the monthly user fees only? Or do you need to generate second revenue stream from the compost?

Answer by Kory:
Other organisations such as Sanergy* (Kenya), X-runner (Peru) and Clean Team (Ghana) are managing to cover all their costs from the user fees but in our project we are not yet there, because we are dealing with the poorest of the poor. Having back-end products which could be sold would help.

* Comment by me: Laura from Sanergy told me in October that the user fees also don't cover all their costs. To become totally subsidy-free they are banking on being able to sell the by-products, mainly compost and they are also aiming to sell biogas, she told me. But they are not yet there either.

(2)
Question by Francis de los Reyes:
Is this type of toilet really "aspirational"? Wouldn't the people only see a water flushing system as "aspirational"?

Answer by Kory:
No, you don't have to have a water flush to have an aspirational toilet... The users are "flushing" with dry covering material instead of water. And instead of water moving the excreta awway, it is done by a professional service provider.

(3)
Question by myself:
Why do you have this long waiting list of 550 households? Why can you (or SOIL rather) not meet this demand?

Answer by Kory:
We don't want to scale up too repidly because there could be a danger of diminishing performance. We want to remain reliable, keep their trust; therefore we are doing a slow scaling up. We still need more suitable tools for scaling up; need to create a framework.

(4)
Question by Mark Illian:
Can you use these toilets in IDP camps for displaced people in Haiti (IDP = internally displaced people)?

Answer by Kory:
In principle yes; we are collaborating with Sanivation in Kenya; but it's a logistical challenge, we are not yet ready for such difficult conditions.

(5)
Question by Mark Illian:
Could you say more about the sludge (excreta) treatment & disposal?

Answer by Kory:
The cartridge from the toilet is sealed and removed when full. It is taken to SOIL's composting facility outside of the community, where it is composted thermophilically at 170 Deg F (= 77 deg C). The end product is sold to reforestation projects or for boutique gardening (so you already have a secondary revenue stream? But I guess this compost is not solely from these toilets but also from others?). The containers are washed, sanitised and put back in circulation.


That's it from the webinar presentation & questions. I hope this post was useful for you if you are interested in this approach in Haiti. If you found my efforts here with this post useful, please let me know by responding or by clicking on the "I like this post" below (or increase my karma points on the left by clicking on the plus symbol ). It's always nice to know if it was worth my time to write this out. (this of course applies to anyone who makes detailed posts for the benefits of others)

Regards,
Elisabeth

P.S.
This seems to have been an excellent cooperation between Standford University and SOIL in Haiti. More about the onling work with this on the SOIL website:
www.oursoil.org/local-contractors-take-o...d-toilet-production/

SOIL told me on twitter that about 2600 people are now using such toilets. I asked them how many people share one toilet. The answer was "the number comes from a combination of household toilets and communal toilets shared by 4 families".

A photo of the inside of the toilet from SOIL on Twitter:
pbs.twimg.com/media/BY4FZ1hCEAADe5c.jpg:large



Another photo of the toilet showing the urine diversion:
pbs.twimg.com/media/BY0ZPpOCYAAqB5C.jpg



SOIL is very active on Twitter and responds to questions there very fast: @SOILHaiti

Second P.S.
This is essentially a single vault urine-diverting dry toilets, which comes with the pros and cons of single vaults mainly in terms of hygienic safety during the handling of the excreta (see also here on the forum: forum.susana.org/forum/categories/34-uri...re-the-pros-and-cons). For this type of application (mobile systems for low-income areas), single vaults are indeed a suitable option in my opinion.

I love this approach and I think I understand the context in which it will work. We are discussing a form of replication location in Uganda and India. I realize you may be still at the development stage, but I wonder if you have any indications so far on -

1 The viability of the collection, composting and reselling process can be troublesome. Transport for collection is usually one of the larger costs components and the more money that can be made from reselling the humanure / vermicompost the better. This is a tough market with low margins, but how are the economics stacking up to date?

2 If I was a customer I can see the advantage of a box and taking control over my families excreta management and the privacy and dignity this brings. However, if I was poor and wanted to save money, I would also be tempted to dump the bucket in the local river and avoid the collection service charge. Have you noticed this as problem?

3 Have you thought of Black Solder Fly larva for processing. They love fresh shit and have real value. Also wood ash capture for the nutrient in the urine?

To all those who have followed this discussion on Kory's research project on mobile sanitation services for dense urban slums with interest:

Here is your chance to interact with Kory (and two other grantees) live during the upcoming webinar hosted by SEI on this Thursday (7 Nov.) at 17:00 Sweden time. Some places are still left (with or without microphone rights, this depends), please see here for more information:

forum.susana.org/forum/categories/139-ge...nment-institute#6195

(If you miss the event live, you can view the recording on Youtube a few days later)

Dear Lesego,
Thank you so much for your interest and questions concerning the project.

1. The level of payment for basic services like sanitation has been very low as you have experienced with your project since this services are presumed as basic rights and supported by MDG's,therefore do you think it is right to impose profit charges either than recouping operational cost of which majority of the population in African countries cannot even afford as we all know the prevailing conditions of poverty,therefore with your proposed costing structure do you think your technology is affordable?

While I agree that having water and sanitation paid for would be ideal, in many areas governments are unwilling to invest or spend funds to provide water or sanitation due to a variety of reasons. Therefore, any sanitation service needs to be able to not only recover operating costs but also be able to grow or there will be no service. Private entrepreneurs operating sanitation as a business can create jobs and keep cash flow within the local economies.

As to your point about affordability, at the current monthly costs being charged in Haiti, households pay less for the toilet and service than they spend per month on cell phone airtime credit. Therefore, I do believe that this service is affordable. It may not be affordable for everyone, but it is within the reach of a broad swath of the highly economically challenged population where we conducted our pilot, and hence a large proportion of low-income urban households in Haiti.

2. Secondly are you proposing to provide the service on commercial basis?supply v.s demand?

Yes, the service is provided on a commercial basis. This is a demand-side solution; in dense urban areas we have found a high demand and willingness to pay for this service.

3.The fact that there is lack of good governance strutures in African countries,does the World Community through UNEP support your efforts?

We are not currently attempting to get the support of UNEP, especially since it is the JMP that sets standards for water and sanitation development goals. The new standards are currently being created for the post-2015 MDG era.

We believe that local governments, rather than global bodies, are the institutions whose support is necessary. That said, where local regulations are unavailable, we rely on global standards and guidelines including those published by WHO to design and operate our processes to protect the public interest.

4. How will incidences be handled should there be any?

I am sorry, this is a very broad question and I’m not sure what you mean.

5.Is your technology supported by the current goverment of Haiti?

The Haitian Water and Sanitation Ministry (DINEPA at the national level and OREPA-NORD at the regional level) authorized our pilot prior to its start and continues to support it, describing it as a necessary effort to find sanitation solutions for these areas where no viable alternative exists. OREPA-NORD has inspected our toilets and SOIL's compost site on numerous occasions, and sometimes even uses SOIL's compost site as a treatment center for waste generated at local festivals and events.

Additionally, we obtained ethics approvals from both the Haitian National Bioethics Committee and Stanford University for the research we conducted during this pilot.

All the best,
Kory