For those following the progress of Loowatt or interested in Madagascar, you might find this blog post on their website interesting (from Feb. 2015):

loowatt.com/news/5-new-loowatt-tsiky-toilets/

Sections from the blog post (go to the blog post to see all hyperlinks):

5 New Loowatt Tsiky Toilets Installed in Madagascar



On 1 December 2014, Loowatt installed five Tsiky Toilets in five households in the neighborhood of Manjakaray, Antananarivo. The durable Tsiky Toilets are easy to transport and simple to install. They are suitable for densely populated urban areas like Antananarivo. You can see a glimpse of the city by watching our documentary: vimeo.com/75398690

Tsiky means ‘smile’ in Malagasy, one of the official languages of Madagascar. Combined with an anaerobic digester, the Tsiky Toilet uses Loowatt’s patented technology to harness value from human waste by producing energy and fertilizer. We have forged collaboration with the local waste utility, SAMVA, to feed the waste into a locally sited digester, which they manage. The households range greatly in size from 5 to 27 people, and the service is designed for customers to pay according to their use. The customers have given great feedback, citing the toilet’s comfort, cleanliness, lack of smell, ease of use and customer service.

Loowatt is working in partnership with a local pit emptiers’ association to orchestrate the waste collection. The waste collection process is designed to eliminate direct contact with waste completely—a huge contrast to getting inside pit latrines to empty them. Upon collection, the waste goes through an anaerobic digester to generate energy and fertilizer. At the treatment site, Loowatt has installed a generator so the energy produced is now used to light the site as well as charge batteries for the local community.



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See also here: loowatt.com/madagascar/

It's an example of a container-based sanitation system, coupled with a centralised biogas digester.

Loowatt also seems to successfully break into the market of supplying festivals in the UK with odourless, waterless toilets.

Has any of our UK-based readers ever seen one of the Loowatt toilets around?

See also:
loowatt.com/uk/

On 1 December 2014, Loowatt installed five Tsiky Toilets in five households in the neighborhood of Manjakaray, Antananarivo. The durable Tsiky Toilets are easy to transport and simple to install. They are suitable for densely populated urban areas like Antananarivo.

Tsiky means ‘smile’ in Malagasy, one of the official languages of Madagascar. Combined with an anaerobic digester, the Tsiky Toilet uses Loowatt’s patented technology to harness value from human waste by producing energy and fertilizer. We have forged collaboration with the local waste utility, SAMVA, to feed the waste into a locally sited digester, which they manage. The households range greatly in size from 5 to 27 people, and the service is designed for customers to pay according to their use. The customers have given great feedback, citing the toilet’s comfort, cleanliness, lack of smell, ease of use and customer service.

Loowatt is working in partnership with a local pit emptiers’ association to orchestrate the waste collection. The waste collection process is designed to eliminate direct contact with waste completely—a huge contrast to getting inside pit latrines to empty them. Upon collection, the waste goes through an anaerobic digester to generate energy and fertilizer. At the treatment site, Loowatt has installed a generator so the energy produced is now used to light the site as well as charge batteries for the local community.

"I’m really pleased to introduce the Loowatt Tsiky experience to Madagascar homes. If you are interested in having a Tsiky Toilet, please contact us." - Anselme Andriamahavita, Director of Operations, Loowatt SARL



6 months later, Loowatt is installing more Tsiky Toilets in Antananarivo households, following the successful pilot operation of 5 Tsiky household toilets which began in December 2014. These new Tsiky Toilets have the same external shape and appearance as the 2014 toilets but with added touches to improve performance and ease of installation. Most importantly, they are made in Madagascar.



On 29 April 2015, Loowatt’s process and implementation engineer Armel Segretain went to the Malagasy Society of Plastics Processing (La Société Malgache de Transformation de Plastiques, or SMTP), which is a Malagasy company that makes everything plastic or recycled plastic, such as tubes, pipes and tanks. SMTP also produces objects in molded fiberglass for boats, digesters and septic tanks. Armel was there to inspect the manufacturing of the new Loowatt Tsiky Toilet mold. The final color choices for the Tsiky Toilets are green, blue and grey. Let us know which one is your favorite at www.loowatt.com/contact

Hi Virginia

Thanks for your important work you are doing in Madagascar.

The country was in focus in March this year as its president Mr. Hery Rajaonarimampianina became the first Chief of State in the world to sign a pledge in public to end open defecation. We presented a short mention of this in our Africa Water, Sanitation & Hygiene May-June 2015 edition. Kindly visit our website www.afriwater.org and go to ‘People’ pages 31-32.

We wish to feature the ‘progress on end defecation in Africa’ in our Sept – Oct 2015 edition of the publication and since you are on ground, could you kindly contribute a short article on the magnitude of the problem and the intervention in place bearing on the pledge of the president at this moment in time?

Kind regards / Steven

Dear Virginia,

I have some questions concerning the Loowatt project.

In the pictures you show a very nice container with two cubicles. Is that a pilot scale application? What is Loowatt's plan in terms of larger scale application?

What are you doing with the collected material?

Is SMTP producing the toilet container out of recycled plastic?

Concerning the grant, is your BMGF grant finished by now? I am asking because if this is the case, you could share the final report here. Which external funding source(s) do you have now?

Thank you for answering.

Best regards,
milli

Hi Milli,

In response to your questions:

The cubicles you can see are for our Tsiky household toilets, which are part of the pilot scale application which we began to implement in 2015 and will expand in the coming year.

We are treating the waste in anaerobic digestion systems that are installed and operated in partnerships between Loowatt SARL and the local government in Antananarivo.

SMTP currently is producing the toilet container at prototype volumes in resin. As we move to larger scale production we hope to produce the toilet container in recycled plastic. Materials for the toilet body are chosen taking into consideration numerous factors including locally available options, environmental footprint, and price.

Our BMGF grant is not currently finished. We are also currently funded by a blog from the GSMA Mobile For Development Programme .

As we are a small team working on multiple projects, we'll do our best to answer questions. We have a FAQ page on our website which answers common questions as well. We appreciate your understanding and patience. Thank you!