By the way, I found a UDDT seat for children, which can be used with sitting toilets:
www.berger-biotechnik.de/trenntoiletten/...r-trenntoiletten.php

[img size=100x300]www.berger-biotechnik.de/images/kindersitzftrenntoiletten.jpg[/img]

Hello everyone,

next year we aim to test the MoSan toilet in Africa, so we need to have some prototypes ready for shipping. Thats why we will produce 10 prototypes in Germany within the next 2 month, update and improve the design. Here some notes to the planned changes on the MoSan design and the sanitation service.

We decided to change the way of prototyping from manual laminating with fiber and epoxy to vacuum forming (also called deep-drawing) with plastic sheets. It simplifies the prototyping process a lot and has many more advantages, e.g.
- the recycling of the toilet itself is way easier, since thermoplastics are used and the plastic could be recycled for new production
- the toilet will be lighter and all surfaces will be smooth and water repellant
- as a result the cleaning of the toilet will be easier and more hygienic.

One important change will be that all parts become stackable. That means we need to change the shape of the main pot and adjust all angles.

Another change is, that the toilet shall also be usable for more than 24h without emptying. Usually we planned the collection service collects inner containers every 24h. This is probably still the most comfortable solution for the users, since no smell will occur and the toilet never fills up completely. In cases, this service becomes too expensive or other problems come up, we will ensure the toilet is still be usable.
One idea is, to provide additional urine containers/ bottles, for replacement. All containers have screw lids and are "branded" with the MoSan identity and logo (which will be designed during the marketing phase).
Another idea is to attach a tube which drains the urine into a big external container. It might be worth a try to connect two or more households to one urine container.

We will also test the usage of biodegradable bags inside the faeces bucket. This means the inner toilet bucket will stay always with the family and only the bags are collected and transported off site. An extra collection bin will be provided for storing full bags. The collection service will then pick up the storage bin and urine bottles or replace the bigger urine container shared by two families.
The combination of bags and multiple urine bottles or bigger external urine containers offers a multiple day use of the MoSan toilet.

We are looking forward to your feedback!

Mona

Dear David, dear Christoph,

many thanks for supporting this discussion and taking it to one of the most important points: the sanitation service! We are aware of the logistical challenge of a manual emptying service and treatment service. The process of emptying the toilet, collection from house-to-house and transport to the place of treatment needs to be as comfortable as possible. Using bags inside the toilet could be one solution to avoid smell during the steps of collection and transport. But for sure the collectors (and users) need to be schooled well and work very precise. Next month we will start designing a detailed service chain and plan trials for next year. We will update you with our ideas soon.

Also important to say: we never planned or plan to change people's behavior. We only reported that during our research in Bangladesh, even people with squatting habits showed great interest in a sitting solution. One family with a very clean superstructure squatting toilet in front of their house (provided by an NGO) wanted to test the MoSan toilet. The mother reported how comfortable it was for her children not to go out at night and be scared at the dark toilet. This example shows, that in some situations an in-house sitting toilet might be also a good solution for people with squatting habits (e.g. for elderly and people with disabilities).
But we will never convince people to use MoSan against their will or try to change their habits!!!
Hopefully one day urban slum dwellers will have the choice to decide between different innovative sanitation solutions

Dear Marijn,

many thanks for sharing your experiences. I really like the idea with colored beads. I can imagine this is a great way to get more people answering questions about sensitive topics like sanitation!

Please contact me on This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. should you be interested in childrens UD pedestals.

Thank you

Guy

We are in the early stages of our trials and as you say at this stage it may not be appropriate to involve the municipality (who do know what we are doing by the way), so I should have been clearer. In fact, our longer term plan is to create the template for local business people to run models like this, not local councils. I will continue to build a robust model that will appeal to investors as I believe this is the most likely way of reaching scale in many countries. In addition, the Tamil Nadu State Government is monitoring what we are doing and actively (and financially significantly) subsidising our rural village work.

But do I trust the municipality? Indian water and rubbish systems... Ummm, I will think about that one!

David

Dear Dave,
This topic might move to be a new topic (Service models) but I will answer it here. First of all I would like say that I´m happy to hear that the number of groups trying out service models is growing and I totally agree with an idea, that in early stage it has to done by people who have the strong will to overcome problems – which are normal to a new approach. But I disagree with you when you write

“I would not trust this to the municipal authority”

.
How about water supply, don´t you trust the municipality on that? How about sewage systems? How about garbage collection?
I don´t discuss with you the severe failures there are. We have to work on that in order to get better. In my opinion the municipal authority is THE ONLY solution to go to scale. How they do it, by outsourcing to a private, maybe an NGO as well, by building up an area, by integrating it with their sewage or garbage service…. those are all models to be tested out and probably they will exist side by side as there are lots of models how to provide sewer borne sanitation. But the responsibility for sanitation has to be with the municipality! By most laws and regulations the responsibility for sanitation is by the municipality. You might answer that the non sewer areas are not included. That is the crucial point. Most municipalities do not define the non sewer areas as their responsibility, but if we really want to see these systems in scale, the responsibility has to be with the municipality  obligation of funding, possibility of funding, obligation of thinking about solutions.
Sorry eThekwini people, I have to mention you again. They took the responsibility for these areas and had to deal with large problems…you all know the story they are still struggling but they are on track and way ahead.
Yours
Christoph
P.S. I very much agree on your concern of the change o behavior squatting – sitting.

Hi Mona,
have a look at the construction manual we made
www.susana.org/docs_ccbk/susana_download...ultrotariaperuen.pdf
page 14 gives some aspects to look for and erros to avoid.



(Thanks Trevor for the advice how to insert a picture)

Yours

Christoph

Sorry, I would like to add one thing. On a personal level I am not sure we should be trying to get people to change cultural habits, i.e. from squatting to sitting. I totally understand the reasons behind it, but it doesn't sit (!) comfortably with me.

This looks a really interesting project. My biggest concern would be the collection element and how everything is dealt with subsequently. As some of you know we operate a whole community ecosan programme in Cuddalore, India, servicing 3,500 per day together with a further 2,000 people in nearby rural villages. Of course we use UDDTs and so we have no smell and both faeces and urine are stored separately from day one (which may be the case here as well). We already have several thousands of kilos of faeces composting and it is becoming a greater logistical challenge each month, which fortunately we are on top of. I would not trust this to the municipal authority. We also have two men we employ, a vehicle, collection cycle and a compost sales process. This experience will be useful when we trial the system in a true 'inner-city' environment, hopefully next year.

Dear Mona,

I do not know of any UDTs designed especially with children in mind. I guess if there is anything at all it would be in school wash.

To return to your question regarding evaluation tools. We use a voting system in our FGDs that we feel gives good results, I will quickly describe it below.

The concept is that the people in our focus group get to vote anonymously on a number of questions. Usually we have around 15 questions and the discussion then takes about 3 hours.

The voting system works with colored beads. Everyone attending the discussing gets a handful of beads in 5 different colors. We then ask our questions as multiple choice questions with 5 possible answers. the question and the answers are written on a large sheet of paper in front of the group (you prepare the question banners before the meeting). Each answer then gets assigned a color, so all answers have a color that corresponds with the colored beads people have. After a question is presented and discussed a person goes around the room with a non-transparent bag, each person in the room then gets to put the bead of the color that represents their answer in the bag. This way people can give their answers anonymously, obviously that also means you can't link answers to people or income groups. After everyone has voted the beads are then counted in front of the group, the community mobilizer then discusses the results with the group, to see if the answers are deemed reasonable by the group and why the answers are the way they are.

An example could be a question of how much time people spend getting water to their houses every day. The answers could be:
0-15 minutes = green
15-25 minutes = blue
25-35 minutes = yellow
35-45 minutes = purple
45-60 minutes = black

After the social mobilizer has asked and explained the question, a person goes round with the bag and collects a bead for every person. The beads are then counted and the scores written on the paper banner with the questions and answers. For example the result could be:

Total people present in the focus group = 30
green (0-15 minutes) = 8 beads
blue (15-25 minutes) = 2 beads
yellow (25-35 minutes) = 1 bead
purple (35-45 minutes) = 5 beads
black (45-60 minutes) = 14 beads

We would probably be a bit surprised at this data set, because it is so heavy on the extremes. Thus we discuss the results further with the group. From the discussion the answer to the strange distribution could be that a group of people living in one district has piped water access, while everyone who does not has to walk very far to get water.

The example above is a bit overly simple but I think you get the idea.

regards

Marijn

Dear readers,

I am looking for information or reports about the use of UDDT's by small children. I know it might be difficult for small children to use adult size toilets (like this squatting UDDT in South Sudan )

But are there urine-diversion toilets specially made for children, small potties with a low height?
Please let me know about your experiences?

Many Thanks in advance!