A Japanese Toilet for 2.5 Billion People

The Japanese toilet giant Lixil have developed SaTo (“Safe Toilet”) that could have the widest impact in the world.

According to the Fast Company post (www.fastcompany.com/3065479/a-giant-japa...-people-who-lack-one), “SaTo is the name of a low-cost toilet first developed with American Standard, with financial support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Designed for parts of the world where there are no sewer systems, the SaTo has sold more than 1 million units so far, encouraging Lixil to think bigger. It’s now turning SaTo into its own division, with a mission to spread cheap-but-effective toilets to the 2.5 billion in the world who still lack them.”

This is how toilet works:

“The clever thing about the SaTo is how it puts a dependable barrier between toilet users and their waste. The pan has a counterweighted trapdoor that opens to let poop and pee down, but closes to stop odors and disease from escaping from the tank underneath. When users pour water to clean the pan, it pushes the trap open while filling a half-inch cup that serves as an airtight water seal.”

Lixil released a report this summer showing lack of sanitation costs the global economy $220 billion (www.lixil.com/en/sustainability/pdf/the_...oor_sanitation_e.pdf). That includes the price of treating people who get avoidable diseases and lost productivity from those diseases.

The post tells me that, somehow, a big business lies in sanitation. More than 2 billion people are without toilets, and this could generate lot of business, especially in developing countries. Pakistan could very well tap this business.

F H Mughal