Hi， Carol：
i have studied all the products Separett has.
You are right. I can find some cheaper products form Separett to realize the purpose.
The 1st Villa 9000 is to find whether the farmers like the product or not . If yes, the government would finance them to change their pit latrines, to some kind toilets like Villa 9000.
As shown in the picture, there is an open pit latrines and vegetable plot.All peasants are happy to use the urine and solid waste as the fertilizer.

Now , I plan to market Weekend, SANITOA, CLASSIC to the peasants family with 1-6 members. Most of them has a small yard to grow vegetables, So, it is easy for them to use the urine and solid waste as fertilizers.
Thanks a million for your reminding.
best wishes
Scott

Hi Carol:

Thank you very much for giving me so much infomation about composting toilets as well as so many different solutions for the village toilet revolution.

I also agree with your concern that the Datong project would end up like the other failed dry toilets case in China 10 years ago. (see also here on the forum: forum.susana.org/uddts-for-particular-si...inner-mongolia-china)

Actually, the dry toilets business has been dead since 2009, as described in the PRI radio reports where both Arno and I were interviewed.

In 2009, I had a conclusion that I must stop marketing waterless toilets in China even though I thought composting toilets or UDDTs are important to China's sustainable development.

The failed dry toilets scared the policy makers who decided that dry toilets do not work.

Two months ago, one of the top experts of China Construction and Housing Ministry mentioned China should use mormal flush toilet instead of dry toilets by referring to the case mentioned in PRI correspondent reports, during a toilet training seminar atteneded by more than 300 officials from all over China.

I have not sold even one single Separett toilet since 2009. But, I did not quit my efforts to promot dry toilets in China.

Instead of selling dry toilets, I survived by selling apples using the urine as fertilizer, collected from the schools donated by SOHO China foundation who was encouraged by both Arno and I. (see here on the forum: forum.susana.org/175-urine-reuse-or-infi...-successful-business)

You can find the details in the documentary, Urine Superpowers, aired by ARTE of France. (see here: forum.susana.org/34-urine-diversion-syst...n-germany-and-france)

One day, I asked the chief engineer of SOHO China, Helen Huang: why did you quit the contruction of water flush toilets and build UDDTs for the schools even after Arno and I told you the failed case?

Helen answered immediately: we do not have other choices. In some schools, we can not find water to mix the cement and sands. Even though the UDDT failed, it is still much better than their shabby pit latrines.

Now, our new leader is calling for a toilet revolution to change 700 million peasants' pit latrines into modern clean and sanitary toilets within 3 years.

Can you imagine how diasterous it would be after 700 million farmers starting to use water flush toilets+centralized waste water treatment in China? Can the farmers find enough water to flush the toilet?

The horrible result is that we Chinese would have no safe food to eat, no clean water to drink, no fresh air to breath.

The whole world can not afford to have a thirsty and hungary China as I caimed at the 2nd European Sustainable Phosphorous Conference in Berlin in 2015.

We need your input and participation to change the direction of China toilet revuolution to a sustainable way.

Carol, Arno, Elisabeth...please come to China.
More and more customers and policy makers are coming to me for eco-toilet solutions because they have no other choices except dry toilets or so~called ecological toilets.

If you had money, expertise and good wills to improve Chinese toilets, Please come to me.

The ecological toilets cake is big enough to make 9000 members superich in This forum.

Let us start from the very 1st Separett Villla 9000 in Datong.

Our taget is to install 400 pcs of Villa 9000 before the end of June. In August, We will sponsor an international toilet conference in the village of Datong.

All members of the forum are welcomed to attend the conference. Your appearance would encourage our policy makers to listen to SuSana.

I am in Separett AB studying the full range of Separett products these two days.

From Saturday to next Wednesday, I will study some new toilet technology in Ducedof and Hamburg.

I Will be available in Ducedof on Sunday in and in Hamburg betwen Tuesday ~Wednesday.

It would be perfekt If some toilet experts showed interests to meet me in Sweden and Germany.

My phone is 0086 139 2459 1643.

best wishes
Scott

Hi all,

with our local WECF partners, we are working in similar settings and developed a manual to do the UDDT locally without the need to carry excreta on a daily basis, such as the double vault system which Arno was referring to. You find also easy solutions to install different toilet interfaces -sitting and squatting- and low tech smell stops and different type of containers and vaults to manage the excreta:
www.wecf.eu/download/2015/November/Web_2015UDDTManual.pdf

Best regards
Claudia

Thanks for this context. As you say, this is mostly about what happens to the containers once they are full and how the urine is contained.

I understand that Scott is describing a market opportunity for his dealership, not a community program.
I am not sure the owner of Separett can improve on the price beyond offering the best reseller price if Scott imported 200 of them in a shipping container. (Interestingly, the moulds are made in China, and they are fabricated in Sweden.)

Where possible, it would be worthwhile to construct composting toilets with large containers that can be removed from outside the building.

Good to hear from you Carol.
What Scott hasn't mentioned is that most villages in China are more like peri-urban settings with small single-story buildings often without piped water and most definitely without installed toilets. The most common sanitation solution is public pit latrines (with separate sides of the building for men and women) that are dark, poorly maintained and with passive ventilation. In the hard cold winter of Northern China, these latrines become recipients of greywater as well since the ground is frozen around people's houses. So the latrines become ice rinks. In the pitch black of night when one cannot navigate safely on the ice, the area around the latrine building becomes a zone for open defecation.




So if the town leaders are interested in changing this situation with private UDDTs they have plenty of different technology choices and experience within the country to tap into. The twin-vault UDDTs which were popular some 20 years ago in China can be installed - here the emptying is once per year for each vault and again these are one toilet per household.


For small container-based systems like the ones Separett has perfected, emptying needs to be frequent. And the neighborhood compost needs to be properly maintained by the municipality.

But most of these villages are surrounded by some sort of farm land or gardens so there is ample interest and capacity for using the collected urine and dried faecal material (following composting).

Regards

Hi, Elizabeth.

I understand your point, but whether it's a composting toilet or not depends on what it is being asked to do and how it is managed.

I've sold more than 1,500 Separett Villas in North America.

They indeed can compost. However, if one is using a Villa in a high-volume setting such as the one described here, it is really mostly part of a container-based composting system, with further processing in the container happening elsewhere.
That is why I think other solutions could work better.

The same is actually true of nearly anything called a composting toilet on this forum.

They are managing an aerobic biological process.

The photo you show is what would be seen inside a high-capacity composting toilet that is in use.

I will upload some videos of the Villa and other composting toilets.

Yes, many paragraphs in the Wikipedia entry for composting toilets are from my contribution in 2008.
I co-authored the book, The Composting Toilet System Book, in 1999. It is still in print and used in training programs, including SIDA's.

However, if caustic lime or a lot of woodash is added, then they are containing a killing process. This is a UDDT.
A CSIRO study showed the endproduct of this can rehydrate with fecal coliform intact.

I have also sold Vera and EcoTech Carousels and installed many composting toilets of our own design. We prefer batch-based composting systems. I've also sold and helped get permits for Wostman urine-diverting toilet stools.

My concern for this project in China is that it does not end up like the past project, which received worldwide attention as "proof" that composting toilets and urine-diverting toilets do not work.
www.pri.org/stories/2011-05-31/chinas-fa...periment-dry-toilets

As has been discussed before, even before the publishing of Ecological Sanitation, these toilets must be installed with user acceptance and robust management plans.

Carol Steinfeld

Very interesting thread. So great of you to keep us updated, Scott, despite the problems with internet access in China. Please keep it going, always great to read from you!

Carol had written:

Please remember the Villa is a relatively expensive little composting toilet mostly used by cottage owners in Western countries.

I would just like to point out that this is not a composting toilet in my opinion. There is no composting taking place in the bucket inside of the toilet, just drying. So I would call it a urine-diverting dehydration toilet (UDDT).
For people not familiar with these terms, please refer to the Wikipedia articles:
UDDT: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urine-diverting_dry_toilet
Composting toilet: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Composting_toilet

Apart from this minor point, I do agree with the questions raised about maintenance by yourself and by Claudia.

I had a Separett Villa in my house for 7 years and loved it. However, emptying the urine container was a bit of a drag (the toilet was on the first floor). We had a waterless urinal in the same bathroom which my husband used (this took away the issue of having to sit down on the toilet seat for men for urination if they don't want to: they can just use the urinal instead). But it meant having to carry the barrel full of urine downstairs about once per week or once per fortnight. (A fancier solution would have been to have a pipe leading to a large urine storage tank in the basement which gets pumped out; but we didn't want to build that)

Anyhow, after 7 years when we moved out of that house, and rented it out, I removed the toilet and have not re-installed it at our new house yet as I became too lazy. So if a committed, keen person like myself gives up eventually then I can just image how less committed people give up much sooner. However, of course for me I had the option of using a flush toilet + sewer + wastewater treatment plant instead. If I had to use a pit latrine instead of the Separett Villa then I would have most likely stuck with the Separett Villa!

For those not familiar with this toilet, you can look it up on the suppliers website here:
www.separett.eu/villa-9000-en

You could also see photos of my installation how it was in my bathroom for 7 years here: (these photos show the toilet new and then later in actual operation, so not just the pretty photos on suppliers' websites when it's brand new)

www.flickr.com/photos/gtzecosan/albums/72157609478355653

The same album also shows the composting operation I had going in the garden (I was very keen!).

Example photos (the album has 80 photos):

IMG_4260 by SuSanA Secretariat , on Flickr

I also made a very basic video in 2009 (sorry, the sound is rather poor):



(if you put "Separett" in Youtube you find many videos about their toilets)

So with this, let's hear more from Scott about his plans with Separett Villas in China!

Regards,
Elisabeth

Hi Scottchen,

good luck for your project in Datong. Can you elaborate a bit on the o&m of the system?
What are the plans for re-using the excreta? How often do you recommend to empty the containers? Are people happy to deal with the fresh excreta?

I agree with Carol, Ecowater´s concern. And i would like to hear about your follow up in Datong how it works in the future and people accept it.

Thank you
Claudia

Hi friends in development, pleasure to join this wonderful and developmental network.

I wish to join this network of professionals in sanitation. Avail me with information how we can modify our pit latrine.

This will help me and my community i work with. Hope to hear from you soon.

Kizito Richard Director Appropriate Technology Energy and Development.

The challenge with small composting toilets for high-volume continual use is the management, not the technology.

There is nothing special about the Villa that is going to avoid the well publicized issues with past projects in China.

We must be careful with how we introduce solutions. When there are "failures" due to not using lessons learned from other projects, we get a prejudice on all future projects, making them hard to introduce and hard to fund.

Please remember the Villa is a relatively expensive little composting toilet mostly used by cottage owners in Western countries. These users, typically 1 to 6 in a household, use the system, then go back to their urban homes for the week.

I think you have other options that would be more successful. Separett could even make you a better system for this purpose.

hi, yes, it is aan expensive way but it is worth it.
Villa 9000 is a perfect product which is easily be installed and maintained.
I am the sole importer of Separett in Beijing.
Next week, I will fly to Sweden negotiating with the boss to find a better method to cope with China toilet revolution program.
best wishes
Scott

That's an expensive way to supply a simple toilet.
Is the fan used?

For those numbers, it makes sense to make the toilet.

What is special about the Separett Villa:
--the fan
--the rotating base platform that moves the feces pail a little every time someone sits---to prevent piling
--the view plate that moves away when one sits

But the toilet requires careful aim by men, or they must sit.

I like the Separett Villa and sell them, mostly to the North American cottage market. But even at cost---about $600 USD per unit---I think this doesn't really make sense for large populations. You could create a cooperative to make these for much less and with higher capacity. I would look to some other programs for molds.