Perhaps we are just talking at cross-purposes. I'm defining a Urine Diversion Dry Toilet (as per Akvo ) as any toilet reception system that diverts urine into seperate storage to feces outwith of a flush. Hence I don't see any contradiction in material from a urine diversion going into a bucket.

I can see how some might see this description as offensive if your understanding of a UDDT includes a specific type of latrine collection system. I'm sorry for not being clear, it wasn't obvious to me that the terms were understood so differently.

Also, if the eThekwini VIP toilets are UDDT (which I think they are, but am ready to be proven wrong), for practical purposes, the different types of UD toilets (bucket vs vault latrine) might be as bad as each other (assuming there is some safe way to empty both).

The users who have been offered the latter are perceiving the VIP UDDT as being superior when they might not actually be.

Incidentally, I was reading a report from eThekwini which described their VIP UDDTs as anaerobic digestors, which is interesting because I think most people think of them as being aerobic.

In fact, I think they're better understood as being both anaerobic and aerobic, which is part of their problem.

muench wrote:


A note to Joe (Turner) (thank you, by the way, for all your interesting posts of late): you had written here that a UDDT toilet is nothing more than a bucket toilet: forum.susana.org/forum/categories/5-clts...dividual-rights#3538
This particular group has been offered UDDT which are basically buckets for reasons of cost.

This shocked me a bit - a UDDT has nothing in common with a "bucket toilet" (a term that is, by the way, highly politically charged in South Africa and in Namibia due to apartheid legacy where "white people had flush toilets and black people had bucket toilets" (even though it was of course not that clear cut)) - it makes all the difference whether urine is not diverted (resulting in a stinky mess!) or whether urine is diverted (and the faeces and toilet paper goes into a vault which may or may not have a bucket in the vault) - resulting in a dry, odourless toilet. (NB: I am happy to have this discussion but if we do, let's start a new thread for it. I think when you read this document you will clearly see how a UDDT cannot be called a "bucket toilet" and that it cannot be stamped as "inferior to a flush toilet" and hence as undesirable).

I think if you look at the link I gave, the toilets are described as urine diversion dry toilets. I'm not trying to say anything about UDDT in general, but clearly these people feel that they've been given buckets - as far as I can understand, they are urine diversion systems with feces which falls into a bucket and needs to be removed regularly (I think to collection points). I agree this is highly politically charged, as the newspaper article I linked to made clear.

I agree that there is a confusion of terms, but strictly speaking, a bucket where urine is diverted is still a urine diversion dry toilet. I'm sorry if I used the term in vain, but in this specific case, I think the think can accurately be described as a bucket toilet.

It would also be interesting to consider whether urine diversion (bucket) toilets are more or less effective than urine diversion (vault) toilets. Obviously it depends on what happens to the sludge in the bucket system, but I can't see that they're automatically worse than a UDDT as you've defined it.

The point I was trying to make is about the perception of users. People who are given things which are essentially buckets may well feel that they're being made to look inferior, particularly in places where 80% of people have flush toilets, and where there is a history of enforced inferiority. It seems to me that systems have to recognise that this is a real problem.