great feedback Chris

From a marketing point of view, I am wondering if the attributes of your system could be packaged into a simple "Bog in a Bucket" type offering (name may need work - or maybe not) 0- and whether it would assist in uptake?

I offer the below for discussion - and future collaboration for UDDT converts and believers:)

For example,if a family could buy a "Bog in a Bucket" UDDT system - and they get the below items nicely included for a "delivered anywhere" landed price of USD$75 (with local licenced manufacture, fabrication and assembly to build out local industry and employment), could this be useful in increasing uptake of toilets generally and UDDT's (and their benefits specifically)?:

All needs to be included because, (if you are not a "garage" or backyard tinkerer), then convenience is worth a lot

Inclusions:

• Pre-cut out 20 litre bucket (or whatever is appropriate) complete with urine diverter system
• urine diverter hose
• Starter set of Sacks including date tags
• Starter pack of cover material
• Free standing fold out toilet privacy structure - bamboo perhaps or other sustainable material??
• Solar drier
• Laminated graphic operators manual for toilet installation and operation
• Laminated graphic users manual for waste usage (urine and faeces)
• Laminated Certificate of Congratulations for being a "Bog in a Bucket" home:)

I know I am operating remotely (ie not in a community in need) here, so this is idea-land - and there would be a lot more required for on-the-ground input and acceptance than this simplistic approach allows for, but thoughts re increasing uptake of toilets if there was the type of system mentioned?

Seems the technology is fine, just requires a different marketing approach

Hi Dennis,

Great idea . It could be offered with or without the privacy structure, as some people may already have a privacy structure and others are extremely poor and maybe are happy with palm fronds stuck into the ground for privacy.

One thing. Waste usage is a contradiction in terms. Let's say nutrient recycling or fertilizer application.

Let me know how I can help.

Best wishes,
Chris

Will "package" up something for forum readers to review; will base the UDDT on your proven design Chris and see where we go.

Hope for lots of feedback from SuSana readers when I put out out there

Was just in a native village in Malaysia today; sanitation probably typical - flush toilets, no nutrient collection and re-use (of course) and uncertainty reigns as to where it all goes!!!

Useful day though; now know that one of the first priorities is to understand the power structures in place (community leaders, leadership type - inherited or elected etc - the informal power centres, the conflicts and the cliques).

This place (500 people, men still go to jungle every day for gathering, women make crafts and mind house) had lots of well meaning development people come in and out, but little progress - because the tok batin (headman) had an issue with an outsider who had married a village woman and was progressive, but because of the tok batin personal conflict, all projects were undermined and blocked.

Focus now (before tackling any sanitation issues and changes) is to bring the power people together and get them sorted out (or at least willing to tolerate each other and not kill something because the others involved)

great learning day

Hi Dennis,

Very interesting. What ethnic group is it? Remember that this is an imminently cultural endeavor, about something that people mostly never talk about. The first step is to get people (esp. the leader) to recognize that there is a problem (like alcoholism, etc.). Are there indices of parasitism, diarrea, etc.? And try to demonstrate UDDTs with him or ssomeone he trusts (like an ONG they are already working with). If they are already using flush toilets, one has to confront the confusion that one group of city people bring one solution and others another. I look forward to hearing more.

Best wishes,
Chris Canaday

Ethnic group is temuan, proto Malay

And yes, planning a strategy that addresses cultural empathy plus meets self-interest:)

People are people after all no matter who or where they are!

And of course self-interest ranges from money to recognition to pride so have to work out hot buttons

Then move into issues like sanitation and health

Will advise as we proceed and learn

RE centralised / large volumes urine re-use

Capturing large volumes of urine is, I guess, an aim of the UDDT approach if it is to become part of the mainstream, particularly in urban and peri-urban areas where local re-use is not possible.

While localised re-use (straight into the garden etc) is fine for rural areas, for maximum commercial value (which could make the whole concept more attractive for government and business), we would have to centralise and re-use for larger scale agri settings.

This I imagine would either have to be:

a)through a household level storage in a material that is easy to store and transport (see notes re this below) OR

b) via piping from multiple households to a centralised point OR

c)via manual collection and transportation to a central tank holding site.

So centralised diversion and storage (somehow) is part of that large scale UDDT solution.

Urine "use by date"?

Once urine is diverted for large volume re-use, I assume that we cannot just let it sit in a tank for a lengthy period or it will get that "stale urine" smell, which is a problem for surrounding areas (or can we?)

I don't know whether urine has a "use by date" or not (as in do the nutrients lose potency as time goes by? can anybody tell me?), but transportation from centralised tanks as liquid to the target farming areas is problematic in my opinion.

My question is:

Can we have the urine go into a holding tank (either at the household level or at a centralised point) filled up with some inert material that absorbs the urine (and therefore the nutrients) but doesn't impact on the nutrients and can be used as is on agri land (therefore must be organic material)?

It would also need to be easy to store, transport and spread on the field / in the paddy.

Has anybody seen large scale re-use solutions in place that address these issues?

Dear Dennis
There are large scale of urine separation toilets where urine is collected reused in the fast growing suburb in a Mega city .
One example is in the La Paz where more than 1OOO households are benefitting from the system.
I am on my way I to visit Sumaj Huase and the Water utiliity in El Alto and I will be happy to report back in the mean time read the SuSanA case study: www.susana.org/en/resources/library/details/1583

There is a new publication from the Knowledge node on Sustainable Sanitation in Bolivia but this one is only in Spanish unfortunately issuu.com/sidone/docs/snv_revista_final
STay tuned
Cheers
Madeleine

Hi Dennis,

There is no problem storing urine, as long as the tanks are organized so the smell does not get out ... and that smell is mostly nitrogen (in the form of ammonia), fertilizer that we do not want to lose. In fact, the various documents on the safe use of urine as fertilizer (such as those downloadable from www.ecosanres.org ) recommend storing urine for various amounts of time to assure that any pathogens (mainly from potential fecal contamination from someone not using their UDDT correctly) die. Remember that industrial fertilization often has that same bad smell.

Mixing urine with some inert material sounds like more trouble than it would be worth. Struvite can be extracted from urine if magnesium is added.
forum.susana.org/forum/categories/98-res...and-and-south-africa
I have been thinking that something similar could be done by filtering urine through magnesium-rich soil (and potentially degraded sandy soils in general). This enriched soil could then be trucked to agricultural fields more efficiently than trucking all of the pure urine (and not require tank trucks). The weakened and equilibrated urine effluent could be used in urban agriculture with less risk of overdosing the plants (plus it could be diluted with greywater). This would also reduce the risk of chemical contamination in the purified magnesium, or excess salt in the case of bittern (not the bird, but a magnesium-rich biproduct of processing table salt).

Another option, which I have not heard about on a large scale, would be to use human urine to speed up and enrich composting operations to deal with organic waste in the city.

I would like to develop vertical and roof-top urban agriculture to recycle urine, plus I am convinced with could have peepee pipelines from cities to agricultural fields downhill. (We could even design speed bumps to slow down cars and that pump urine to fields uphill.)

Thanks, Madeleine, for the great sanitation magazine from Bolivia. If I can be of any help with that magazine, please let me know. Maybe they would like to reprint some posts from my blog, inodoroseco.blogspot.com . Or this 2-part interview (that I would be happy to translate into Spanish):
www.chekhovskalashnikov.com/water-sanitation/
www.chekhovskalashnikov.com/human-waste-disposal/


Best wishes,
Chris Canaday

That is a superb report Madeleine and a well-conceived and managed project

answers a lot of my questions

and Chris, we need to dream a little I agree:)

back to the think tank for more brain-cycling