Integrated Mobile Sanitation Solutions in Urban Settings in Haiti
We are developing a portable, low-cost household toilet and entrepreneurial service model to deliver safe, dignified sanitation to the urban poor. In collaboration with the NGO SOIL, we have piloted this environmentally sustainable, container-based system in Shada, a slum in Cap Haitien, Haiti that has no sewers and no piped water supply. Our toilet is portable, with removable containers to collect and transport wastes safely from the community.
Waste is being processed at SOIL's existing human waste composting facilities, generating valuable fertilizer to improve Haiti's devastated soil resources. Our goal is to enable local entrepreneurs to recover energy, nutrients, and material from the waste in order to subsidize the cost of the sanitation system, earn a livelihood, improve the environment and boost agricultural productivity.
TOILET DESIGN
We used a user-centric design approach to build a toilet that meets the needs and appeals to the aspirations of our target customers: the residents of Shada. We know from many conversations with residents of Shada that a good toilet is a symbol of cleanliness and modernity. Beyond being odorless, hygienic, and vector-free, our toilet needs to be elegant, modern, and pleasant to use. It must also be extremely affordable, enable easy and hygienic emptying, and backstopped by a reliable supply chain. In order to fulfill these requirements, we are iterating prototypes that combine a 20-L solid waste container, a liquid container, and a western-style toilet seat into a sealed, portable, urine-diverting toilet.
OPERATIONS
Our first strategy for Haiti is to collect and deliver the waste to SOIL's existing compost sites, where the waste will be converted to valuable compost for sale to agricultural and reforestation customers. Since Shada has limited road access and is too dense for on-site treatment, we are developing a two-step collection process. First, full containers are removed from the homes and replaced with clean ones. The containers are transported in carts or dollies from homes to collection centers, where they are then transferred to trucks for transport, processing, and cleaning at the compost site.
As we develop this operation, we will explore various incentives programs in order to harness local entrepreneurial activity to collect the containers in the most efficient manner that still protects public health and the environment. Our objective is to maximize revenues from compost sales while minimizing collection and treatment costs, such that we can deliver the service to the residents of Shada at the least cost to them. Our operations will enable us to try various different service models beyond the fee-for-service approach that has traditionally dominated sanitation. Our customers in Shada may ultimately subscribe to a toilet instead of buying one, assuring sustained service while avoiding the up-front expense that can be a large barrier to entry.
RESEARCH
We are examining the drivers that not only encourage toilet usage but also enhance isolation of the user from disease-causing vectors in dense urban condition. Ultimately, we hope that this leads to a more complete understanding for what defines improved and unimproved sanitation solutions.
We seek to develop modeling and assessment tools that will facilitate the scaling of operations within Shada and to other communities in Haiti and around the world. As part of this effort, we seek to identify the key cost and revenue drivers of household container-based human waste collection systems, as well as the data that are necessary to assess the system feasibility and plan in new locations.
