Reading through the countless
innovations in areas ranging from health and education to farming and energy, I
remembered meeting the wonderful team from Wockhardt Foundation in India, pioneering
an improvement in sanitation. Their solution, called bio-toilets, uses the psychrophilic
bacteria, which is found in Antarctica, to break down human excreta into usable
water and gas through an anaerobic
process.
We seem to have a problem here
According to WaterAid, clean water,
toilets and basic hygiene practices like hand washing with soap are critical to
eradicating extreme poverty. We don’t have a chance of meeting global goals for
universal access to clean water and sanitation (Goal 6 of the UN Sustainable Development Goals), without accelerated, but long-lasting change in India. This,
coupled with the lack of access to toilets and sanitation facilities leads to
widespread diseases. In fact, more than 140,000 children don’t live to see
their fifth birthday in India, succumbing to diarrhea caused by unsafe water
and poor sanitation. A report released on the occasion of World Toilet Day last
November said that if all people without toilets in India stood in line, they
would stretch from the Earth to the Moon!
“With more than 600 million people forced to practice open defecation in India, we are talking about more than twice the number of people as in the next 18 countries combined who do not have a safe, private place to go to the bathroom.” - Sarina Prabasi, WaterAid America Chief ExecutiveThe idea
It is interesting to note that the
idea for Bio-toilets was triggered by mere observation. Researchers from the
Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) in the Antarctica noticed the
penguin excreta disappearing in the sub-zero temperature. The bacteria were then
derived and developed by the DRDO. It was tested by them and found to be fit
for complete human waste decomposition, leading to the output of 100% neutral
water and biogas.
Any takers?
The government’s movement to clean
India, Swachh Bharat Abhiyaan, accelerated the Indian Railways to install about
37,000 bio-toilets in coaches till now. They plan to install 140,000
bio-toilets in 55,000 coaches over the next three years. Various local
governments have contemplated mobile toilets using this technology in the urban
slums and rural areas where scores of families are devoid of sanitation
facilities.
Cultivating a culture shift
There is more to the problem than
what meets the eye. When my team at Project Reach Foundation met the local member
of the legislative assembly in Mumbai, we learnt that the problem is not just
the implementation, but the culture is hard to combat. He told us how people
from the slums had ended up vandalizing the mobile toilets in the constituency,
removing doors and roofs to take with them. Another challenge is the
communities throwing other garbage into the toilets, treating them like trash
cans for plastics sachets of tobacco and bottles, etc., rendering the
bio-toilets useless. A widespread adoption of education and awareness campaigns
is needed along with innovations such as these to move the population away from
the habit of open defecation and adopt other simple yet effective hygiene
practices. These will lead to better use of public facilities once installed
and even encourage citizens to invest in them for their communities.
References
1. Culturing a hygiene revolution, The
Hindu
2. Pronto Bio-Toilet, Wockhardt
Foundation
3. India’s water and sanitation crisis,
Wateraid
4. Railways sets a new target: 1.40 lakh
bio-toilets to be installed by 2019, The Indian Express
5. The final frontier, The Economist
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