You may not think about this when you do your morning business, but over 1.7 billion people still don’t have basic sanitation services, such as private toilets or communal latrines. Almost 500 million people still practice open defecation (yes, that’s pooping out in the open), 92% of whom live in rural areas.
That’s why Archie Read, a recent graduate from London’s Brunel University, designed Sandi. The toilet uses a mechanical flush (no electricity), a basic conveyor belt to move the solids away (no water), and a divider inside the bowl that separates the waste streams so they can be used as independent fertilizers. For now, Sandi is just a concept with an accompanying prototype, but if it makes it on the market, it could operate off-grid, making it a viable—and dignified—solution for rural families with no water, septic tanks, or sewage systems.
Read, who received a degree in product design engineering, came up with the idea during a recent internship in Madagascar. He was working for toilet company LooWatt, which captures waste in a biodegradable polymer film but requires regular servicing. “It’s a great product, but like every other sustainable toilet designed, they’re targeting cities,” says Read.The key here is that the whole operation is low-tech by design. “If you have a nice complex electrical component, and you’re in a village that’s 50 miles away from any technician who can fix it, you can’t expect them to travel 50 miles there and 50 miles back to fix one toilet,” says Read. “It has to be in a situation that’s fixable by 90% of people themselves.”
It’s too soon to talk logistics, but for now, Reed has priced the product at $74 per unit, which puts it somewhere in the middle of his competition. Eventually, he envisions working with NGOs that could buy or rent the toilets and educate people about safe sanitation in the process. “If your main priority is safety, you can’t charge people a fortune for it,” he says. “It’s not like you’re selling a luxury product.”
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