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Perhaps it's somehow easier to talk about infectious disease than toilets. But the unfortunate truth is that more children die every year from illnesses caused by poor water and sanitation than from HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria combined.

Bindeshwar Pathak has made it his life's mission to do something about it. Over the last four decades, the Indian doctor has replaced open-air defecation and bucket toilets seen—and smelled—throughout his country, reports the AFP. Last week, he was awarded the 2009 Stockholm Water Prize for his life- and water-saving toilet called the Sulabh, which means "easily available" in Hindi.

"Provision of sanitation provides dignity and safety, especially to women, and reduction of child mortality," Pathak said in his acceptance speech. "As a matter of fact, safe water and sanitation go hand in hand for improvement of community health."

Each Sulabh uses about a tenth the water of a common toilet—crucial in regions where water is growing scarce—and houses the flushed human waste in two tanks until the contents can be recycled as a fertilizer. Disease and diarrhea remain confined.

The toilets are sold on a sliding scale—as cheap as $15 for the poorest families and as much as $1,000 for the richest, according to the AFP. And just $1 a month buys a subscription to use any of the 7,500 public toilets. The Sulabh Sanitation Movement, which started in India, has now exported the lavatories to Afghanistan and Bhutan, with plans to furnish the flushables in another 15 countries.

The touchy topic of toilets is gaining widespread attention—from an annual World Toilet Summit to books devoted to what to do with waste. (Check our recent interview with Rose George, the author of The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why It Matters.) Some 40 percent of the world (2.6 billion people) still lack access to proper sanitation and toilets, according to the World Toilet Organization, so proper sanitation may be, the organization says, "the best preventive medicine in the world."

Picture of a Sulabh by Alay Tallam via Flickr

6 Comments

1. 1. rockjohny 02:57 AM 8/25/09

   am i supposed to sit on that thing like Mr. Peepers and watch people watching me poo?

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2. 2. Maestro in reply to rockjohny 03:30 AM 8/25/09

   You don't sit on it at all, rockjohnny.

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3. 3. Anura 09:08 AM 8/25/09

   It's a squat toilet, normal throughout Asia. Those pads on the side are for your feet.

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4. 4. MikeB 03:07 PM 8/25/09

   This article raises more questions than it answers, and these sentences are representative: "Each Sulabh uses about a tenth the water of a common toiletcrucial in regions where water is growing scarceand houses the flushed human waste in two tanks until the contents can be recycled as a fertilizer. Disease and diarrhea remain confined.
   
   1) The toilet pictured is common throughout Asia -- I have used them for years -- and the amount of water used to flush it is entirely dependent on the preference of the person pouring the water into the bowl (and maybe the size of the water container used); so where does this one tenth figure come from?
   2) It has TWO holding tanks? Why? One for solid and one for liquid waste? Then how are they separated from a single bowl?
   3) Contents are recycled as fertilizer, but disease in the waste is contained? How are the parasitic eggs, cysts or amoebae removed?
   
   SA can do better than this, even in a compacted format.
   
   

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5. 5. cavnarw 05:22 PM 8/25/09

   In answer to MikeB's questions: take a look at this page on Pathak's website:
   
   http://www.sulabhinternational.org/st/sulabh_flush_compost_toilet.
   
   The high points: There are two pits, used alternately on a 2-3 year duty cycle. While one pit is in use, the other is "resting". During that period, the pathogens and such are being naturally digested, and the waste dries out. At the end of a duty cycle, the now-dry waste can be removed by hand safely. Then a valve or plug is moved, diverting flow to the now empty pit, and letting the other pit rest. This system apparently meets all of the WHO recommendations for treating human waste.
   
   Other pages on the site talk about how the sludge can then be used as a fertilizer, after being mechanically broken up and mixed with other things.
   

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6. 6. otto n 08:08 PM 12/11/09

   Otto N.
   Good on you for creating instead of critisizeing.While in the holding tanks couldn't the resulting gasses be chanelled and used as fuel for heating or cooking.I read something like that has been done in one of my Dads National Geographic Magazines many years ago.
   All the best and God Bless.

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