Waterless or composting toilets are being touted as a promising solution to many of South Africa’s sanitation woes.
Just less than 14-million of the country’s citizens lack access to sanitation and about 200 000 households are reliant on the bucket system. As more demands are placed on national water resources, it appears increasingly unlikely that homes without sanitation will be able to receive the popular flush toilet — hence the search for solutions elsewhere.
“It is only in the past couple of years that the government listed dry sanitation solutions as an acceptable form of sanitation [and] that various government departments have started to entertain the use of waterless toilets as acceptable sanitation systems,” said Alfie Heeger, director of corporate affairs at African Sanitation, a local firm that sells composting toilets.
But, critics ask, why is it that the poor account for the vast majority of people getting waterless toilets? In a water-scarce country like South Africa, shouldn’t these ecologically friendly toilets also be installed in upmarket homes?
There have been reports of communities rejecting waterless toilets because they want flush toilets.
“Across the country, when we talk about sanitation, people want to know why they should have VIP [Ventilation Improved Pit] toilets, low-flush or [composting] systems when the rich suburbs have always had those nice, clean flush toilets,” said Deputy Science and Technology Minister Derek Hanekom at an ecological sanitation conference in Durban last year.
He said that without the support of communities, there was little hope of making the transition to waterless toilets, a view echoed by Heeger.
“The current mindset in South Africa is that everyone wants flush toilet systems,” he said. “However, with fresh water supplies depleting [and] the effect of global warming, the cost of installing and maintaining flush water systems will soon prompt the so-called rich to move towards waterless eco-friendly systems. These trends are being found in countries such as Canada already.”
Composting toilets have proved popular in Sweden too, Heeger said.
Still, middle-class buyers for ecologically friendly toilets remain scarce in South Africa, said Ernst Tiedt of Ecosan — another waterless toilet firm. “You only market the toilets to the middle class with effort. While there is potentially a market, especially for green-Âconscience consumers, it has not taken off in South Africa at all as in other developed countries.”
The internet features many photographs of beautiful bathrooms in the developed world that make use of composting toilets. Until you try to flush the toilet, it is impossible to detect that it is not a conventional loo.
But at present, Tiedt said, the range of composting toilets in South Africa is limited to the basic low-cost housing range that is being installed across the country: “If we want to sell the toilets to the middle class, we will have to improve the designs of the toilets and beautify [them].”
More optimistically, a number of exclusive tourist facilities — such as the Teniqua Treetops treehouses along the coastal Garden Route — have started to use composting toilets.
As far as low-cost housing is concerned, the toilets have been most widely used by local governments in KwaZulu-Natal and the Northern Cape. In other parts of the country the VIP toilet has been the most popular form of sanitation for many local authorities.
Tiedt said municipalities opted for VIP toilets because they cost less: a composting toilet is about R2 500 more expensive than a VIP toilet.
VIP toilets can be used by a whole block of people inside a settlement, whereas it is recommended that a composting toilet be used by one Âfamily only.
However, when VIP toilets fill up after three to four years, government either has to empty them at great cost or move the toilets to another location. There have been reports of VIP toilets not being installed properly, which leads to pollution of water resources.
Education is key to the successful use of a waterless toilet: families have to clean the toilets by removing composted urine and faeces. While there is no health risk in doing this, many consumers still balk at the idea of handling their own faeces and have to be educated to the contrary.
“We have developed a delivery plan that will ensure community participation in the implementation and community acceptance [of composting toilets],” said Heeger. Tiedt said his firm had conducted extensive education sessions with the recipients of its toilets.
This article is published jointly by IPS and the Mail & Guardian