Who Gives A Crap? Sanitation, Energy and Entrepreneurship in Kenya

Forbes: Who Gives A Crap? Sanitation, Energy and Entrepreneurship in Kenya

... The toilet they threw open is Sanergy, a year-old for-profit social enterprise that manufactures high-quality, yet low-cost and compact toilets for urban slums in the developing world and then uses human waste to produce energy and fertilizer. It is an “affordable, accessible and hygienic sanitation” solution for millions that live in places without sewage or electricity. They are places where the street is the bathroom. And that’s precisely the problem.

According to the World Toilet Organization, (yes, there really is one) 2.5 billion people worldwide lack access to a toilet. Relieving themselves in rivers, roadsides and impromptu and poorly built latrines, this results in high levels of disease, notably diarrhea and cholera. The recent cholera scourge in Haiti that killed thousands is sobering evidence. It is estimated that 1.6 million children die as a result of these diseases. Statistics show that hundreds of millions lose approximately 60 days of work.

David Auerbach and Ani Vallabhaneni, two of Sanergy’s young entrepreneurs, didn’t need stats to know how the absence of toilets affected the poor. The two graduating MIT-Sloan of Management school students experienced first hand the challenges of no sewage or sanitation when they lived and worked in rural China and India respectively. “Going to the bathroom isn’t a popular topic that comes up at the dinner table in the West,” Auerbach, a former policy hand at the Clinton Global Initiative (and my former colleague at Endeavor), says. “It’s flush and forget for us. That’s not the case in much of the developing world.” ...

... What they found was that Kenya’s poor were interested in having compact stalls that could fit into the tight spaces of their usually one-room homes, rather than large community outhouses. They wanted a “permanent” feel to the stalls rather than the flimsy feel of a porta-potty. As a result, Auerbach, Vallabhaneni and their Sanergy team that includes engineers, architects and designers drew up plans for a 3×5 toilet made out of thin shell cement that is locally produced for $200 per unit. Each toilet is designed for a 100 uses per day. They are units, which also collect waste in double-sealed 30L containers, rather than pits, or septic tanks “that are then drained into waterways.” It is this waste collection that is key.

More than where to go to the bathroom, how to dispose of human waste is, as Auerbach points out, a primary reason that no one touches the issue of toilets. That was Sanergy’s opportunity. Recognizing that, though “messy,” human waste can be converted through anaerobic digestion to produce fertilizer or electricity. It is also where the Sanergy team recognized that it could generate revenue.

Sanergy produces toilets that are franchised to local operators who charge around $0.06 per use. Currently the company has two toilets serving approximately 150 each day.  One is at Bridge International school (a for-profit school supported by the Omidyar Network), the other in Kibera, Kenya’s largest slum. These local operators keep all revenues. That, Auerbach says, is an incentive for them to clean, maintain and “market” the toilets. The operators then work with groups who collect the waste daily and bring it to facilities where it is converted to energy. “The waste from each toilet generates Sanergy revenues of $1250 per year.” The waste from 10 million creates a potential market of $178 million per year. Brown gold. ...

Sanergy Overview from Ani Vallabhaneni on Vimeo.

Comments

[Dana Ames]

Awesome.

Two simple things, clean water and waste disposal, can eliminate so much misery in the world.

Dana

[Michael W. Kruse]

Awesome indeed. And in addition to your list of positives, people make incomes and stimulate the economy in the process. It remains to be seen if the idea really catches on but I love the win-win-win nature of the idea.

[Lala]

So what are you going to do about it?