Greenwire: A Swedish architect and professor has come up with a product he says can act as a single-use toilet for urban slums in the developing world and also be used to safely fertilize crops.
Anders Wilhelmson calls his invention the Peepoo.
The biodegradable bag, which can be knotted and buried, is lined with a layer of urea crystals that break down the waste into fertilizer — killing off disease-producing pathogens found in feces.
He says the device would be useful in urban slums in Kenya, for example, where there are open spaces where waste can be buried even though the area is densely populated. His idea came from seeing slum dwellers collect their feces in a plastic bag and fling it away.
Starting this summer, Wilhelmson plans to sell the bag for about 2 or 3 cents — comparable to the cost of an ordinary plastic bag. He has already tested the product for a year in Kenya and India.
U.N. figures suggest that an estimated 2.6 billion people — 40 percent of the Earth’s population — do not have access to a toilet. Improper sanitation from open defecation can lead to water contamination.
Therese Dooley, senior adviser on sanitation and hygiene for UNICEF, said that while the “private sector can play a major role, it will never get to the bottom of the pyramid” on this issue, since bringing about large-scale change in sanitation habits would require a “large amount of behavior change” (Sindya N. Bhanoo, New York Times, March 2). – DFM