
Reinventing the toilet in Madagascar - sergeant3
https://mosaicscience.com/story/poo-toilet-waste-energy-madagascar-loowatt-future
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danisth
Not sure how this is any better than a good composting toilet set up. Grew up
with one in the house (hippy parents) and it doesn't smell and is minimal
maintenance. Not sure how well this would translate into an urban setting but
that seems like a solvable problem (and a better approach than a subscription
based service like this one).

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Composting_toilet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Composting_toilet)

[https://www.researchgate.net/publication/258852961_Compostin...](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/258852961_Composting_toilets_as_a_sustainable_alternative_to_urban_sanitation_-
_A_review)

~~~
ams6110
Looking at that Wikipedia page, the composting toilet sounds rather more
complicated and expensive. Also potentially it does not destroy pathogens
completely. The approach of the "Loowatt" keeps the residential installations
simple, sanitary, and inexpensive, and locally centralizes the composting in a
process that uses high heat to completely eliminate pathogens.

~~~
schiffern
This. Sometimes decentralized solutions are great, but most people don't want
to become experts at the sanitary biological processing of human waste
(especially inside their own home). For safety and efficiency reasons it makes
sense to aggregate that at the community scale. Think of it like the local
sewage treatment plant.

Actually it's _better_ than a conventional sewage treatment plant, because

* it safely recycles fertility (interrupting the fecal-oral route, unlike "night soil"), providing a sustainable alternative to phosphorus mining and other fossil fertilizers

* it doesn't discharge fertilizer into waterways where it causes eutrophication and "dead zones"

* it produces biogas energy rather than being a large energy consumer

* it doesn't squander potable water to transport human waste, and

* it doesn't require a huge network of underground pipes, which have enormous embodied energy and replacement cost. If your city can't afford to replace the underground pipes, your water system is insecure and unsustainable for that reason alone.

Here's another large scale biogas digestor operation (this one's for food
waste): [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/15/magazine/the-compost-
king...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/15/magazine/the-compost-king-of-new-
york.html)

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userbinator
_The residents can also request service by text message when the bag fills up
or if something breaks._

I'm surprisingly pleased to find that they didn't decide to make the toilet
itself some fancy IoT thing that phones home, and instead kept it "dumb".

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skc
I'm extremely fascinated by this topic.

It's amazing how something as simple as a toilet, that we take for granted
everyday, is such a monumentally difficult thing to re-engineer cheaply for
the world's poor.

~~~
true_religion
It's an outhouse with a bag.

The challenges of developing nations aren't technological, they are poor
infrastructure or organizational.

It's been said... building a toilet is easy. Keeping it clean and operational
for years is hard.

~~~
kwhitefoot
Many cabins in the mountains in Norway use thick plastic bags that you just
tie off and dump in a skip when you leave. At least they did last time I
rented one twenty years ago, so the general idea is not new. Sealing the waste
in with a biodegradable film is a neat idea though and makes a lot of sense
for a hot climate.

~~~
nazgul17
What is a "skip" in this context? Not a native speaker here, sorry

~~~
speakeron
> What is a "skip" in this context? Not a native speaker here, sorry

[https://www.google.ch/search?q=skip&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=...](https://www.google.ch/search?q=skip&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiF297JktnUAhXJJ8AKHcTQC1MQ_AUICigB&biw=1480&bih=1025)

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ak39
The epicenter of the modern human waste problem is India. Has this project
been tried in India? I know Gates is behind this project. If it has, I wonder
what were the results, hurdles and practicalities.

~~~
csydas
From what I remember reading, a lot of this tended to be cultural more than
anything. Free++ and clean public restrooms are readily available but many
residents in rural villages don't use them for various reason. The most
attention-garnering reason was an article where a local sanitation worker
reported that people were superstitious about toilets, believing them to have
witches. [1]

In a less supernatural but similar vein, many still prefer open defecation in
fields, as they traditionally have done.

It's not just a matter of infrastructure, it's a societal change for many
people.

[1]
[http://www.bbc.com/news/health-33980904](http://www.bbc.com/news/health-33980904)

++ Edit: added "and clean" after Free.

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jccalhoun
Here's a link to the site for the toilet:
[http://loowatt.com/](http://loowatt.com/)

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Noxchi
Modern day outhouses are serviced by a truck that come s and vaccums out the
waste.

How is hauling off a bag any better?

~~~
ams6110
FTA outhouses in Madagascar tend to be serviced by a couple of guys with
buckets.

~~~
Pica_soO
They all work for the King of the Golden River

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hunglee2
Combined with a hyperloop type delivery system, this could be upgrade on the
flush toilet

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anovikov
These are all lame attempts to 'hack' nation development. If the country is so
broken that flush toilets are 'not an option' there, go and fix the government
(that might require a few JDAMs), civil society, and only then, infrastructure
will follow. Don't try to fix consequence not touching the cause.

~~~
nazgul17
What if you could only fix the consequence and not the cause because of your
limited funds? Would you decide against doing so?

~~~
anovikov
Absolutely. Any fix won't work long term. I relate this to all attempts to do
'small thing' improvements in developing countries like providing solar power
to places where grid is 'not an option', makeshift toilets, makeshift
electronic money on Android phones instead of normal banks etc. These things
just don't work long term, they prolong the suffering much more than actually
help. There is no 'hack' around building the functioning civil society, fixing
corruption, tribalism and crime, and building a bull blown infrastructure -
highways, railways, airports, electric grid, dams and bridges.

In fact, even just forcibly building infrastructure without putting the
groundwork of civil society, democracy and working laws in place doesn't work
so much - see Soviet Union.

~~~
Eerie
>In fact, even just forcibly building infrastructure without putting the
groundwork of civil society, democracy and working laws in place doesn't work
so much - see Soviet Union.

1\. Former Soviet Union countries are much better off than Madagascar.

2\. However, the best counter example is China.

