Cool, really good to hear from another perspective that is different from "I have a flush toilet in my bathroom, and every other toilet is else is exactly like it" :)
Yep, toilets like this in every house would probably work too. If the Government paid for them, or gave financial assistance and strongly encouraged households to build them. These probably would not work for a common toilet (which is the model discussed in the article), unless you had a really deep hole.
Also, the soil problems you mentioned come into play, because the monsoons bring down a huge amount of water. (That's the reason those things are usually built out of concrete.) I think the warm weather still might be factor, whereas it is probably not in Eastern Europe, where it is colder, and consequently slower decomposition and fewer flies.
It's a fairly hard design and engineering problem to solve if you look at these constraints. Unfortunately, these often take a back seat to rhetoric and quasi-shaming news headlines like this one. UNICEF (a UN agency) also does this, apparently without trying to understand these constraints, and throws money into ridiculous "education" campaigns to shame people into pooping in a smelly, constricted area with a ton of flies. (http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/20/world/asia/unicef-latest-anti-...)
As a result, the Government has tried to tackle it head-on without proper planning and design, and will end up constructing thousands of these toilets which no one will use.
Yep, toilets like this in every house would probably work too. If the Government paid for them, or gave financial assistance and strongly encouraged households to build them. These probably would not work for a common toilet (which is the model discussed in the article), unless you had a really deep hole.
Also, the soil problems you mentioned come into play, because the monsoons bring down a huge amount of water. (That's the reason those things are usually built out of concrete.) I think the warm weather still might be factor, whereas it is probably not in Eastern Europe, where it is colder, and consequently slower decomposition and fewer flies.
It's a fairly hard design and engineering problem to solve if you look at these constraints. Unfortunately, these often take a back seat to rhetoric and quasi-shaming news headlines like this one. UNICEF (a UN agency) also does this, apparently without trying to understand these constraints, and throws money into ridiculous "education" campaigns to shame people into pooping in a smelly, constricted area with a ton of flies. (http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/20/world/asia/unicef-latest-anti-...)
As a result, the Government has tried to tackle it head-on without proper planning and design, and will end up constructing thousands of these toilets which no one will use.