The theme of this year’s World Toilet Day – ‘We’ll always need the toilet’ – calls for action to protect and expand access to sanitation in the face of mounting challenges such as ageing infrastructure, rising demand, low investment, and the impact of climate change.
It is a stark reminder that 3.4 billion people live without safely managed sanitation services; this situation, faced by much of the world’s population, has serious negative impacts on public health, dignity and the environment. Research into barriers to safe sanitation is urgently needed to accelerate action and develop innovative solutions.
The challenge
Our researchers were part of the team funded by UKRI to investigate sanitation provision and access in rapidly urbanising areas in Asia and Africa during the Towards Brown Gold research project. The presence of unsafe water, sanitation and hygiene practices occurring in the town of Gulariya, Nepal was highlighted during the project. Off-grid sanitation solutions such as latrines connected to septic tanks can help protect health, but these tanks or pits need to be regularly emptied, and the contents (faecal sludge) transported safely off-site to be treated and ideally reused.
However, our findings revealed that only a small proportion of waste from such sanitation facilities was safely managed and treated at the town’s municipal treatment plant. Faecal sludge from households was often not emptied, or else this task was done manually by family members, or private contractors who lacked protective clothing and equipment. Not only does this pose risks to the health, safety and dignity of pit emptiers, but the work is physically difficult and messy. A safe and practical solution was required that could be used by off-grid communities, where vacuum truck access was challenging, or unaffordable.
The solution
Professor Sabitri Tripathi, a research team member from Nepal Engineering College (NEC) realised the need for a solution for the safe emptying of septic tanks and set about exploring available options for Nepal. Consequently, under Professor Tripathi’s leadership, engineers from NEC, with support from the University of Brighton, initially attempted to create a manual pit emptying device from scratch using locally available materials, but the prototype device was cumbersome and unreliable. Instead, the team settled on the adaption of an existing open access, aluminium pit emptying device known as ‘the Gulper pump’, so it could be created and manufactured in Nepal using locally-available resources. The Gulper was invented by Steven Sugden from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and the aluminium version donated to NEC by Professor Michael Templeton (Imperial College London) and built by Jeff Broome.
The Gulper is operated by raising and lowering the handle on the pump which uses a one-way valve to manually draw sludge up a pipe and into a container. The adapted device – the frame of which was constructed from wood (based on engineering drawings sent by Jeff Broome) is light enough to be carried to hard-to-access areas, meaning that faecal waste can be safely removed and then taken to the treatment plant using a converted motorised rickshaw (tuk tuk).
Our involvement
Prototype devices require development, testing in location, and stakeholder engagement to raise awareness and encourage adoption. We collaborated with partners in Nepal and supported a Gulper training workshop to engage representatives from local, regional and national government, local communities and the media. The need for improvements to sanitation practices were acknowledged, along with the potential for entrepreneurial opportunities in the sanitation sector.
In addition, we helped support the monitoring and evaluation of community uptake, based on feedback and assessment of the performance of the pump and opinions of sanitation workers over a three-month period. We were also able to help facilitate the construction of the in-country version of the Gulper, which can be scaled up, produced and repaired locally, creating a blueprint for low-income settings. Support from Official Development Assistance funds also allowed us to employ a professional local documentary-maker to capture field visits, workshops and the Gulper journey, from development to application and acceptance. The documentary, overseen by our collaborative partner (NEC) and hosted by WASH Khabar, Nepal is available to share and should serve to promote safer sanitation in similar settings in Nepal and further afield.
Next steps
Small steps can make a big difference – to lives, communities and the environment. It’s vital that we work together towards innovative, effective, appropriate, low-cost solutions that can be locally deployed and scaled-up.
Our work on safe sanitation has also focussed on disease control in low-resource emergency settings. You can read more about our work to treat faecal waste during the onset of humanitarian crises and how it is helping protect human health, by reducing exposure to pathogenic microorganisms such as Vibrio cholerae responsible for cholera.
The World Toilet Day global campaign, coordinated by UN-Water, is live at www.worldtoiletday.org and on social media with the hashtag #WorldToiletDay.
