The Toilets For All team received a seed funding grant of $20,000 to further their research into supplying sanitary eco-toilets to impoverished communities.
The organisation was founded in 2014 by two industrial engineering PhD students at Stellenbosch University after they came to realise the full extent of the issues faced by poor communities where basic sanitation infrastructure is non-existent. They were later joined by UCT B.Com student, Jade Hubner, who is also currently working as a lifestyle presenter on magazine television show, Top Billing.
The Toilets For All project is still in a prototyping and research phase and is currently in the process of securing patenting rights for their design. Their proposed business model is focussed on an alternative currency - litter. The system is straightforward: in disadvantaged rural and peri-urban communities around the world, two things exist in abundance - litter and human waste. The project plans on addressing both these issues simultaneously.
The premise is simple - incentivising the collection of litter, allowing people to become part of their own solution by cleaning up their environment, and then being enabled to trade the litter for the use of one of the eco-toilets. The goal is to provide accessible, clean, safe, dignified and private facilities to those who need them.
The eco-toilets aren't the typical porta-loo, though. The design entails a urine-diverting composting system that diverts the waste into liquids and solids. The diverting system allows for a more effective use of water and environmentally friendly recycling of the waste. The liquid waste is then recycled by, for instance, pharmaceutical companies who reuse the nitrogen and ammonia while the solid waste is used for composting, possibly in local community food gardens.
As with most philanthropic community initiatives, funding is a major obstacle for Toilets For All. With the continued assistance of Mazars South Africa in the form of business mentorship, the team plans to establish a sustainable revenue stream by encouraging corporates to invest for tax benefit reasons; soliciting public donations through a purpose built website; running campaigns on popular crowd funding platforms; through stand-alone toilet unit sales; and via recyclable litter collection that will be a by-product of the organisation's operating model.
While the initiative is still in its infancy, Toilets For All is attempting to tackle an issue that affects more than a quarter of our planet's human population - a problem that begins with undignified living conditions and unsanitary surroundings and can end in the further degradation of community life, disease and death.
