Dry toilets, sustainable technology for the future

By: Patricia Olivares

Within the framework of World Toilet Day, Julio César Díaz Gómez, coordinator of the Los Altos de Chiapas region, talks about dry toilets as one of the eco-techniques implemented in communities to improve people’s quality of life.

This year, the theme is “Make the invisible resource visible”, because emphasis is placed on the effects of the sanitation crisis on groundwater, which represents 99% of all fresh liquid water on the planet (UN Water 2022). A problem that seems invisible because it happens underground and in the most poor communities, but which affects the supply of drinking water, sanitation systems, agriculture, industry and ecosystems.

Amextra promotes the development of ecotechnologies and their applications, ecotechnologies in highly marginalized urban and rural communities, to provide sustainable alternatives at home and in everyday life. Because its use leads to an improvement in people’s health, there is adequate waste management and limits human impact on the environment, because it is also appropriate according to the context, as Julio César comments:

“The dry toilet is an eco-technology appropriate to the communities to the community context, provides a service for basic sanitation and contributes to improve health and the environment. Eco-technologies are environmentally friendly technologies, they are prototypes or projects that come to cover basic needs of communities such as stoves, dry toilets and biofilters”.

In Los Altos de Chiapas, Amextra works in the communities of Chalchihuitán, where a large part of the population does not have toilets, so they use latrines, defecate in the open near their homes or family backyards, or very few people have a septic tank. Any of these three options contaminates and causes a health problem, therefore, gastrointestinal diseases frequently occur.

Julio César Díaz, coordination of this region, mentions that, with the analysis of water that is carried out in the communities, they have detected the presence of fecal esses and E. coil bacteria in the water that comes mainly from the waterholes, amd that it is that consumed by families in the absence of drinking water. For this reason, they work with comprehensive programs to propose solutions to these problems from health and nutrition, education and care for the environment.

The dry toilet began to be implemented at the end of 2017, when the first prototype was made, but the structure had materials that were difficult to load and take to the most distant communities, for this reason it was changed for a metal base, sand and combined with wood and other more accessible materials.

“An ecological dry toilet cup is used that separates the pee and poop, there is no combination of liquids and solids, that means that it does not stink and ash is added, and the waste is composted. The urine stream can be used directly for the soil or to make some kind of biofertilizer.”

As of 2018, 16 more dry toilets were made, because families continued to defecate in the open air or in their latrines, and serious health problems began to be detected that were reflected in anthropometric monitoring, where it was seen that children were underweight, anemic and with gastrointestinal diseases.

“Implementing and promoting dry toilets is a variable program, in rural and urban communities. If you defecate in the open you affect the environment. If you have a latrine, you contaminate the soil and aquifers. The septic tank contaminates groundwater. The drainage also contaminates, it goes towards the aquifers, to the rivers and it contaminates the water and the living beings that live there. Everything tends to contaminate. Instead of contaminating, dry toilets help, you use the waste as fertilizer or compost, for crops such as fruit trees or corn. This composted waste is reintegrated without contaminating the soil”.

Before giving a dry toilet to a family, a series of comprehensive training is carried out, later, the use and appropriation is built and monitored. In this process there is constant monitoring. For example, the Amextra health promoter keeps a logbook where she records which families use the waste for compost, performs anthropometric measurements and detects the frequency of diseases, and gives workshops on personal and home hygiene.

The use of the dry toilet, as a new technology in the communities, was not easy, because the families were not used to it. For this reason, some used both toilets: the dry toilet and the latrine, and little by little, when the transition was made, they closed the latrine. Where the adaptation was faster, it was with those who defecated in the open air. This appropriation process has been going on for 5 years in Amextra.

Seeing the improvements in their quality of life and comfort, more people joined Amextra’s activities and groups in the communities, which is why 3 more bathrooms were built last year, however, due to lack of budget in the regions, it has not been possible to build more for the new families that are integrating.

Finally, Julio César Díaz invites us to:

“Let’s raise awareness and don’t be afraid to explore new ways to sustain our home that are very functional and can improve our quality of life, in the community or in the urban environment. Having eco-techniques that are friendly to the environment leads us to have a fuller life, here where we live, which is our only home: planet Earth”