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Description

A clean, comforatable, compact box shaped toilet facility, separating urine and feaces for recycling on behalf of urban farming, meant for densely populated areas.

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BathroomBox
<< Back to category Water & Sanitation

Prototype Twentyfold cost reduction Applicable within poverty Comfort Health Urban



Why

  • Clean and comfortable private sanitation in urban conditions integrated in a system of off-plot santation.
  • Re-use of human waste for urban farming initiated by local entrepreneurship
  • No sewerage, no spill of flush water
  • A solution for proper sanitation in densely populated areas, while taking into account all aspects of hygiene, comfort as well as the recycling of human waste.
  • An alternative for sewerage that is costly to lay out in an existing urban situation, an alternative for the need of filtering of sewerage fluids
  • Self-sustaining entrepreneurship should take initiative for providing sanitation facilities to the local community
  • To become available within the economic reach of the very poor. -
  • To be part of the promotion of urban farming.
  • Construction and upkeep of the facility has to done with locally available means.

    How

  • A box shaped toilet, designed to collect faeces and urine in separate partitions. The box offers a comfortable position to sit on or to squat. It prevents stink by forced ventilation. The Bathroom Box offers pressurized water for cleansing in front and rear, while preventing wash water to enter the faeces compartment.
  • The box is small in size and easily stored when not is use.
  • With the top part with seat and wash facility taken off, the container can be rolled to a nearby location where faeces and urine are collected and processed for recycling.
  • Recycling is done by dry fermentation, while isolating human waste fully from the surrounding. The recycling of human waste into fertilizer for urban agriculture is profitable for the local entrepreneurship. This will include the distribution of the toilet units. In this way it is ascertained that also poor neighborhoods are serviced.
  • The Bathroom box itself is made from recycled plastic in a local workshop.

    Top picture shows prototype, remark the small size of the box, yet sufficient for two day's use for a family.
    Lower picture shows testing of rolling the unit, by now perfected to a level usefull in practice.





  • Planned progress

    • Develop and test functions as rolling and emptying of the unit,
    • Develop and test the means for personal cleansing with water
    • Link to ongoing projects related to sanitation and urban farming
    • Find out more about ongoing projects and policies of governments or NGO's related to urban farming



    Internal links

    Progress report in the Dutch language May 15th 2003

    Progress with the development of the BathroomBox is described in general terms in the Dutch language.

    Human excrement: the unmentionable global crisis noname

    Copied from ID 21Urban Development Monday 4th August 2008
    http://www.id21.org/urban/u6mb1g1.html

    Although 2008 is the International Year of Sanitation, 40 percent of the world’s population, 2.6 billion people, have nowhere to relieve themselves in dignity. Instead, they are forced to use alleyways, waste-tips, river banks, railway lines and fields. Massive improvement in health and human dignity could be achieved by the safe disposal of excreta.

    Making the Cement Pot for the Solar Bathroom Box

    The base for the SolarBathroomBox is a stable square cement pot. Making it from cement allows to give it the most functional form. Production can be done small scale in a way well known in shanty towns. Local capacity and local need for proper sanitation comes together this way. This was a first test to learn to make such a toilet pot. The result was very already very useful, also indication where many improvement could be made in the next experiment: 30% less weight, less taper, round top, easier production.



    External Links

    Links related to Uban Farming

    Links related to composting and urine separating toilets

    Links related to availability of recycling plastic for the manufacture of toilets

    Promoting Composting and Sanitation entrepeneurship

    Links related to Biogas digesters

    Additional links

    • The Sulabh International Social Service Organisation, the largest nationally and internationally recognised pan-India social service outfit with 35,000 volunteers on the rolls who work to promote human rights, environmental sanitation, health and hygiene, non-conventional sources of energy, waste management and social reforms through education, training and awareness campaig
      http://www.sulabhinternational.org/

    Links related to Sanitation for the Urban Poor

    • Sustainable Technologies for Waste Managment
      Sulabh is the pioneering organisation in India, involved in the fields of human waste disposal. The two-pit pour flush toilets (popularly known as Sulabh toilet) developed and modified by Sulabh is nationally and internationally recognised design for safe and hygienic disposal of human wastes.
      http://216.239.59.104/search?q=cache:06zjY1-6rOYJ:www.ias.unu.edu/pro...

    • Send us an email form about any relevant link, that should be added here


    What other people say...

    If you like you can add your own comment

    by Reinder van Tijen - Sat Dec 02 (2006)
    Planning
    Test

    by Stijn - Wed Dec 06 (2006)
    test
    test test
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    When message is ready press or press to start over.

    by Reinder van Tijen - Wed Dec 06 (2006)
    New start with a feedback form for each item
    Some time Demotech had been in doubt how to handle the forum function that is advocated in the main menu. The way it was designed by our web master from the start was to provide one forum item for each item. This proved to be not very inviting. Over the years only few people used it. And their contributions were not very neatly displayed. Less clear as in the more standard forum. So the offer of Sander Bokern was gladly accepted to provide such a forum, Sander planned to build this forum function from scratch. It took him some time to do so. When the contours of his work became clear, it also became clear we were not really equipped to provide the care and the time to keep it going. In the mean time Demotech got involved with Appropedia. Their staff highly appreciated Demotech's content. Some of this content was ported to their pages. The Wiki-structure of Appropedia (identical to WikiPedia) offered a natural environment for feedback and participation. A new idea was born: could we not port the short description of each design item to the Category structure of Appropedia? And add to this content a link back to the original content on the Demotech website? People from ApproPedia said that they liked the idea. So for Demotech this also became an attractive option. The only remaining problem: it is a lot of work and time is already scarce. This is what we have decided to do: - Work towards porting summaries of Demotech's design initiatives to ApproPedia, _ Invite feedback and participation from people visiting these Appropedia pages, - Improve slightly the form function as it was up to now at the Demotech web pages, such as to show only the first lines of a contribution ending with a clickable "More".

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    stadsboeren, compost, compostering, hygiene, krottenwijken, riolering, sanitaire zorg, ondersteek, ouderenzorg, off-plot sanitation, ....