From Channel 19: A Global Social Media Network. Get a glimpse of sanitation in India.

---

Shigella is a bacteria that thrives where basic sanitation and clean drinking water are not. Right now, that’s Haiti. People who lost their homes are living in tent cities. Waste is accumulating. Water is hard to find.

The New York Times reports:

The problem has become impossible to overlook in many districts of Port-au-Prince, with the stench of decomposing bodies replaced by that of excrement. Children in some camps that are still lacking latrines and portable toilets play in open areas scattered with the waste. The light rains here this week caused some donated latrines in the camps to overflow, illustrating how the problem would grow more acute as the rainy season intensified in the months ahead.

The earthquakes may be over, but Haiti still needs help. In fact, the place was in need of severe help before the earthquake. Stand With Haiti, donate to Partners in Health. They’ve been on the scene for many years and are still there.

The Humanure Handbook: A Guide to Composting Human Manure describes how to collect human manure and use it. This video shows how to make a human manure compost pile.

This is the story of an ingenious solution for poverty alleviation using human urine and faeces! See it to believe it…

Interesting article on Treehugger discusses how biogas is improving life in Uganda:

“In developing countries – where food is scarce and reliable energy supplies are even scarcer – necessity often becomes the mother of invention; so it is in Uganda, where farmers have resorted to using human urine and excreta – mixed in with banana peels, algae, water hyacinth and poultry droppings – as an inexpensive source of biogas. This cheap alternative is being pushed by Heifer International Uganda (HIU), an NGO working to reduce hunger and poverty around the world by sharing livestock and knowledge.”

For more information, see “Human Poop and Urine Provide Cheap Biogas Source in Uganda.”

More and more communities around the world are finding that public utilities are being outsourced to mega corporations. Novato, a small city in Marin County, California recently made news in the New York Times (In Marin County, a Public Fight Over Private Control of Sewage). Novato wants to stop the French multi-national corporation Veolia from getting a contract to maintain the Novato wastewater treatment plant.

The Alliance of Concerned Citizens of Novato is:

” . . . an association formed by Novato residents to prevent the privatization (outsourcing) of the operations and maintenance of Novato Sanitary District’s new $90 million wastewater treatment facility. ACCNovato is an alliance of citizens who wish to keep our Novato utilities public with local control!”

Although the Novato wastewater agency has had its share of problems (investigated by the EPA and FBI For dumping sewage in the Bay), outsourcing to a French company is not the solution. Veolia has a poor environmental record. It also tried to buy the Novato district board elections to get Veolia sympathizers on the board.

Now that Thanksgiving is over, it’s time to make those Christmas lists. I’m sure there is someone on the list who you feel obligated to give a gift, but has everything. Or maybe they don’t have everything, but you haven’t a clue what to get. Maybe you always pick out the wrong thing and your gift gets regifted or unused.

This year, consider the perfect solution. A toilet. On the behalf of the person you need to get the gift for, buy a toilet for someone who really needs one. There are millions of people in the developing world who don’t have a pot to piss in — literally. Your gift recipient will get a warm, fuzzy feeling at the thought you put into this gift and the fact that your gift will have a major impact on the life of someone else.

Vist the World Toilet Organization to find out how you can gift a toilet.

For Your Convenience made the shortlist for the Golden Poo Awards 2009.

Yup. The dry urine diversion toilet is designed to do just that. There are big health risks with handling poop. It can make you sick because it contains such things as bacteria, viruses, protozoa, and parasitic worms.

Urine is another matter. People have been using pee for eons to do such things as set dye colors. It’s also a great fertilizer. In contrast to feces, urine is almost sterile and contains lots of nitrogen. So why not funnel off the urine and use for agriculture and let the poop go elsewhere?

---

The dry toilet is popular in Mexico, South Africa, Finland, and Sweden and gaining footholds elsewhere. It also saves water.

Find out more:

• Sustainable Organic Integrated Livelihoods
• Global Dry Toilet Association of Finland

Peter J. Speed’s animation Poo in Passing was shortlisted for the Golden Poo Awards 2009.