Winter Work Summary

The sanitation group of Design for a Sustainable World has partnered with Parishudh, an NGO initiative funded by the Infosys Foundation that works on developing sustainable sanitation systems in the Indian state of North Karnataka.  The goal of the program is to reduce open defecation in the region through the construction of 10,000 toilets for homeowners in rural areas and the education of 100,000 families  in sustainable sanitation.   

To figure out how to address all the issues in the project, our team has divided into three groups. The first group is focused on “awareness”: the problem of how to get the community to comfortably agree with our sanitation goals. Many of the people we’ll be working with have not ever considered using a toilet and don’t see the benefits. One of the main methods we’ll be developing next quarter is the “Community-Led Total Sanitation” (CLTS) method that hopes to involve the population in championing this effort in each village with the goal of eventual sanitation for all. This approach would focus on making the users a part of the solution, rather than the cause of a problem.

The second group is the “engineering, procurement, and construction” group, which focuses on the all the elements of actual toilet design, construction and wastewater management. This group will address all the questions and issues surrounding each possible toilet design, as well as the water supply chain. The goal of this section for next quarter is to come up with a few well-thought-out design and construction plans for pre-fabricated, low-cost toilets that fit different locations.

The final group is addressing issues of finance. The main question this group is tackling is how to get a large-scale toilet project to be financially viable. They will analyze possible funding sources such as the Indian government and world health organizations, as well as develop sustainable models to incorporate funding from the villagers themselves. In addition, the finance group will also focus on risk assessment and mitigation to improve chances of investment from Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiatives.

Spring Quarter Awareness Plan

1.)  Working collaboratively with local organizations that are already set up in the areas

1. Find out if there are local organization in the area that are already focusing on sanitation
2. Determine if these organizations want to partner
3. Create an incentive for these organizations to partner

2.)  Develop an incentive (no wedding without a toilet) or disincentive (toilet shame) program to motivate people to use the toilet

1. Determine what it is that will motivate people to use the toilet
2. Provide a cash incentive to people who promote the toilets

3.)  Create a way to target decision makers, marketing strategy for men in power positions, and may possibly already own a toilet

1. Research who the decisions makers are in each area
2. Determine what is preventing people from wanting the toilets
3. Build a marketing strategy for each gender and age group
4. Research what has worked to promote toilet use

4.)  Set up a program where the community is educated and then takes responsibility for finding a solution that works for them.

1. Implement CLTS
2. Train leaders
3. Incentive for people to be leaders
4. Find a way to create a sense of ownership and responsibility within the communities

Water Reuse Plan

Ariel Hippe

For the spring quarter I plan to focus on engineering procurement.  More specifically, I would like to focus my attention on the design of the outflow and use of the wastewater.  Water is a valuable resource, and implementing some form of water reuse is a way to add significant value to the project.  In order to make progress on this issue I believe that the two big questions that need to be answered are what methods of water reuse would be acceptable to the local populations and what methods of water reuse are safe, practical and useful.  These questions can be further broken down as shown below.

What methods of water reuse are socially acceptable?

• What do the users view as the main problems with water reuse?
  • Safety
  • Stigma/disgust
  • Aesthetics (smell, etc.)
  • Other
• Are people more comfortable with water reuse if the water is not seen?
• What water demands are users comfortable with meeting with reused water?

What methods of water reuse are safe, practical and useful?

• Groundwater recharge
  • Is it effective?  Does the wastewater actually help maintain the water table?
  • What measures would have to be taken to make sure the water doesn’t contaminate drinking water supplies?
  • Subsurface irrigation
    • Which crops are safe to grow on leach fields?
    • What measures would have to be taken to make sure pathogens don’t contaminate crops?
    • Would maintenance issues be a concern?
    • Would leach fields provide sufficient water for crops?
    • Surface irrigation
      • What measures would have to be taken to make sure pathogens don’t contaminate crops and people who come in contact with the water?
      • How expensive would it be to set up the necessary pumps?
      • Other options?

During the spring  quarter I plan to use these and other questions to narrow down the possible methods of water reuse to find an option that is socially acceptable, safe, and economically feasible.

Marching towards Spring

Afroz

My expectation of the spring quarter is to aim for maximum collaboration on the team to create inspired solutions. I’m looking forward to working on Engineering & Procurement and Awareness Strategies.

Engineering & Procurement

I think a wonderful way to begin the quarter would be by trying to answer the questions that Sonya raised in her post about Engineering & Procurement. She covers a wide range of interesting aspects of design problem, which provides a structured direction for our problem solving. As I was thinking about what I can add to her comprehensive list without risking redundancy, I decided to focus this post on how to tackle Sonya’s decidedly tough questions. And that was how this list came into being :

How do we “work” on the design problem to create the best solution?

1.    Explode & Dissect.

This stems from my neurotic need to write down the “given” quantities or variables whenever I begin solving a numerical problem. To jump right in, the questions we’ll ask ourselves would be:

1. What kind of toilet technology currently exists? Is there a model solution out there that would fit our needs with minimal tweaking?
2.  Why currently? Is there ancient wisdom, or indigenous innovations in the developing world that were created to deal with sanitation?
3.  If all else fails, how can we build a toilet from a scratch? Do we really need all the parts? Does it have to be shaped the same way, or be the same size as our base model?
4. Would it still work if we switched the conventional building materials with locally available substitutes?

Every team meeting would end with a short informal showcase of the product under current consideration. This would keep things focused, and light.

2.     The Toilet Matters.

Why do you not head out into the wilderness when nature calls? To explore this idea further, we could dig deeper into the thoughts of those who do use a toilet in the community, to see what persuaded them to make the shift.

Work Activity : Get the whiteboard buzzing with responses to :

1. What does the toilet represent?
2. How can we use our design to create positive feelings towards hygiene?
3. How can we make this transition seem natural and easy?

End with : A rapid fire round to discuss why these ideas would not work.

3.     Your My Our Sanitation Problem.

The designer who can envision the most practical solution is – the user. As part of our need finding, we could include questions to spark off both user design input, and involvement. 

“If you would have to convince someone you know that open defecation is weighing the community down, how would you do it?”

“Can you think of a directed government/NGO program you most benefitted from? What was different about it?”

Work Activity :

1. When can you ask these questions in an informal setting?
2. Can we make use of the “wait times” at certain services?

Awareness Strategies

For the spring quarter, I would like to approach awareness strategies with the intent of truly integrating our sanitation project into the community.

1.   Maximizing benefits

How can we plug our ideas into the existing infrastructure and programs? Can the experience we design nudge users into thinking about health and wellbeing in a broader context?

2.     Targeted user awareness

The idea would be to seamlessly bring awareness into everyday life and gain credibility and attention by fostering familiarity. It would also be necessary to use ideas that appeal to, or motivate specific user groups like school children, parents, young adults, labor workers and so on. Some examples of the concept would be gamification of the program for kids, creating safe spaces or bonding zones for the women, using numerical or visually represented statistics in native lingo that shock or create unease.

3.     Measuring impact

The inclusion of a built-in measurement or feedback systems in the awareness strategies could result in much needed data and insights that could help future projects in addressing community needs. These direct user responses would be a measure of success of the project, and could potentially be used when looking for program sponsorship or funding in times to come.

Awareness: Plans and Solutions

Brooke

1.Define target groups- Pick communities that would be ideal for CLTS                        

• Start with rural communities because 85% of people that lack access to sanitation live in rural areas

2. Define the needs of the community                                                                          

• Target men or women? Where toilets should be located? Urban or Rural area? Social conventions? How are toilets viewed? Size? Disease Prevalence?

3. Funding                                                                                                                        

• One for One Movement: Play off of successes of TOMS and One Laptop Per Child and work with toilet companies to donate toilets or funding for toilets when someone buys a certain toilet.                                                                                      
• Diarrheal disease claims the lives of 1.6 million children annually- Buy a toilet and have toilet made in household with a child under 5

4. Implement Awareness Solutions                                                                      

• Education and advertisement in schools and in community meetings: Work with the “poop group” to determine what kind of information is the most effective.

• Implement “sanitary certification” in the community and use LEED certification as a template.

  LEED is a point-based system where building projects earn LEED points for satisfying specific green building criteria.

  LEED Ranking Scale (Based off of 100 points):

  Certified 40–49 points

  -Silver 50–59 points

  -Gold 60–79 points

  -Platinum 80 points and above

• Scored based on Sustainable Sites (SS), Water Efficiency (WE), Energy and Atmosphere (EA), Materials and Resources (MR) and Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ)

• Sanitary Certification: Similar point system based on percentages of homes with toilets, percentage of community involved in efforts, upkeep of toilets… etc.

• Whenever household receives a toilet have a stake or sign outside of home that shows their sanitation efforts.

• Change the role of the waste collectors focus on the outcome of their work and that they bring cleanliness rather than what they take away.

  Scavenger week- A week without scavengers to get people to see how important they really are.

Financial Viability – Considering CSR

Isaac

Financial viability is an important component to assuring the sustainability of this sanitation project. More specifically, we’ll need to explore ways in which Parishudh does not continue to lose money in the endeavor. Thus, there are a number of angles that we could take to explore this. One potential is corporate social responsibility. One study demonstrates that CSR has the potential for large impact in the sanitation space. There are, however, some barriers, as they mention:

-Sanitation is still largely a taboo topic, this may make it difficult to serve as the driver for large scale CSR campaigns

-There’s little data suggesting potential profit

-Infrastructure investments, especially in developing countries, tend to be risky, with limited return

Thus, moving forward:

-Financial viability is closely tied to awareness. The social taboo surrounding sanitation is one that not only needs to be combatted in the rural areas in which we are working, but also in business meetings and board meetings in which CSR is evaluated.

-Parishudh’s financials are important. How much are they spending? On what? Are they making any money? If so, how? If not, is there a way in which they could? These are all things we’ll need to consider before encouraging CSR because these are the questions corporations will be asking.

-Minimizing investment risk will be essential. To do this, it’s most likely that CSR will be achieved through preexisting partnerships or relationships. Perhaps, groups that work closely with Infosys/Parishudh will have a greater line of communication and trust that would instill greater confidence in investments. But more importantly, we’ll need to analyze potential sources of risk. Clearly, there are many, but some of the more interesting/nuanced ones manifest on the awareness side of things. In other words, what do people themselves in these rural communities think of the sanitation facilities? Is there a demand? A willingness to pay? Are there instances of rejection or failure? These are important things to consider, and they should be framed in our surveys.

Engineering and Procurement – Spring Quarter

Sonya Mollinger

For next quarter, there are many questions that we need to answer in the EPC section. The best way to think about this is focusing in on a goal, analyzing paths to answer it, focusing in on one (or many) of those paths, and repeating. For example, I think we need to investigate many of the following questions:

Engineering and Procurement: focusing on the first goal.

Reducing Construction Time can be achieved by a number of ways including

– Training Skilled Workers

or

– Developing a Pre-fabricated Toilet (for on-site assembly/installation)

Focusing on the second sub-goal, a pre-fabricated toilet requires

– Which design will be the one chosen for pre-fabrication, or should we do multiple designs for this goal (as well as for the general toilet design goal).

– for one design:

   – which materials lend themselves most easily to the process

   – which components are cheapest to manufacture

   – which design is easiest to assemble

   – where will the materials come from

   – where will this be manufactured (close or far)

   – how heavy are the toilet components

   – how many people does it require to install it

   – what kind of stability components does it require to fix it to the location

   – how will it interface with the wastewater treatment system

   – what is the lifetime of the product

   – what maintenance does it require

focusing in on what is the lifetime of the product:

   – do the materials break down due to environmental pressures

   – does repeated use cause mechanical failure

   – what are the weaknesses of the connections to each other and to the treatment system

   – do the toilet and the treatment have the same lifetime scales

   – how can the user break the design

I am interested in working in Engineering and Procurement next quarter, and also potentially contributing to the Finance section.

Wastewater Management Group Update

Sonya Mollinger

When thinking about wastewater treatment this week I focused on the requirements of the system for using wastewater as irrigation. Some of the important things to note were:

1) the salinity tolerance of crop that will be used with the water needs to be coordinated with/accounted for;

2) ensuring that the plants will not absorb any toxic elements;

3) more centralized planning is need to arrange how the wastewater will travel from the toilet to the treatment location to the irrigation area;

4) the type of irrigation needs to be considered when coordinating this; and

5) the finances of wastewater treatment (the farmer/the toilet owner/the treatment plant owner) need to be extensively considered. All of this requires a good deal more research.

Pranav Pai 

Wastewater treatment in India is a growing concern, especially since the constant release of untreated wastewater has resulted in increased pollution and depletion of clean water resources throughout the country. In India, only 60% of industrial water and 26% of domestic water is currently treated, according to Avalon Global Research.

Urban Areas – According to Centre Pollution Control Board (CPCB) study, out of 38254 MLD of sewage generated in India, treatment facilities are available for 30% (11787MLD). The indiscriminate disposal of domestic wastewater is the main reason for degradation of water quality in urban areas, with negative impacts on health, the economy, and the environment. Major part of urban India is yet to be connected to the municipal sewage system and people are mainly dependent on conventional individual septic tanks. It is estimated that about 29% of the India’s population uses septic tanks (USAID ,2010).

In India, there is no separate policy or regulation for sewage management. However, there are several environmental laws, which prohibit discharge of sewage into a water body or on land without proper treatment beyond the prescribed standards. Consent is required for disposal of sewage or sewage from State Pollution Control Boards under the law.

In rural areas, enforcement of these laws is even harder, leading to neglect of the basic problem of wastewater management. It is important to move local agencies to manage wastewater in an effective manner. A system that includes the strengthening of these local bodies and involvement of private service providers to ensure revenue generation, effective collection, transport, treatment and disposal of wastewater seems to be the need of the hour.

There are detailed WHO guidelines for wastewater reuse, and there are several methods that can be applied in the Parishudh project. An exploration of these methods will help us determine the best-fit models for wastewater management.

Isaac Madan

Wastewater treatment is an important component of our project, as it will help not only divert waste, but reduce it and prevent possibilities of recontamination while supporting an environmental benefit. Wastewater treatment systems are often implemented at a large, municipal scale, but these systems can be hard to fund and maintain especially in developing countries. Thus, to support wastewater treatment in rural India, where we are building toilets, we will be faced with a difficult task and will have to design our solution carefully. Wastewater treatment, it seems, can be broadly categorized into 4 main steps: pre, primary, secondary, and tertiary treatment. Pre treatment tends to involve standard mesh filtration, primary treatment allows for waste to settle, secondary treatment usually involves chemical processes, often biological in nature, and tertiary treatment enables higher quality treatment via disinfection, etc. accomplished by UV, for example. 

To accomplish these goals one such study in rural Beijing describes the major components of a wastewater treatment system that they have successfully employed. Namely, the steps are: source collection, sewage transfer, rural domestic sewage treatment, circle water system for distribution. Source collection was achieved through a piping system that collected toilet waste; these pipes then transfer the sewage downhill via gravity flow to a location where primary, secondary, and tertiary treatment can occur. After treatment, the water is then appropriately redistributed so it can be reused in the community (for irrigation, farming, etc.). Based on this description, it’s evident that certain systems will place great demand on infrastructure, namely our toilet design will need to be closely coordinated with our wastewater system, and we’ll need a good understanding of how, more generally, the region is laid out (physical terrain, potential uses of treated wastewater, proximity of homes, etc).

Afroz Algiers

The inherent challenge with wastewater treatment seems to be the public perception of the outflow. It would be interesting to explore how much of an aversion there really is to wastewater reuse amongst the locals. If such a reluctance is expressed predominantly within the stakeholders, it would necessitate designing a “hidden” or indirectly used reclamation system for the treated effluents. This may also be a strong reason to push for waterless/low flow toilets. The case study of borewells dramatically improving drinking water access in India, while also depleting the groundwater tables seems remains a relevant lesson to keep in mind. The setting up of a sewerage system with effluents being treated and circulated around sensitive areas has the potential to stumble into bigger, unseen problems in the future. This makes waste-water treatment and proper reuse critical to the success of a sanitation project.