WASHplus Weekly: WASH and Household Energy Entrepreneurs

Issue 72 September 28, 2012 | Focus on Entrepreneurship in WASH and Household Energy 

This issue contains some of the latest news and announcements about the role of entrepreneurs in providing water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) and household energy products and services. This includes several winners of the Social Entrepreneurs 2012 award by the Schwab Foundation and USAID support for commercializing hand washing and establishing markets for cookstoves in Haiti. Also included is a link to cookstove market assessments by the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, which provide suggestions for removing barriers that prevent the creation of a cookstove market for more than 20 countries.

• Link to Weekly

US philanthropist aims to build 1 million toilets

John Kluge. Photo: EastWest Institute

The number of US philanthropists with a passion for sanitation has now doubled. Following in the footsteps of Bill Gates who launched Reinventing the Toilet, “Chief Toilet Hacker” John Kluge aims to provide 1 million toilets in the developing world. To kick-start this endeavour, Eirene, a company that Kluge co-founded with fellow toilet hacker, Michael TS Lindenmayer, is launching a global Sanitation Hackathon in December 2012.

For the Sanitation Hackathon, Eirene is teaming up with the World Bank’s Water Practice and ICT unit and the Water and Sanitation Program (WSP), which hosted the successful Water Hackathon in October 2011. Other partners supporting this initiative include the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Gensler, IDEO.org and Columbia University.

At least 1,000 toilet hackers from across 9 countries are expected to join in.

We have dug into the problem at the most local level and have asked some of the greatest global minds to also tackle the issue as well. These toilet hackers come from all kinds of backgrounds. Engineers, material scientists all the way to street artists, micro-entrepreneurs and inventors of all stripes are all becoming toilet hackers

Forbes has identified John Kluge (29) as one of “philanthropy’s up-and-coming faces”. He is the adopted son of John Kluge Sr., “once the richest man in America, and is is committed to ensuring 95% of his late father’s assets go towards philanthropy”. His company Eirene focuses on tackling problems like sanitation that affect at least 1 billion people. Kluge is also a resident fellow at the EastWest Institute and a memnber of UNICEF USA’s Next Generation Steering Committee.

Follow John Kluge on Twitter @klugesan and the Sanitation Hackathon with the Twitter hashtags #toilethacker and #sanhack

Source: John Kluge, Hacking Toilets the World Over, Huffington Post, 25 Sep 2012 ; Forbes 400 Richest Americans – Ones to Watch – John Kluge

Golden Poo Award Finalist – Bum Bay

Sanitation Updates’ favourite to win the 2012 Golden Poo Award for best short film has to be Bum Bay. Set to the tune of the 1969 Indo-pop hit “Bombay Meri Hai” – transformed to “Bum Bay Meri Hai” – we see a mock tourist promotion film interspersed with explicit scenes of male open defecation.

The film was made by renowned Indian film advertising company Genesis run by Prahlad Kakar.

The business of the honey-suckers in Bengaluru (India) – new IRC publication

A new IRC paper explores some contributions being made by honey-sucker tanker operators — that renders a small-scale sanitation service informally and within the private sector — on waste (faecal) extraction and, in some cases, reuse. Operating outside the legal framework of waste management, this paper provides preliminary insight into the limitations and potentials of the ‘honey-sucker business’ as a sanitation service model, based on selected experiences in Bengaluru (India).

Global Handwashing Day celebrates 5th anniversary on 15 October

Global Handwashing Day is a global celebration of handwashing with soap involving over 200 million people in over 100 countries worldwide

In 2012, Global Handwashing Day will share its 5th anniversary with over 121 million children who are also celebrating their 5th birthday this year. Handwashing with soap can reduce the incidence of diarrhoea among children under five by almost 50 per cent, and respiratory infections by nearly 25 per cent. That’s why this year’s theme is “Help More Children Reach Their 5th Birthday”.

Logos, guidelines and information packs can be downloaded from the Global Handwashing Day website. There is a promotional Twitter/Facebook game called “World Wash Up”. The official Twitter hashtag for Global Handwashing Day is #iwashmyhands

Web site: globalhandwashing.org/ghw-day

The “World WASH UP” game created by Periscopic for the Global Public-Private Partnership for Handwashing (PPPHW)

African Sanitation Think Tank to be launched at high level meeting

Water and Sanitation for Africa (WSA) will launch the African Sanitation Think Tank (ASTT) at a high level forum in Senegal this December. The aim of the think thank is show how sanitation policies can be translated into action on the ground.

The initial ASTT activities will be based on the interim findings from two WSA studies – ‘Economic and Financial Models for Pricing and Setting Sanitation Tariffs for the benefit of the Urban Poor’ and ‘On-site Sanitation’.

The ASTT launch will take place during the 2nd Africa High Level Forum on Water and Sanitation for all, which is scheduled for 12-14 December 2012 in Dakar, Senegal. The theme of the forum is “Innovative Financing and Investments to accelerate access to water and sanitation in Africa”.

Other sanitation-related highlights of the forum include:

• a session led by His Royal Highness Prince of Orange on UNSGAB’s ‘Sanitation Drive to 2015’ Initiative
• Innovations Fair – Re-Invent the Toilet: Africa
• Launch of the Sanitation and Water for Africa Development Initiative Fund (SWADIF)

Related web sites:

• 2nd Africa High Level Forum on Water and Sanitation for all
• Water and Sanitation for Africa (WSA)
• UNSGAB – ‘Sanitation Drive to 2015’

 

Videos and more from the vibrant Sustainable Sanitation Alliance (SuSanA) meeting during Stockholm World Water week

Sustainable sanitation experts and enthusiast gathered at the SuSanA meeting in Stockholm two weeks ago where they exchanged experiences from their global programmes, networked and begun conversations about future collaboration. The meeting material, which includes videos of the presentations, powerpoint presentations for download and photos are now available online. 

• The meeting page – Links to all the presentations, the videos and the photos from the meeting

Moreover be aware of the vibrant discussions that are taking place on the SuSanA forum that have resulted out of the meeting two weeks ago.

• About the meeting here.
• A new initiative by working group 5 here.
• The drafting of a mission statement for SuSanA here.
• Discussion on SuSanA partner mapping here.
• Discussion on the post-2015 indicators for sanitation here.

Feel free to take part in the discussion and become part of the SuSanA community.

The JMP Post-2015 indicators on WASH in schools are a step in the right direction

The JMP Post-2015 Working Groups have proposed targets and indicators for WASH in schools to be included in future global monitoring of water, sanitation and hygiene. Have they got it right or should they start again from scratch? Overall, most participants in an e-debate on this topic think that they did get it right, but that the indicators still needed refining to make them really useful and easy to monitor.

Making sanitation subsidies effective: an IRC summer debate

By Carmen da Silva Wells

Every year, diarrhoea kills more children in developing countries than AIDS, malaria and measles combined (Pruss-Ustun 2008). Sanitation subsidies are a common tool used to motivate households to construct toilets. This seems an obvious response: many who lack access to sanitation are extremely poor and the potential public health benefits of universal access to safe sanitation are immense. But what is a subsidy? All programmes have some form of subsidy – so the question is HOW to use them effectively.

On the 11th of September, IRC debated the pros and cons of sanitation subsidies. The debate started with short presentations for and against sanitation subsidies. After that, discussions shifted towards a common definition of a subsidy and improvements to ensure subsidies contribute to sustainable services.

Peepoo toilets in flood emergencies in Sindh, Pakistan and Kisumu, Kenya