The Right to Water & Sanitation

Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the USSR and founder of Green Cross International, published an op-ed in the New York Times about the ongoing efforts at the UN to recognize right to water and sanitation as a basic human right. It is exciting to see water and sanitation issues take center stage at world forums not just as an important issue but as a essential human right. As Mr. Gorbachev says, this is indeed a great achievement. 190 countries have signed on, yet, countries like Canada and United States have refused to come on board.

A Sea of Roses

One of the primary revenue streams for Sanergy is the high-quality organic fertilizer we will generate from the waste collected. We are particularly interested in contracting with commercial farms for our potentially large quantities of fertilizers. 

Roses as far as the eye can see

Today, I spent they day at Karaturi Rose Farms, one of the biggest commercial farms in Kenya, with about 500 acres under cultivation on the shores of Lake Naivasha. Each day, they export nearly 1 million roses to Europe accounting for about 6.5% of global rose production. Using a combination of greenhouse and open field production techniques, they grow 26 varieties of roses throughout the year. Their streamlined process moves a rose stem from harvesting to grading to packing to shipping in less than 24 hours and delivers it to Amsterdam in less than 36 hours. 

Vermicomposting and regular composting in action

Karaturi piqued my interest, in part, because of their focus on social welfare and environmental impact. They have nursery, primary, and secondary schools that are free of charge for the families of their 5,000 workers. They also provide a free 40-bed hospital that is open to the community. Recently, they have enhanced their efforts to reduce their carbon footprint (and consequently cut costs) through renewable energy and organic fertilizers. In this vein, they have started piloting vermicomposting as well as regular composting. 

In another effort, they're connecting the 26 septic tanks from their workers' housing blocks to a biogas facility that will generate electricity for the farm. They estimate about 4 tons of waste is pumped from their septic tanks each each day, with about 1 - 2 tons usable in generating about 1000 cubic meters of biogas each day. Once installed, it will be one of the largest biogas generation facilities in Kenya.

Even with all these greening efforts, they anticipate that the waste products from their farms will meet only about 20% of their fertilizer and renewable energy needs. Clearly, Kenyan commercial farms hold a vast and unserviced need for organic fertilizer and energy. This is the market we, at Sanergy, look forward to tapping into.

Mr. Muscle to the Rescue

As much as we focus on the technical challenges of building toilets, the real battle is the maintenance. In Kibera, 65% of the toilets are not operational because the pits are full and there is no means to empty it or because the toilets are broken and nobody has the responsibility to fix them. But even more often, residents can't use the toilets because of the seemingly simple problem of keeping them clean. 

This morning I shadowed a team from Community Cleaning Services (CCS), a for-profit subsidiary of SC Johnson, which is trying to tackle exactly this problem one toilet at a time. Justin DeKozmovsky, who spearheads the BOP iniatives at SC Johnson, founded CCS 2 years ago and has been vital to its continued growth. Each team operates as an independent franchise responsible for securing their own clients but receiving training and supplies from CCS headquarters.

The first set of toilets we cleaned in the Kawangware slum are a classic example: 45 families, each consisting of 4-5 members, share three toilets. The landlord originally built the toilets but the maintenance is left to the tenants. The latrines are designed to be pour-flush and supposedly connect to the sewer, although the waste was actually flowing into an open pit outside. However, there was no water available to flush the waste, and the pipes taking the waste away were too small and frequently clog. Newspapers used as toilet paper and plastic bag flying toilets exacerbate the clogging issues. In just the 3 days since the last visit by the CCS team, the feces had overflowed the squat pan and collected all the way to the door.

Before the cleaning

Armed with scrubbers, mops, and SC Johnson's own Toilet Duck and Mr. Muscle, the brave CCS team dove right in. In just 45 minutes they uncloggeed, cleaned, and disinfected all three toilets. For just 25Ksh (~$0.30) in materials, the bowls were left sparking clean! I will spare you the videos of the cleaning, but the pictures speak for themselves.

After the cleaning

At Sanergy, our focus is on cleanliness because a clean toilet is a useable toilet. A lot of thought has gone into the design to achieve both perceived cleanliness and actual cleanliness. But to make it all useful, we also need good products, procedures, and training. Our partnership with CCS will provide us with exactly this. CCS will help train our toilet operators on cleaning processes and procedures and we will be using SC Johnson products to keep our toilets clean and fresh. We look forward to working closely with Justin, Mambo and the rest of the CCS crew.

A Sanergistic Team!

When Sanergy was last in Nairobi, our team rolled three men deep: Dave Auerbach, Jeff Zira, and I. Over the past several months, though, our ranks have grown.

During May and June, we began the pilot’s design work from Cambridge. Both Chris Tolles, a designer and recent RISD graduate, and Nathan Cooke, a mechanical engineer and employee at MIT’s D-Lab, played key roles in drafting the first prototypes for the sanitation center we’ll be building this summer.

To finish the designing, building, and implementation on the ground, I’m joined in Nairobi by Ella Peinovich and Joel Veenstra - both of whom were clearly long destined to join the Sanergy team.

Although Ella’s architectural expertise, honed through work at Skidmore, Owing, & Merrill LLP (SOM) and her current course of study as a Master of Architecture (MArch) Candidate at MIT, have already proven extremely beneficial, her true qualification for membership in Team Sanergy lies in her musician father’s original song “Music in the Outhouse” and his hobby of collecting miniature outhouses.

With a passion for optimizing user experience through appropriate design and for working in developing countries, Ella is enthusiastic about building her own outhouse. Moreover, as a LEED AP, Ella is deeply interested in sustainable design that encompasses both “green” and community-based practices. Sanergy offers her the opportunity to dive into the details of product design and see the real-life impact of her late nights of drawing, measuring, redrawing, and building. 

Joel Veenstra

The fates, with a little help from a friend’s forwarded email, also very clearly intended for Joel to join Sanergy. A blond-haired, blue-eyed Canadian who grew up in Tanzania and attended high school in Kenya, Joel has surprised many a Jua Kali metal worker with his fluent Swahili and the construction savvy he’s developed through summer jobs building houses and repairing foundations.
 
Like Ella, Joel wants to continue working in developing countries after graduation. In particular, he’s interested in water resource management – providing clean, accessible water to communities that lack it. Team Sanergy, though, couldn’t be more excited to have him on board our own waterless sanitation endeavor.

Our Summer Pilot

Sanergy aims to build and scale viable sanitation infrastructure in the slums throughout Kenya, Africa, and the developing world. We will create a network of franchised low-cost sanitation centers, collect the waste from these centers, and process it into electricity and fertilizer at our central processing facility. But that’s the very long term.


This summer, our goals are bit more modest but, as we’re discovering, no less challenging: Build two sanitation centers in Nairobi’s slums, work out the operational kinks on the collection route for each center, and process the waste by applying a urea solution to it.

Step 1: Create a comprehensive design for a low-cost, small-footprint sanitation center adapted to local conditions and user preference. No problem, right? To aid the design process, we’ve supplemented MIT’s mens et manus with some hands-on training in ferrocement in Nicaragua’s EcoTec.


Step 2: Work with a community group to identify two pilot sites. Done and done. We’re thrilled that, through partnership Carolina for Kibera, we’ll be building in Soweto West and, through Bridge International Academies, we’ll be building in Lunga Lunga.


Step 3: Build the sanitation centers. From local materials and unskilled labor. This challenge has led us to develop an intense relationship wiith the city’s industrial areas along Mombasa Road and the informal markets at Gikomba and Jua Kali.


Step 4: Identify operators to run the sanitation centers, collection routes and processing sites. We’ve begun conversation through our community partners and hope to have our first operators confirmed soon.


Step 5: Establish standard operating procedures. This week, we’ll be learning from cleaning experts SC Johnson, apprenticing with their subsidiary Community Cleaning Services. Once we’ve completed construction of our sanitation centers, we’ll begin training the operators in a thorough yet efficient system that will deliver the best user experience possible.


Of course, this is only the beginning. Through the end of the year, we’ll be gathering user feedback to revise the design and operating procedures for the next phase. Before we’re ready for feedback and revisions, though, we still have an adventurous summer ahead.

We're baaack!

It's been 4 months since our last post, but Sanergy is back in force in Kenya. In fact, we have been here since June 25. A lot has happened and we have made significant progress. Over the next few posts/days, I will try to do some catchup on what we have been doing and what we have planned for the rest of the summer.