AMSURB2x – 2.4.3 in the Absence of Infrastructure

Hi! Let’s talk about a very urgent and health-threatening situation: the living conditions in Nairobi's infamous called Kibera.

It is the largest urban slum of Africa.

As the settlement was considered illegal from its outset, the government did not supply

Kibera with public services like electricity, water, or sanitation infrastructure.

And in a densely-populated area of about 2000 people per square kilometre, the area now lacks the space to build any.

Kibera is said to be the birthplace of what is now called the infamous flying .

In this video we will introduce you to the Flying and the problems for environmental health they convey.

We will introduce you to the biodegradable Pee Poo Bags that are considered a solution to these problems.

Both plastic bags may help us answer the questions:

What do people do when there is no toilet?

And what does it take to arrange improved forms of sanitation in urban ?

So, what is actually a flying toilet?

Flying toilets are a peoples’ emergency solution for a sheer lack of sanitation options in a densely-populated slum.

A flying toilet is a thin plastic bag in which people relieve themselves before the bags end up in huge piles or start blocking the ditches in the area.

This causes major environmental problems as well as health problems for the hundreds of thousands of people living in Kibera and even those beyond its borders.

So, how could the situation in Kibera be improved?

One solution that has been suggested and tested in Kibera is the Pee Poo bag.

A Swedish NGO that has produced and distributed Pee Poo bags describe them as personal single-use, self-sanitising and fully biodegradable toilets.

The material of the bags inactivates pathogens and breaks down the faeces, so that it turns the waste into fertilizer.

The bags should therefore be collected and reused in urban agricultural sites.

Now the Pee Poo organization wants to get the Pee Poo listed as “”.

That term was coined by UNICEF and the World Health Organization in 2002, to help monitor the progress towards Millennium Development Goal Number 7 on access to improved sanitation.

So far, the Pee Poo bag is not part of the list of improved sanitation solutions.

The question is: should it be?

Jan, what do you think about Pee Poo bag from an environmental technology perspective?

Well, basically the Pee Poo bag is another fancy name for a flying toilet.

The difference is that it should be part of an organised system and that the bag is made of a special bio- plastic.

Compared to the conventional sanitation system, you could call the Pee Poo bag the toilet.

The collection system for the bags can be considered as the sewers and the specific bio-plastic can be considered the treatment.

The common feature of all improved sanitation systems is that human excreta are sealed and that the danger of exposure to those excreta including the possible pathogens is minimised.

For the Pee Poo bag the collection system and the design of the bags are crucial to guarantee that.

For this case, the collection system is not a technical system but mostly a social system.

And Bas, what could you say about that?

Well, two points actually.

First of all: it is striking that the Pee Poo bag places our emphasis on toilets again, rather than on the waste and water chain.

Indeed, a Pee Poo bag can only function if it is part of a whole socio-technical system, created and handled by both users and providers.

This system does not only include collection, but also production and retail of the bags and reuse of the material as fertilizer by farmers.

But this logistics part seems underdeveloped and lacks the support of public utility services.

Secondly, I wonder how the Pee Poo bag will be received by its users.

Do they indeed see it as a relief for the problem of lack of access to clean toilets?

Or would they feel offended, as the Pee Poo bag - even when it is introduced as part of a whole system - in fact tells them a plastic bag is the only feasible sanitation they can get?

This is a question about dignity.

So, the Pee Poo bag urges us to think about the question: what is actually proper sanitation?

The technical answer to this question is that proper sanitation is a system that prevents exposure to human excreta and associate pathogens.

In that strict sense, the Pee Poo bag system as the basic elements of a sanitation system.

Namely, a toilet in combination with a system that prevents exposure to human excreta.

But the technical answer is not the only one.

When evaluating the Pee Poo bag, or any other sanitation solution, we should consider the entire sanitation chain.

In this case, the chain includes indicators for the production, the distribution, the use, the collection and reuse of Pee Poo bags.

Beyond that, the acceptance of the new sanitation solution by people in the slum like Kibera, and issues such as safety, comfort and dignity should be part of any co-creation process for improved sanitation.