Development Of The Idea Of Waterless Toilets

The idea of waterless or dry toilets started out a very long time ago in 1859 by Reverend Henry Moule. He designed a composting toilet and his belief was thatThis came about because the western type of toilet has not solved the issue of getting rid large amount of waste in developing countries or even in developed countries. The Western system is expensive. It uses large amounts of clean water to flush away a smallamount of excreta. It dirties streams, lakes and groundwater. For the large majority of people who still have no piped water, such a system is not even something to consider”.

Waterless toilets simply put ‘are toilets that uses other mechanism asides water for the purpose of flushing’. The dry toilet has a raised support of which people can squat or sit, either way; human waste is dropped through a hole. What led to the designing and construction of a waterless toilet? The main purpose of this is to conserve water, which is the obvious. In developing countries, areas with no water or no clean water need waterless toilets for proper sanitation.

So instead of spending lots of money on water for sanitation, money can be saved for water for other purposes like industrial, domestic which includes washing and so on. Before the invention of modernized toilet design, most people in the rural areas of developing countries pass excreta in the open air, which leads to environmental pollution and poses a great threat to human health. The Gates Foundation claims that four out of ten people globally do not have “a safe way to poop,” and while some might argue that even fewer dispose of their wastes in an environmentally safe manner, the truth is that the developing world suffers extreme economic, social, and environmental disadvantages when it comes to safe elimination and treatment of wastes (Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, 2011) There are toilets types that are also called waterless or dry toilet and have been designed and used overtime and they include:

1. Composting toilet: composting toilet is a type of toilet that treats human waste trough biological process. It is the decomposition of human waste into compost, which is later, used as fertilizers.
2. Urine diverting dry toilet: it has a urine diversion
3. Arborloo : this is similar to pit latrine but the depth is shallower than the pit latrine and the waste is used for compost.
4. Container-based toilet5. Bucket toilet
5. Pit latrine

Broadly speaking, the number of countries prone to drought in the world is very large. An estimation of nearly one billion people have no access to toilets globally and mostly in developing countries example India, they are forced to open defecation, which may lead to diseases. The fact is that waterless toilet is not only used in area where there are little or no water. Developed countries are adapting this method in order to save cost of water on sanitation and use it for a different purpose and because water is becoming a scarce resource(seckel et al 1998)

The waterless toilet focuses on creating toilets that are affordable for rural communities. Most septic tanks are built close to the water body and once it get flushed into the tanks it infiltrates and join the groundwater body contaminating the groundwater. But for this composting toilets the waste products are turned into useful products like fertilizers, energy, and water.