Making toilets desirable but also affordable for the poor

There is consensus in the sanitation sector that in countries with low access to sanitation, an absolute policy priority is creating demand for toilets. Giving people free or heavily subsidised toilets has repeatedly been shown to fail. This is because if people do not have genuine ownership of its construction, and if they are not adequately taught why sanitation is beneficial, they may not use their shiny new toilet (or may use it for something else, like a store-room…).

Many people argue persuasively that there is still place for some subsidies, particularly for the extreme poor, but that is a discussion for another day. So, creating demand is the key, and zero-subsidy approaches like Community Led Total Sanitation (CLTS, see link here) have been proven to create demand effectively in Timor-Leste. But what about supply? It is no good creating lots of demand for sanitation if there is nowhere for people to buy the necessary parts. A lot of attention has therefore recently been given to the idea of ‘sanitation marketing’. This is the concept of treating sanitation as a product to be made attractive and sold by the private sector, meaning anyone who can make adequate parts. The approach involves creating demand through modern marketing techniques, but also ensuring a sustainable supply through support to small-scale sanitation masons.

The most basic pit latrines are essentially free, because most parts can be made from wood and stones which are both easily available. But these materials do not produce a good product which will last much longer than a year. Simple pit latrines can also smell. In short, whilst simple pit latrines are a crucial first step on the ‘sanitation ladder’ they are simply not desirable. People who aspire to modernity and development want a proper toilet which does not smell, but this requires more complex technology, which of course costs money.

Generally, people in Timor-Leste equate a ‘proper’ toilet with porcelain pour-flush pans imported from Indonesia. But these are expensive, and can cost up to $15 in Dili, which doesn’t include the cost of getting them to the rural areas where most people without sanitation live. This is simply unaffordable when half of the population here live on less than $1.25 a day. So how to bridge the gap between a wooden shack with a hole, and an imported porcelain pour-flush pan?

The answer is to build local sanitation markets; training masons to produce products which people want, at an affordable price. WaterAid has recently been investing ‘start-up’ capital in sanitation masons in Liquiça district, such as the roadside sanitation shop in the photo above. The people who run this shop have a furniture business alongside their sanitation shop. In their shop, they sell the moulded cement pans (as shown in the picture) for $5 each, and make a decent profit on each one which creates an incentive to do marketing across the community to get more people to buy them.

It’s early days, but they’ve sold 40 or so in the last few months, and Oxfam recently got Januario, the entrepreneur, to train some other masons in another district. I’ll write a longer post on Januario’s shop in a few weeks