Not everyone is capable of making their interlocutors passionate about a toilet. Diana Yousef is one of them, and she proves it in every presentation to potential donors or investors, in every interview with the press, even in a TEDx talk organized at her daughter’s schoolBorn in Boston (USA) to Egyptian immigrants, Yousef, a doctor in Biochemistry from Cornell University, has developed a toilet that does not need water or a connection to any sewage system, and works through a membrane that evaporates between 90% and 95% of waste. The idea aims to solve one of the major problems for half of the world’s population: the lack of sanitation, and all the consequences that come with it: deaths from infectious diseases, environmental problems and, one that particularly affects Yousef, the violence suffered by girls and women simply for going to the bathroom.
“When people live without access to safe sanitation, it is very difficult for them to improve their quality of life,” Yousef said in a video interview from his home in Boston. According to the World Health Organization, 4.2 billion people use sanitation facilities that do not treat waste. Of these, 673 million do not have any type of toilet and defecate in the open. Some 564,000 people die each year from diseases related to poor sanitation, mainly diarrhoea.
There is a huge problem, which is rarely talked about, of women being raped and even murdered, simply because they need to go to the bathroom.
“But beyond that, one of the things that moves me the most is the disproportionate way in which it harms women and girls not having access to safe, private toilets close to their homes. There is a huge, little-talked-about problem of women being raped and even killed, simply because they need to go to the toilet,” Yousef explains. “Fifty per cent of schools around the world lack adequate sanitation facilities, which makes it extremely difficult for girls, especially, to go to school. When they go to school, they fight the urge to go to the toilet, so they don’t eat, they don’t drink, they end up tired, they struggle to pay attention. And when they start having their period, they miss a week of school every month and fall behind.”
Mother of three daughters, aged 13, 8 and 5, she admits: “I find it very difficult to understand that this happens to girls all over the world, while my daughters have the life they have just because of where they were born.” Precisely her birth was one of the driving forces that led Yousef to start his startup, change:WATER Labs, in 2013. “When I had my first daughter, I was out of work for two years because nobody wanted me.” So she had to reinvent herself. “I want to set an example for them, to show that they can do what they want, that they have the ability to decide.” Her Egyptian roots also played a role. “I think that all of us who come from the Middle East are very aware of the importance of water, it is vital.”
She took up an idea that had emerged during her participation as a consultant in a joint initiative between NASA and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in 2009, which sought to find technological solutions to the problems of access to water. During that work, the use of breathable materials to recycle waste water in space and turn it into drinkable water was proposed. “These materials have the property of absorbing moisture from one area and passing it into the dry air on the other side. The liquid water enters the material and comes out on the other side as vapour,” she describes.
I think all of us who come from the Middle East are very aware of the importance of water, it is vital.
His previous work with the UN looking at business models that would involve the private sector in development had allowed him to visit countries in the Global South and learn about the problem of sanitation. The breathable material seemed like a very low-energy solution that could be used on both a small and large scale. So it was very useful in poor communities without much infrastructure. “I realised that it was probably better used to get rid of dirty water, rather than to make clean water.”
Yousef made the first presentations of the project at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), which allowed him to meet researchers interested in the idea who joined the team, which currently has seven people. Thanks to an initial grant of 50,000 dollars (45,700 euros), he was able to access a laboratory where he could put the idea from paper to reality. In February 2020, the first pilot was carried out on the ground in a refugee host community in Kiboga, Uganda, with funding from the Humanitarian Grand Challenges Award (an initiative by the governments of the US, UK, Netherlands and Canada to fund solutions that are useful in conflict or refugee crises). The two Turkish-style toilets (on the floor, without a seat) served about 400 users a week at a women’s hospital and a girls’ school. “We found that they contained waste completely and hygienically, and we didn’t detect any odours in the place. In addition, maintenance only needed to be done every two or three weeks.”
The next pilot is being carried out in Kuna Naga, an informal suburb of Panama City inhabited by indigenous Kuna people with no running water or sewage, with funding from Asocsa, a local construction company that often works in low-income communities. In October, two Western-style, sit-down toilets were installed in two homes, with about 25 users in total. There is no chain to pull – the membrane simply begins to evaporate water from urine and feces when it comes into contact with it. “We have been able to demonstrate that we can run these toilets for two, even three months, without having to empty them.” The next planned phase is to install public toilets in the same community.
Yousef estimates that the final price of the iThrone—which in May reached Mapfre Foundation Award for Social Innovation “In the category of Health Improvement and Digital Technology, the price will be around $200 per unit. We plan to outsource production to local partners, so the price will come down even further. Other solutions that are used cost tens of thousands of dollars. This is much cheaper and simpler, because it doesn’t require a lot of infrastructure, but it offers high performance by eliminating waste. in situ“, he says.
Both the breathable bag and the non-evaporating waste are, for the most part, compostable, Yousef says. So when emptying the toilet, the waste “can be disposed of in whatever way the partner needs. If it’s a humanitarian organisation in a crisis or a refugee camp, without the capacity to build adequate sanitation infrastructure, they can simply burn the waste. But in a community that wants to make sanitation circular, waste can be turned into something with value, energy, fertiliser.”
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