'Mama Poo' brings simple sanitation to a Kenyan slum
(Read article summary)A person's quest to bring simple sanitation to Kenyan slum where toilets are lacking, a disposable bag that transforms human waste into fertilizer may be an answer.
“They call me ‘Mama Poo,” Anne told me matter-of-factly as we strolled through a dusty pathway in Silanga, a small neighborhood in the expansive Kibera slums of Nairobi, Kenya. “And I like that,” she added.
Anne Nudge is a sales representative for Peepoople AB, a Swedish social enterprise that, last October, launched a pilot project in Silanga marketing and selling “The Peepoo" – a single-use, personal toilet that sanitizes human waste quickly, preventing it from contaminating the surrounding environment.
After just a few weeks, the bag transforms the waste into a nutrient-rich fertilizer.
The Peepoo bags, which sell at a subsidized (by PeePoople) cost of three Kenyan Shillings (four cents) each, are used at home, then returned to one of two “drop-off” points where customers get a one Kenyan Shilling refund/incentive for returning the bags.
While treated bags may seem a rudimentary, even crude form of sanitation, looking at the alternatives make the solution seem a little less far fetched.
