Stand-alone sanitary toilet for Guarani people living in rural communities of Bolivia

Stand-alone sanitary toilet for Guarani people living in rural communities of Bolivia

Leuzzi, F.L.

Van Boeijen, A.G.C. (mentor)
Aprile, W.A. (mentor)

Industrial Design Engineering

Industrial Design

2012-11-16

Sanitation is a taken for granted theme in most of the Western Country, but it is a serious issue nowadays. We can count on modern water supply systems and efficient sewage systems but only few of us know what is happening in remote areas of the underdeveloped countries. Sanitation is a central matter for people living in rural areas, where the scarcity of water and sanitary facilities afflicts millions people. The contact with fresh faeces kills every years millions of people worldwide. Especially for a country like Bolivia, in which almost half of the population lives in rural areas, lack of sanitation is one of the first causes of people’s death. Those communities are marginalized and lack of the most basic services, above all health care. Indigenous people living in these areas are exposed to a number of diseases connected to their improper daily sanitary practice; the unhealthiest one is the open defecation. Those people usually live with 10 dollars a month, so they cannot afford a personal sanitary facility. The ethnic fragmentation of Bolivian population does not help to solve this problem even if every population has an ethnic organization that provides them help. Despite the effort of their organizations, the Bolivian Government and the NGOs present in the field, the current situation is far to be under control. Solutions like pit or VIP latrine do not reach all the family of the community and they are polluting the ground. Other more environmental friendly solution have been tried in the past years, (such as dehydration toilet made out of concrete), but they are too expensive and the construction requires time. These were the reason why rural Bolivia extremely needs a new solution on this side. The goal of this graduation is to give to people living in Bolivian rural communities a safe alternative to open defecation. This project was run in collaboration with an important Bolivian company: Plaxburg S.R.L. Plaxburg is a growing and dynamic company focused on the production of plastic containers of all dimensions and for every use (especially for water), industrial reservoirs, waste containers and plastic roofs. They are leaders of the market and they want to enlarge their selling with an innovative new product suitable for their production line and able to solve the sanitary need of the Bolivian population. The starting point of the project was a deep literature research conducted in the Netherlands, in order to gain preliminary information about the country and the rural situation. In this part of the process the designer created a set of Research Questions and techniques to be tested and run with the people living in Bolivian communities. All the people range, ages and genders were taken into account in order to make the future product suitable for the entire community. In order to reach a solution to the above-mentioned problems, a user and context research was conducted in the Bolivian Chaco, one of the poorest parts of the country. Here the ethnic group of Guaraní people struggle to live in a very difficult environment. During the research the designer received help from the mission of Padre Tarcisio (an Italian priest) and from Dr. Fabio Ammar an NGO operator working for OXFAM Italia on health care with local people. Thanks to their help it was possible to gain rich information about users’ need and expectations as well as the social/environmental context. It was also possible to understand which relationship they have with the sanitary products and what is their perception about personal hygiene. The research pictured a situation in which people are aware about the importance of having a personal sanitary facility but they can not afford it. The communities are quite often far from the cities and the connections are not adequate. The only basic supply they have is the water system, which is quite vulnerable against the environment. As matter of fact entire community can remain isolated because of a rainy day. So the most important problem is the lack of water supply (as well as the absence of electricity and sewage system). The designer understood also the dynamics inside the rural communities: the average of family members, materials available, distance of the houses and social status of the people. With these data gathered was possible to have a complete overview of the current situation and to visualize the Future Scenario and the Design Goal. After that the designer involved part of the major stakeholders into the Idea Generation through a Brainstorming session. The participants were: the NGO operator (representing the point o view of the people working directly with the communities), the manager of the company (for the financial part) and the engineer of the company (manufacturing part). On the basis of the data obtained from the Brainstorming, the information from the research the designer was able to come up with three concepts. These concepts were previously evaluated with the Company mentor and the NGO operator. From these three concepts, they selected the one that was fulfilling the needs of the users as well as the requirement of the company. The last design is a prefabricated polyethylene double-vault toilet, working with dehydration system with urine diversion and an inner switching system. The faeces will drop directly into one of the two vaults and a switching system under the toilet sit will enable the user to easily switch the chamber when one is full. A solar heater will increase the dehydration process. The product is meant to be integrated inside a house or for a separated cabin. Since it is prefabricated it can easily reach the communities and be mounted rapidly. The system is half grounded instead of being totally grounded in order to facilitate the extraction of the dried material. The product can be easily manufactured with the current company’s technology. The merchandising strategy has to aim to the organizations that work with them: the ethnic organizations, the NGOs and the local Governments present in the field. Since they manage and receive money from the central Government and from investor abroad, they can invest in this project. To convince them about the necessity of this product in Bolivian rural areas represent a great occasion for Plaxburg to widely sell the new product, in a still untouched market; increasing the selling and helping the communities at the same time.

sanitation
toilet
BoP
rural areas Bolivia
prefabricated

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:cdc8c98f-6586-4e04-89db-bcab55145a2d

2013-11-16

Campus only

Student theses

master thesis

(c) 2012 Leuzzi, F.L.