'It’s much cleaner': Bill Gates’ toilets flush with success in Durban

For years Jacob Madlala had to dig a hole in the earth whenever he wanted to relieve himself, or use a pit latrine, because the informal settlement he lived in did not have proper sanitation.

Today Madlala, a resident of Thandanani, north of Durban, has no concerns about hygiene or contracting diseases because he and his community are toilet guinea pigs.

Thandanani is a test site for prototype communal toilets — the technology for which was designed by the University of South Florida, in the US.

In the face of global sanitation problems, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates challenged scientists around the world to reinvent the toilet. Gates’s challenge resulted in 19 different prototypes being developed by universities and companies across the world.

The University of South Florida responded by developing the NEWGenerator 100, which is designed to operate with no mains power or external water supply.

The system takes waste-water from toilets, treats it and recycles it for reuse, which includes water suitable for toilet flushing.

The self-contained unit can produce biogas as a form of renewable energy and can also generate nutrients for agricultural use.

The pollution research group from the University of KwaZulu-Natal and eThekwini’s water and sanitation department has been tasked with facilitating the toilet’s testing in real-life settings like Thandanani.

“Durban is a good place to run these tests because the city is growing fast and many people there don’t have modern sanitation, which means that, even if they have access to a toilet, the waste can get into the environment and make people sick,” Gates said in a video he posted to Twitter two years ago.

Rebecca Sindall, operations manager of the pollution research group, said the strength of the partnership between the university and municipality “is that the university has access to real effluents and real communities, and the municipality has access to research expertise and facilities”.

“Over the three years since the testing started there have been three informal settlement communities, one primary school, the waste-water treatment plant at Isipingo, our lab, and multiple households in peri-urban areas of Umzinyathi, northern KwaZulu-Natal, where we have tested prototypes,” said Sindall, who runs the field testing.

She said some of the newly invented toilets could flush away urine with less than a litre, and faeces with  just over a litre, of recycled water. Generally, new toilets installed in households use about 5l per flush.

Older toilets from the early 1980s and up to 1992 typically used 13l or more.

While Madlala is not familiar with the inner workings of the system, he is happy to have a proper toilet. “It’s much cleaner. There aren’t terrible smells any more.”