Audrey Quaye introduced me to the work of the WTO, no not the World Trade Organization but the World Toilet Organization. As a social enterprise they take a “Market-based approach for achieving social goals.”
Their goals are ambitious to meet “the sanitation Millennium Development Goal (MDG) target to reduce by half the proportion of people without access to basic sanitation by 2015.”
In my Integrated Farming proposals I have tried to show people the potential of the sewage as a resource. Existing modern sanitation systems have major and fatal flaw – they assume sewage is a waste that you have to get away from you as quickly as possible using lots of water, pumps, chlorine and pipes, control systems, etc. All this consumes electricity as well as resources. Finally there is the issue of treating valuable biomass as a waste. Since biomass is finite, if we treat it as if its infinite then common sense tells us we’ll run out of it someday. Of course with that kind of policymaking its also likely that we’ll only see the problem after its too late, unless the current conventional thinking can be overthrown.
Getting to the point of the post is the fact that the world’s 2.6 billion toilet-less are potential customers. Yet that same kind of conventional think has ignored and neglected them as potential customers. Possibly that’s just as well because we cant afford either ecologically or economically to have them adapt to the modern system and its inefficient use of resources.
WTO incorporates Social Enterprise language and jargon well into their copy. They note that “the people at the so-called ‘bottom of the pyramid’ have recently become the focus of parts of both the corporate and development community.”
Whats interesting though is that a note “an ideological shift in thinking about markets…” That’s a key point of the core philosophy of the social enterprise movement and yet it is often not discussed. It needs to be, because while on the one hand you can identify any school of thought as ideology, really it is reflecting a desire to overcome ideological dogmatism and seek out a more thoughtful way of seeing the world that is solutions oriented. This is not to say that all ideological differences can be overcome but rather than it is about ability to be open to the best solution for humanity regardless of ideology that is key to overcoming the increasing polarization in our societies and indeed at the global level.
Ray Kerzweil is a inventor that has been one of the leaders of the Artificial Intelligence movement. Going beyond pure computer technologies he has identified ways that technologies are converging in different fields leading to synergies that is creating quantum leaps in how we address challenges.
With the sanitation field in emerging markets it is not so much about new fangled, sophisticated technologies though as it is about a rethink in the use and configuration of existing technologies.
For example in this field there are these major developments:
- Visualizing a new and promising market, in which the sheer number of potential consumers compensates for their little individual purchasing power
- Seeing a market for value added products that are produced from the wastes
- Seeing a reduction in health and envirionment degradation costs through market driven investments in integrated sanitation and waste management systems
WTO says that Today’s market for sanitation is dysfunctional, due
- Muted demand due to lack of capacity, awareness and a low priority among individuals and institutions who have become complacient with inadequate or non-existent sanitation systems
- Lack of (freely) available sanitation appropriate technology designs for mass production
- Dependence on donations is not sufficient to solve the problem of such a vast magnitude.
They believe a “Market based approach is required to address the problem at a large scale.” So their plan is to build “efficient market infrastructure” to drive “demand through awareness, mindset change, low pricing and stylizing toilets so as to make it a symbol of status and owners pride.”
That might work but my thought is not to make toilets hip so much as to make toilets profitable in terms of the sewage effluent being seen as a valuable resource instead of a worthless waste.
WTO also wants to “install efficient market infrastructure” with the the “objective is to create Integrated Supply Chain…” That all sound interesting but I would like to hear more about specifics.
More here… http://www.betterplace.org/projects/236