Acumen Fund's Community
What are people saying about the Peepoo?
This week’s New York Times put social enterprise start-up Peepoople in the spotlight. The Swedish start-up has garnered popularity because of its innovative take on the problem of “flying toilets” in Africa. In Kenyan slums, cost and poor availability mean that residents often defecate into plastic bags which are then sent “flying” to nearby trash dumps, creating a considerable health hazard. While Acumen Fund investees like Ecotact have had considerable success constructing toilets in Kenya, Peepoople has taken a different track to solving the “flying toilet” problem. Their innovation is the Peepoo, a biodegradeable bag that, when knotted and buried, breaks down human feces into fertilizer that can be used in farms, while killing off germs that would otherwise spread disease.
The Peepoo project is the brainchild of Mr. Anders Wilhemson, a Swedish Ashoka Fellow. Mr. Wilhemson believes that the Peepoo can be a profitable social business its given its attractive pricing (at 2-3 cents per unit, it will be comparable to normal plastic bags) and potential social and environmental benefits. Given that some 2.6 billion people in the developing world lack access to toilets, the Peepoo might potentially be able to tap a huge market, and urgent need, at the bottom of the pyramid (BoP).
However, not everyone has been as enthusiastic about the Peepoo’s alleged benefits: critics have tabled a variety of questions concerning its applicability. The New York Times article cited a more traditional critique concerning the ability of social enterprises to reach BoP populations without government intervention. Others have questioned the actual willingness of people to adopt Peepoo’s technology.
While Peepoo is not an Acumen Fund investee, we are excited to host this discussion in order to raise awareness of sanitation issues in the developing World. We're fortunate to have Suraj Sudhakar, a 2009 Acumen Fellow at Ecotact and current employee at Peepoo on hand to moderate a discussion on the topic. During his fellowship year at Ecotact, Suraj developed a marketing plan for an expansion of Ecotact's model, and a financial consolidation plan. After his fellowship, Suraj decided to continue his work in social enterprise and urban sanitation as Project Manager of the Peepoo Initial Launch Project in Kibera, Kenya.
Post your questions below by clicking "Reply", and also be sure to follow the discussion by clicking "Follow" to receive email updates as post come live on the thread. We look forward to hearing from you!
Replies to This Discussion
-
Permalink Reply by Amy Langdon on -
I'm wondering where the people will bury the bags. Will it be too much of a hassle to have to walk somewhere and bury the bag every time you have to go to the bathroom? Or will there be local and convenient pits where everyone dumps their bag and when the pit is full, it gets covered over? If it's a pit with lots of "peepoo", won't it get into the groundwater? How would the pit be kept "sanitary"?
Thanks,
Amy
-
Permalink Reply by Chris Tolles on -
I'm wondering how Peepoople expect to so dramatically shift millions of peoples' perception of sanitation that they're willing to pee and poop in a plastic bag (that they implicitly buy for themselves). Human waste is one of the most personal, private aspects of a person's life, and carries with it an enormous amount of cultural baggage. We have a hard enough time compelling people to slightly modify their diets for the sake of an enormous benefit to nutrition. How exactly does Mr. Sudhakar hope to convince the poor to so drastically change the way they use the bathroom?
This looks to be a fashionably-designed band-aid solution that does not in any way address the actual core problems of sanitation, plumbing, local governance, land use, population density, or personal hygiene. Would be (genuinely!) interested in evidence to the contrary.
-
Permalink Reply by Ryan Rowe on -
Hi Suraj,
I understand the Peepoo bag was piloted in the slum community of Kibera in Nairobi, but I haven't seen any news on whether it is still in use / launched commercially. Can you kindly provide us with an update on this?
Best regards
Ryan Rowe
-
Permalink Reply by camilla wirseen on
-
Hi, I am one of the founders of the Peepoo project and have worked with it since 2005. I would like to invite you to watch a short documentery and interview with a user of the Peepoo toilet in a the informal settlement Kibera in Kenya. Kibera is one of the worlds largest slums where more than 1 million people live on a space as small as Central Park New York. This video will give you first hand knowledge on what the users think of the Peepoo as a toilet and how they can use it as a fertliser. Please follow link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oz2KikG6fyY&feature=youtu.be
-
Permalink Reply by Carolyne Atieno Jalang'o on -
This kind of project may work in some areas,i would say rural,where people hav a chunk of land next to facilitate the burrying of Peepoole,in town ,or cities it will be a bit tricky,as they area may not have a farm to be able to bury,they may still want to have them flying as before. Having wondered for a sanitation project,and having been taught that proper disposal of human wastes helps reduces diseases like cholera,collecting the stuff,will mean a little may training on hygiene to ensure it is proper handled to keep users away from disease out breaks rampant in Kenya. Getting people to wash hands after visiting the toilet is proofing to be quite challenges especially an observation in schools at break time,may pupils go to the toilets and run back to class.
I would suggest we consider where we can collect the peepoole may be over night then bury them at a particular time in the day,or just a quick question,how many times to bury's do we need to have for example a family of possibly 3 to 4 people? Let us look at the time involved in burying and the culture of now having to come to terms with storage of the stuff before burying,can we make it a little bit easy for the users.thanks, Carol
-
Permalink Reply by Mary Louise Penaz on -
Sounds very interesting! Thanks for including me in this discussion. :-)
-
Permalink Reply by Chris Tolles on
-
Dear Camilla,
Thanks for the link. During the trials you've been running in Kibera and India, were residents required to pay for the bags? Do you have any robust M&E data on adoption rates? If so, was this data collected by locals or expats?
camilla wirseen said:This video will give you first hand knowledge on what the users think of the Peepoo as a toilet and how they can use it as a fertliser. Please follow link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oz2KikG6fyY&feature=youtu.be
-
Permalink Reply by Nana Efah Obeng - Kwakye on -
Will people adhere to the advice of not throwing these bags anywhere they find themselves? Am wondering how far the education of the use and after use of this product go.
-
Permalink Reply by Suraj Sudhakar on
-
Hi Amy,
Great questions. Thank you.
Each Peepoo bag works like a micro treatment plant. The Peepoo bag starts to sanitize the faeces the moment the bag is used and knotted. Within 2-3 weeks all disease producing pathogen found in faeces are inactivated and what remains is high quality fertilizer. This sanitizing process is complete long before the biodegradable bag starts breaking down, thus ensuring that a used Peepoo bag does not pollute the environment. While a used Peepoo bag can be directly buried in the ground, we are cognizant of the fact that many slum dwellers do not have access to a garden or farm.
Keeping this in mind, we are evolving different collection models to handle the used Peepoo bags - by creating strategically placed collection points where used Peepoo bags can be dropped, by organizing a collection service run by micro-entrepreneurs that would collect used Peepoo bags from users, and by providing the option of a user utilizing their Peepoo bags as fertilizer in their own garden/farm. Users will have incentives like cash rebates, access to collection services or high quality fertilizer, to ensure that they stick to a collection plan. We believe that this high values of a used Peepoo as a fertilizer will pay for the collection.
I hope I have answered your questions. Do let me know if you have any more questions.
Thanks again,
Suraj
Amy Langdon said:I'm wondering where the people will bury the bags. Will it be too much of a hassle to have to walk somewhere and bury the bag every time you have to go to the bathroom? Or will there be local and convenient pits where everyone dumps their bag and when the pit is full, it gets covered over? If it's a pit with lots of "peepoo", won't it get into the groundwater? How would the pit be kept "sanitary"?
Thanks,
Amy
-
Permalink Reply by Penelope on
-
I found out about Peepoo a few weeks ago. Personally, I think this is precisely the type of project that shows the limits of social entrepreneurship... First of all, I find the name Peepoo to be really lacking in dignity - also, shouldn't it be called Poopee, and the website poopeeple?
More seriously though, peepoo's tag line "2.6 billion people just got their own toilet" to be completely misleading. This is not a toilet - it's a plastic bag. While I'm sure that you've seen successful test runs in some communities, I don't see how this will be adopted on a large scale. Poor families living in slums have much better things to spend their money on than a stack of single-use peepoo bags (at 2 or 3 cents a pop, it adds up pretty quickly if you have 5 children...). Also, if this is geared towards urban dwellers, the fact that it becomes fertilizer is not particularly useful, as still very few home gardens exist in these places...
Mostly, though, what really bothers me is the notion that this is somehow a "solution" to the water/sanitation problem. The way in which this product is marketed suggests that it is somehow a replacement for proper toilets and sanitation. Don't poor communities around the world deserve a better solution than sh*tting in a bag? At best, this is a stop-gap measure - as some commentators have noted elsewhere on the interwebs, this *may* be useful in emergency situations, where there is no time for building latrines, toilets and where hygiene is usually a significant issue. However, I strongly believe that this, as a consumer product, is degrading.
Unless accompanied by efforts at behavioral change and a massive educational undertaking as to how to actually properly use and dispose of the peepoo bags, I see this as merely a ploy to get poor people to spend money something they don't need. If there are no toilets or latrines or sanitation, instead of having to pay for a bag to do your business in, it might be much better to devise educational/training programs that teach people how to create natural compost from human (and animal and plant) waste. This, at least, does not cost the poor person any money. Even so, I don't believe that there is any other long term solution to WATSAN problems as investing in large scale efforts, with public authorities, to create or upgrade existing infrastructure. The money spent on developing this product could have been spent in financing a pilot project that does exactly that.
The only people who benefit from the peepoo bag are its manufacturers, its retailers and its creators. This does not - by any means - improve the lives of poor people.
I'm dismayed by the fact that the New York Times, Acumen Fund and influential voices like Matt Yglesias are touting the greatness of this product. In contrast, I found this interesting initiative, by a Kenyan entrepreneur: http://www.nextbillion.net/blog/2010/03/04/kenya-dispatch-toilet-pa.... This is the type of solution that people without WATSAN need to see - not expensive plastic bags that are eerily reminiscent of the bags that people use to pick up their dog excrement.
-
Permalink Reply by Samia Khan on -
Few comments and questions:
- To me, this seems like a short-term solution. I'm hoping that this doesn't give governments an excuse to completely let go of any efforts to provide sanitation services in these communities.
- I am also concerned about the educational aspects surrounding the use of the bag. Similar questions have come up on this forum, will people know they have to bury it? Where will they bury it? How?
- The one thing that is positive is that it is not really asking people to change their behavior too much, so it's pretty easy. If you're already using a bag then using a Peepoo bag doesn't require too much of a paradigm shift. Of course, the question is -- don't we want a paradigm shift?
While many of us know how ineffective governments can be at providing sanitation services, I think it's imperative that we continue our efforts to advocate for them. Many countries have started public-private partnerships to leverage opportunities and others have started successful self-help programs. If you're not already familiar with it, I urge you to look into what organizations like the Orangi Pilot Project in Pakistan have done. It demonstrates how eager the poor are for these services and that they are willing to pay for it. Sustainable projects don't always have to look "outside" for innovations.
-
Permalink Reply by Ian Thorpe on -
I think Penelope sums up well some important objections to this product and the way it is being marketed. Just to add:
A large part of safe sanitation is around social norms and human behaviour change, not around technology. You can build toilets but there is no guarantee they will be used or maintained. What is required for a successful sanitation project is to engage communities to want to imporve their sanitation and to catalyze action to build, maintain and use toilets. Approaches such as "Community Led Total sanitation" and related methodologies have been shown to do this quite effectively. They build demand and ownership, and an important part of this is that toilets are designed and constructed locally, usually without subsidies - so this also supports local markets. I don't see much evidence of local enterprise or social change in the description of this project which seems mainly focussed on the technology.
To really address sanitation and disease in a sustainable way people need toilets not plastic bags, and it is possible for them to have them, even in some of the poorest locations. Also for the sake of human dignity I don't think it is right to encourage people to defecate into a bag, especially one with such a silly name. It might be considered a marginal improvement in Kibera where there is already a tradition of using plastic bags - but it's far short of where we should be going, and it seems wholly inappropriate to imply that for 2.6 billion people going in a bag is good enough.
30 Top Social Entrepreneurs
Search Community
Latest Activity
© 2012 Created by Jo-Ann Tan.
Powered by 
.
