Sulabh Sanitation Movement

"Sulabh Shauchalaya" is a low-cost, pour-flush water-seal toilet with leach pits for on-site disposal of human waste. Flushing requires two litres of water, as compared to the ten litres needed by other toilets. The latrine can be built with locally available materials and may be upgraded. One million units have been constructed (or substituted for existing latrines) in houses, and 5,500 have been installed in pay-and-use public toilets. Public toilets are staffed by an attendant 24 hours a day and also offer facilities for bathing and doing laundry (free to children, the disabled, and the poor).

Door-to-door campaigns by volunteers and workers involve persuading people to convert from bucket latrines to Sulabh System. The organisation works to construct the twin-pit, pour-flush toilet, educates people on the use and maintenance of their new latrine, and promises to fix construction defects and solve technical problems at no cost.

Technical training is also provided to enable local people to construct more latrines themselves. In rural areas, latrine-builders are trained in such fields as handpump repair, brick-laying, social forestry, and biogas production in an effort to provide these artisans with sustainable income. Sulabh also helps local communities set up, operate and maintain the community toilet complexes. Special attention in these efforts is given to the needs of women, especially those living in impoverished areas. They are included as both students and instructors in the re-education process and trained as sanitation volunteers, with the expectation that they will pass the message along to other women.

The organisation also works with local groups on production of biogas from human excreta from the community toilets, and on the generation of electricity as an alternative source of energy. Its research and development activities are geared to practical solutions for solid and liquid waste disposal, including recycling and resource recovery.

Health, Environment, Women, Economic Development.

According to programme organisers, 80% of Indians still either defecate in the open or use unsanitary bucket latrines or smelly public toilets. Two common sanitation technologies internationally known to be ideal for the disposal of human excreta and waste water have proved too expensive for widespread installation, operation, and maintenance in India: septic tanks and sewerage.

In 1970, the NGO Sulabh Shauchalaya Sansthan (now called Sulabh International Social Service Organization) was set up to address these issues. Since that time, more than ten million people have been provided with Sulabh Shauchalaya; 50,000 people have been employed. The Government of India, Indian state governments, and various national and international agencies, as well as Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council (WSSCC) members such as UNICEF, the World Bank, UNDP, WHO and UN-Habitat, are advocating use of the design throughout India, as well as in other developing countries in South-East Asia, Latin America and Africa.