US engineers’ body lauds low-cost Indian toilet technology

NEW YORK - A top American engineers’ body has recognized the low-cost toilet technology developed by Indian NGO Sulabh International to improve community health, hygiene and environment in the developing world and in the process triggerring off social reform, restoring human rights and dignity to millions of downtrodden women involved in manual scavenging.

The World Environment and Water resources Congress, organized by American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) at Providence, Rhodes Island appreciated Sulabh’s low cost sanitation technology in India and other developing countries, the NGO said in a news release.

Indian Social innovator, Dr. Bindeshwar Pathak, along with his team, has developed an indigenous two-pit toilet technology, which is not only cost effective but can also be used in producing biogas. Recycling and reuse of human excreta for biogas generation is an important way to get rid of health hazards.

His efforts have made a difference in life of millions of people by creating, through technology, a new culture that had restored human rights and dignity to those traditionally known as untouchable by providing a safe and hygienic human waste disposal system, says the Congress citation.

Delivering the key note speech at the Congress , Sulabh founder said that NGO will soon launch its sanitation campaign

in 50 countries and appealed to technical experts to join hands with his organization to achieve United Nations’ millennium Development goal relating to sanitation and hygiene.

Sulabh International is the pioneering organization in the field of biogas generation from public toilet complexes. After a series of experiments, the organization developed a more efficient design of biogas plant that has been approved by the Indian Ministry of Non-conventional energy.

Pathak’s toilets, the design of which he’s made available to almost all the towns of India, are used by 10 million people daily, helping push the number of people in rural India with access to a toilet from 27 percent five years ago to 59 percent today.

Sulabh technology has also been used to construct over 5,500 public-toilet complexes in cities across south and central Asia, for people who are homeless or who have no sanitation in their houses.