Eco Friendly Toilets by Mobius Foundation

Nearly 600 million people in India lack adequate sanitation, clean water, and sewage infrastructure. As a result, they are forced to defecate in the open and are exposed to several health and social problems.

Open defecation leads to contamination of food and water, transmitting diarrhea-related diseases. It can also cause mental and cognitive stunting in young children. Now more than ever, we need low-cost, easy-to-operate alternatives to traditional waste disposal models.

Mobius Foundation has collaborated with ‘Logical Indian’ and Marta Vanduzer Snow to set up eco-toilets in the villages of Uttar Pradesh.

Marta is an American native living in India, working in the villages of UP under the project named Better Village Better World. So far, she has built 143 cost-efficient eco toilets, 10 ft wide and 122 meter long permeable roads and French drains that help in rainwater harvesting. Mobius Foundation funded her efforts in the village of Jagatpur, Uttar Pradesh. It helped set up five demonstration units of eco-toilets in the village of Kakrana, Dhaulana, Ghaziabad, in October 2018.

Eco-friendly toilets are low-maintenance, safe and hygienic. The scientific model followed by these toilets is called evapotranspiration, which is self-cleansing and requires less land. These green toilets also help generate awareness about sanitation among the masses and gain community support, helping our ultimate goal of a sustainable India.

The total cost to construct one unit is Rs. 10,639, while a standard toilet under Swachh Bharat Abhiyan costs Rs. 17,000. To curtail expenses, broken bricks, and recycled materials are used wherever possible, including fly ash bricks and used tires. The toilet also has a low operational cost; it needs only the occasional cleaning of the squatting platform.

On the other hand, in the unlined twin pit toilet model, the toilet tank is filled with waste and later emptied. Due to the opening in the septic tank, urine and fecal matter enter the soil, causing health issues. The evapotranspiration toilet is self-cleaning, i.e., the waste is filtered without human intervention.

Eco toilets are on-site sanitation systems for chemical and biological treatment and reuse of household black water. It was developed and popularised over two decades by permaculture practitioners in different countries, especially the U.S.A. and Brazil.

The substructure layers use anaerobic digestion, capillary action, evaporation, and transpiration processes to filter, release, and absorb the waste matter. Anaerobic digestion converts a portion of the human excreta into biogas, exiting the back-standpipe. The digested matter travels up and out through capillary action. The nutrients leave the system by incorporating into the plants’ biomass through mineralisation and absorption through its roots. At the same time, evapotranspiration removes the liquid, either transpiring through the plants or evaporating at the soil’s surface.

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Eco Friendly Toilets in India - Mobius Foundation
Eco Friendly Toilets in India - Mobius Foundation
Eco Friendly Toilets By Mobius Foundation