Stories: Toilets
-
Reinvent the Toilet, Save the World? Ecuador Is Betting on It.
The composting toilet is adorable; all cheery plastic curves in a bright Smurf blue. It seems to belong in a playhouse. Outside, roosters strut and crow, pigs snort and snuffle in their cinderblock pens, and a gaggle of children race around the countryside east of Guayaquil, Ecuador’s biggest city. The late afternoon is swollen with heat, but the...
-
Talking Toilets in Ecuador
Drive north out of the gritty port city of Guayaquil, Ecuador, and the traffic-clogged streets widen to broad highways lined with spiffy new shopping malls, American fast food restaurants… and gated community after gated community. Guayaquil reminds me of the few other South American cities I’ve visited in the sense that the income disparities here are vast...
-
To Get People to Build Toilets, Turn to Subsidies
The one public bathroom in Ponkrum collapsed a few years ago. An effort to build a new one yielded a large pit that is used for trash, not defecation. For the people living in the small village near the Ghanian coast, there is no other option than going out in the open. They are a part of the 15 percent...
-
Zambian Chief Supports Sanitation
[View the story "Zambian Chief Supports Sanitation" on Storify]