Don’t pooh-pooh the idea

Japan firm comes up with a basic toilet that can help sanitation in developing countries.

Tokyo: Japan may be famous for high-tech toilets, but one local firm is hoping a much more basic model can help solve deadly sanitation problems in developing countries.

More than two billion people around the world do not have access to basic sanitation facilities, and children are especially susceptible to diseases that can spread without hygienic toilets.

Household products firm Lixil has developed a latrine that sells for just a few dollars and features a self-sealing trapdoor to keep out disease-spreading insects and seal in unpleasant odours.

Now it is forming an unusual partnership with the United Nations’ children’s agency Unicef, which will help promote the company’s Sato toilet in the hope of saving lives in developing countries.

Andres Franco, Unicef’s deputy director for private sector engagement, said on Thursday that the partnership would capitalise on Lixil’s “business, their technology, their knowledge, their innovation”.

Under the partnership, Unicef will promote the Sato toilets in Ethiopia, Kenya, and Tanzania, with the aim of helping 250 million people gain access to an adequate toilet by 2021, said Lixil president Kinya Seto.

About 2.3 billion people worldwide do not have access to basic sanitation facilities, including 892 million people who have no choice

Each and every day, dirty water, poor sanitation and poor hygiene result in the death of around 800 children under the age of five. Shanelle Hall

but to defecate in the open, according to Unicef.

“This takes away people’s dignity, it renders them vulnerable to lifethreatening diseases,” Unicef deputy executive director Shanelle Hall said on Thursday at a joint press conference with Lixil.

“In fact, each and every day, dirty water, poor sanitation and poor hygiene result in the death of around 800 children under the age of five. That translates to two children every minute,” Hall added.

Lixil has sold around 1.8 million Sato toilets in 15 countries since releasing the product in 2013.

Seto said it hoped to capitalise on Unicef, “which has credibility and a network around the globe that we don’t have ... to give children access to toilets”. — AFP

— AFP Promoting cleanliness: A primary school pupil checking out a public toilet display with one-way glass as his classmates look on during the launch of the Unicef-Lixil partnership in Tokyo. (Inset) A pupil lifting a Sato toilet pan.