Bucket toilets must go despite growing water scarcity
Climate change is forcing households, communities and governments to adapt to new realities of prolonged periods of drought in some parts of the country as well as the fast-changing rainfall patterns.
These realities affect water provision by municipalities because water does not originate from a tap but from groundwater sources and good rains, thus surface water.
As consumers, we expect water every time we open the bathroom tap and expect water to be available because we pay dearly for such. The reality is that we ought to value our water supply a lot more and use every drop sparingly.
As we celebrated World Toilet Day yesterday, water becomes associated with a toilet – with almost 9 litres of potable water used to flush a toilet in most cases. Flushing toilets are associated with dignity, cleanliness and hygiene.
Aflushing toilet is regarded as superior, decent and an aspiration for most households.
Have you ever thought of what life was like before climate change brought very dry weather to severe levels of drought as the new normal climate? What if you had to choose between water to drink and water to flush the toilet? Isn’t it time to change our thoughts and behaviour and conserve water to avoid a complete dry out? Using grey water from washing dishes to fill the cistern is a practical solution. In areas where water is not in abundance or bulk services are inadequate, an ecological toilet or an alternative toilet is as efficient, user-friendly, decent and an equivalent to flushing toilets.
The dreaded apartheid bucket toilet system is an all too familiar memory to many households. Whether we once used it or are still using such, the use thereof has no positive connotations. In 2013, the government introduced the bucket eradication programme with the sole purpose to rid communities of such. About 52,249 households were identified as using bucket toilets in the Eastern Cape, Free State, Northern Cape and North West. The project presented more difficult challenges than initially anticipated, however, not insurmountable. Projects had to weigh up the best solution based on the availability of water and bulk infrastructure, and the solutions included the introduction of a grey water recycling system to reuse and recycle water for use to flush toilets to on-site waste disposal solutions in the form of conservancy tanks in the absence treatment plants.
The point is, given changing weather patterns, geographical location and settlement patterns, adapting to this new reality also implies looking differently at how sanitation services are provided in future. The last stretch of eradicating the remaining bucket toilets is in sight with only 12,124 buckets of the 52,249 remaining. The department resolved to utilise its internal capacity of civil engineers to design and monitor projects and its construction team to build the required bulk services.
Migration, and natural growth of towns and cities are inevitable, and the department of water and sanitation noted with concern that some households were still using bucket toilets post the audit, with many areas being formalised post the start of the bucket eradication programme. While the focus of the department remains the audited bucket toilets, communities are still provided with buckets due to the lack of the required infrastructure in some areas and/or poor maintenance of VIP toilets. The latter have over the years fallen into disuse due to the disposal of foreign objects into them and subsequently reached their lifespan earlier than anticipated, and reverted to the use of the bucket toilet.
Municipalities are encouraged to prioritise the eradication of “new ” buckets within existing funding allocations and complete such as a matter of urgency.