eco loo

We all know what it's like to wake up in the middle of the night, needing the loo, not wanting to leave your warm bed and head downstairs to a cold bathroom.

So imagine there are no lights, it's -14°C and instead of quickly nipping down the stairs, you have a 20 minute trek along a rocky track ahead to your toilet - which happens to be a riverbank.

Oh and that same riverbank feeds into the river where you get all your drinking water, wash your clothes and so on.

Well, for Doris and hundreds of other families in the high Andes of Peru, that's how it is.

However, thanks to the work of the innocent foundation and Practical Action, that is all about to change.

Practical Action are introducing 300 'eco loos' to families living at 5000m (about 4 times as high as Ben Nevis). These dry toilets are ideal in an area where water is scarce.

Helen from Practical Action has just got back from visiting Peru and has been blogging about the eco loos here.

 

As well as improving sanitation conditions and not polluting drinking water supplies, these new loos mean that the waste produced can be used to fertilise crops.

Now that's what I call recycling.

Comments

[Serena]

Awesome! And you can join the world's biggest sanitation campaign to get action from politicians on the sanitation crisis affecting a massive 2.6 billion people here: www.worldtoiletqueue.org

[Naomi Arnold]

I am staying in Calca at the moment - near Cusco. Where is this all based? Is it near by?
I think this is so worthwhile.