An Alternative ‘Flying Toilet’: The PeePoo

Previously, we explored the ‘everyday sanitation’ experienced by girls and women in urban slums, and concluded that GBV in urban slums cannot be solved by the technical fix of simply building more toilets, and overcoming ‘software’ and governance issues will be a long-term process. So, how can we improve the sanitation situation of the vulnerable, particularly girls and women, now? 

Well, perhaps the question then is: how can we adapt current sanitation practices – such as the use of buckets or ‘flying toilets’ – to allow for a more dignified, and safe sanitation experience, and to reduce public health impacts? 

The Peepoo - a single-use, self-sanitising, biodegradable toilet bag for urine and faeces - offers an alternative to traditional 'flying toilets'. This is a 'soft' solution which does not require; infrastructure, water access, overhead costs, or installation, and is therefore, well-suited to the urban slum environment. 

As shown in the video, the Peepoo can be used easily in the privacy of people's homes, providing children and women, the elderly and the disabled, in particular, with a safe and dignified alternative to shared sanitation facilities (SSF). The PeePoo can also provide a more hygienic alternative to SSF, which can improve the users' health. The per-use cost of the Peepoo (3 Kenyan shillings) is also cheaper than SSFs (5 Kenyan shillings). Furthermore, the Peepoo is made of aromatic co-polyesters, and remains odour-free for up to 24 hours. This enables users to manage their sanitation needs in the privacy of their own home with more dignity, by circumventing the key ‘software’ barrier that is smell (Rheinlander et al., 2013).  

The Peepoo also creates female micro-entrepreneurs, as exemplified by the work of Ruth Auma, an employee of Peepoople in the Kibera slum of Nairobi, Kenya, shown in the video. Ruth collects the bags, and drops them off at the collection point in return for a payment of 1 Kenyan shilling per bag. Women can also be trained and employed to sell the bags in their communities. This inherently enables women to expand their freedoms, capabilities and opportunities, necessary for development as defined by Amartya Sen (1999).

Peepoo used in a bucket -> degrading the soil -> used as fertiliser. Source: SSWM.

Moreover, the Peepoo tackles the issue of public health, functioning as a 'micro-treatment plant' due to the urea granules contained within the bag, which kills pathogens present in human waste within 2-4 weeks. The PeePoo also follows an EcoSan circular economy framework: after the sanitation process, the bio-degradable bags can be buried directly into soil, and used as a high nitrogen value fertiliser in agriculture. This creates opportunities for economic development, and reduces the amount of human waste entering the environment, thus, reducing faecal-environmental-oral contamination routes. Therefore, the Peepoo can be seen to engage with a series of nested issues – ecological, social, economic and gendered – providing both a ‘humanitarian good and a development device’ (Redfield, 2018). 

However, the Peepoo may be unable to fulfil its ‘eco-utopian promise’ of creating a sustainable, circular economy, due to a range of interrelated issues:

Firstly, a reliable user-base has proved elusive, perhaps due to cost (as referenced in the video), as well as, cultural resistance towards the fulfilment of sanitation needs in the home (particularly prevalent among men as exemplified in the video), and the use of human excreta-derived fertiliser’s (HEDF) (discussed previously). Ultimately, the Peepoo will only able to able to compete with ordinary plastic bags, if it’s amplified to mass production to reduce user cost, but this cannot occur without demand due to the biodegradable material of the Peepoo, which deteriorates in 2 years in storage. Moreover, without a sustainable user-base, for both Peepoo bags and fertiliser, the logistic system cannot function effectively. Furthermore, the logistic system necessitates that there is an interest from locals to be employed as Peepoople employees – which as demonstrated in the video may be difficult due to perceptions of sanitation workers. 

My thoughts:

I think that Redfield provides a great synthesis of the Peepoo in calling it a ‘humble’ development device: it doesn't instigate ground-breaking change, particularly, if it lacks a sustainable and efficient logistic system. However, the Peepoo does produce a monopoly of positive small-scale impacts, to deliver community benefits. Therefore, in my opinion, although the Peepoo is not the perfect sanitation technology, it does try to close the nutrient loop, and is sure to be accepted by inhabitants of urban slums who already use plastic receptacles. Therefore, until software issues can be overcome, the Peepoo can co-exist with other sanitation technologies to provide people – particularly girls and women – with safe, and dignified sanitation.