by Lisa Sharp

Created on: March 30, 2010

In a parable, two friends were walking by a river and one of them saw a baby in the river, he jumped in to save it only to see at least ten more. He yelled to his friend to come help but his friend continued to walk upstream. The first friend kept yelling asking him why he wouldn't help. The second friend replied that he was going upstream to see who was throwing them in.

We not only need to save the babies but stop the people who are throwing them in the river. This relates to water because all to often we focus on cleaning the dirty water and not on finding out why it's so dirty. We must fix the cause to truly fix the problem.

There are many reasons that one in eight people don't have access to clean drinking water. One of the leading causes of water contamination is the lack of proper sanitation. Poor sanitation can lead to the spread of deadly diseases. Every 20 seconds, a child dies due to poor sanitation. These deaths are highly preventable.

A group called Sustainable Organic Integrated Livelihoods (SOIL) in Haiti is working to solve this problem in a very environmentally friendly way, by using dry toilets, also known as composting toilets. They estimate that only 16% of rural Haitians and 50% of those in cities have adequate sanitation facilities.

The dry toilet systems are a low cost way to bring adequate sanitation to people. They are working to build public, urban, and rural facilities. They also teach Haitians the importance of proper sanitation and how to build the toilets.

One of the systems they use is the Ecosan dry toilet which was designed in South Africa, where water shortages are a big problem. These toilets use no water, are low cost, and the waste can be used as fuel, compost, or disposed of using municipal waste services.

Another system is being designed by SOIL in collaboration with engineers from several US universities. The system they are designing is a bucket that is covered after each use with a material like sawdust, collected each week for a small fee, and then processed with other organic matter at a central composting site.

Arbor loo is yet another system that SOIL uses. This is a very simple system, where a three foot deep hole is dug, a small concrete slab and small building is put on top. When the pit is full the building is easy to move to a new hole and the old hole is filled in with soil and then they plant a fruit tree.

All of these systems help to keep dangerous illnesses out of drinking water, save water, and the arbor

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