Building and Promoting
Eco-Toilets For Villages
In Chinese villages, conditions of toilet facilities are commonly poor. The disgusting odor would usually be smelled far from a toilet. Because the toilets are open pits, the flies in and around these pits would spread bacteria easily. We support the Go and Love Foundation initiated a pilot plan of building eco-toilets at Fengqing and the Tengmiahe Leprosy Rehabilitation Village of Guodazhai. The eco-toilet is a dry closet with waterless, odorless, and wormless features. It provides separate treatment for urine and stool, which would become organic fertilizer for the farm crop. It also has a low construction cost in that each eco-toilet costs only RMB 1,600. It takes less space and requires only a week for one worker to set it up.
Most villagers have accepted the eco-toilet after its tests and trials. Given this acceptance, the Go and Love Foundation has decided to promote this project on a large scale this year in various parts of Yunnan Province and to build 400 eco-toilets. In terms of funding, we will adopt a 3-3 sharing plan, i.e., for building 1 toilet, the local government pays for 1/3 of the cost; the villagers for the other 1/3, and the Foundation, the remaining 1/3. When eco-toilets become widespread in Chinese villages, I believe that environmental hygiene will be improved by virtue of the decrease, to a minimum, of diseases caused by the spreading of bacteria.