Show Some Love: Blair Toilets

Afrigadget has a post on a subject close to my heart; the Blair Toilet. My youth was filled with moments squatting over or aiming at one of these marvels of Zimbabwean technology, and though I was never struck with awe at the flies that weren't there or the cholera I didn't come down with, I should have been. They were developed in the 1970s by one Dr Peter Morgan at the Blair Institute and have probably saved thousands if not hundreds of thousands of lives since.

image swiped from Equator Initiative

The genius of these things is their simplicity, ordinary outhouses have been around forever but this version has very significant improvements which will not be immediately obvious. It's a fly trap, removing a major disease vector at the very spot where they're likely to be contaminated with something nasty. They're usually built as a single spiraled wall, so there's no door, which combined with the vent means they stink a lot less than one might imagine and less than a sitting toilet can in similar circumstances. Having a hole in the floor with its predictable halo of urine is actually an advantage over a seat because you squat and make sure not to touch it - if there were a seat you might sit on it, and in areas without running water that's not good.

Squatting is also better for you, human plumbing was sculpted by millions of years of evolution to void itself in exactly this way. Sitting on a seat means muscles pulling on each other awkwardly, introducing low level stresses to the system that over time may produce hemorrhoids and other problems. Admittedly, a pit latrine is probably not most westerners idea of a hygienic, dignified way to make brownies but I think that more of a cultural bias than any rational objection to the things (the French have a highly developed version).

For comparison, some of the absolute, most unbelievably awful toilets in the world are operated by the Zimbabwean Government. I once had to go though a security screening and acquire a permit to use the chimbuzi at a brutal concrete monster of a building in Harare, suspected Soviet design. It could be smelled a block away. I'll spare you most details, but let's just say that it was nobodys job to clean it and overflow of raw sewage covered most of the floor and some of the walls. There was running water - all the time! - but not to the cisterns. The whole affair was only marginally better than the traditional 'flying toilet' which the Blair VIP largely replaced.

For those in happy ignorance (ha!) the flying toilet can be found thoughout the developing world and probably in poorer parts of the developed (and Rock festivals). It takes the form of a plastic bag and a ritualistic shaky-butt dance, you then tie the bag in a knot and throw it. You don't throw it anywhere in particular; just throw it, so that the bag ends up further away from you than before. It's a gift to the community that falls from the heavens several rows of shantys away from where it originated, and the lucky recipients will never know who is their benefactor.

Because of these circumstances the Blair toilet is a revolutionary work of pure design, it can be constructed very cheaply, requires no special materials or manufacturing technologies and makes the poorest communities significantly safer and more pleasant. It should be more widely recognized as an important invention of the 20th century.

Related: Composting Toilets

Created 2007-09-20 02:04:13 by strix and filed under things