After four years of testing how entrepreneurs can deliver sanitation services to the poorest urban citizens in Bangladesh, a business model developed by Water & Sanitation for the Urban Poor is starting to create significant change. To mark World Toilet Day, we are reflecting on how this business model is achieving what very few other approaches have achieved: financially viable sanitation services which benefit low-income residents.
On the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, we remember the life and impact of Paul Polak, Market-Based Development Pioneer, who sadly passed away on 12 October.
Having access to clean toilets is not just a basic human right – it’s also a health necessity. But in India, nearly 50 million people[1] lack access to adequate sanitation, increasing the risk of water contamination and diseases for these individuals.
By May 2018, we knew something was missing in the business model for Sama Sama, a toilet business iDE had started in rural Ghana in 2016.1 After two years of knocking on doors, sales were lower than expected or desired. This is a sure sign that another round of design is needed.
Katharine Teague, Head of Advocacy at AB Sugar, explains why one of the world’s leading sugar businesses has created The Innovate Irrigation Challenge in partnership with WaterAid and the Centre for Industrial Sustainability at the University of Cambridge.
As greater traceability and ever-growing consumer interest in coffee origins increase the incentives for sustainable production, more opportunities to align profits and sustainability will emerge. If we are innovative and approach problems from a business perspective, we can help the supply chain grow even greener.
Japan’s maker of water and housing products, LIXIL, has invested in a sustainable social business – SATO – to help bring affordable toilets to those that need them. In 2018, their work on SATO led them to a new partnership, “Make a Splash! Toilets for All” with UNICEF to tackle the global sanitation challenge. How did this partnership evolve and what has been learnt along the way?
A recent report predicted that Bangalore might be the next major city to face water shortages. The National Institution for Transforming India (NITI) expects Bangalore to run out of groundwater within just two years – this is in addition to the challenges that the booming city already faces in terms of water sanitation.
Tokyo based LIXIL, maker of pioneering water and housing products, believes that creating solutions for the 2.3 billion people that still don’t have access to basic sanitation is an opportunity to solve one of the world’s greatest social challenges, and to do so sustainably by helping to develop a future market.
