Sustainability is a hot topic these days and more and more companies are increasing their efforts to put the 17 United Nations SDGs into practice, which is of course a positive evolution. However, looking at the initiatives most companies take, two common tracks seem to be popular.
The first track I call “the obvious track”, as in switching off the lights when you leave a meeting room, bringing your own lunch box, don’t use disposable cups, … Nothing wrong with this, but limited to “marginal gains”.
The second track I refer to as the “technology track”, where we talk about solar panels, windmills, hyper isolation, and electric cars, … Nothing wrong with this either, although … all of these devices and materials need to be manufactured and distributed globally which comes with an environmental, health and social cost. Just look at mining rare minerals for batteries, for example.
Now suppose you would have a cheap, low-tech, and simple solution, only using locally available materials, to solve a global sanitary problem, with the potential of improving the well-being of billions of people and at the same time reducing the biological pollution of water and soil. Wouldn’t that be sustainable?
I came across Joseph (Joe) Jenkins when I was looking for literature about off-grid houses. In his book “The Humanure Handbook” Jenkins describes how the lives of people in less developed countries can be improved by using “compost toilets”. Indeed, 60% of the world’s population (that’s 4.5 billion humans) don’t have a toilet that safely manages human waste at home (source: Unicef).
Toilets literally can save lives, but instead of installing water closets, sewers, water treatment plants, and so on, a simple toilet, a compost pile, and some organic materials are enough to deal with toilet material. Compost toilets improve comfort and sanitary conditions but don’t require water or sophisticated infrastructure. They don’t pollute soil or groundwater, as we experience in our western societies.
Backed up with a lot of data and 40 years of experience, Jenkins describes how a well-managed compost pile, heated up by mesophilic and thermophilic processes, kills pathogenic microbes potentially present in human waste to a level that cannot be detected, thus improving hygienic and sanitary conditions and reducing diseases like cholera, diarrhea, dysentery, hepatitis A, typhoid and polio.
Reading this book, it became clear to me that not the highly promoted and marketed good deeds of billionaire philanthropists can change the world, but rather actions of people like Joe Jenkins who travel the world and share their knowledge and experience with poor people, helping them to get a better life and helping to preserve our planet by avoiding further pollution.
As Jenkins says: “less than 1% of all the water on planet earth is drinkable, why use it to flush toilets and spread pathogenic microbes”?
PS: credits to Kristina Munroe as well as her book “Twisted Oak” led me to Joe Jenkins