Chimbowe Secondary School Composting Toilet 2nd Toilet

Hello All! I am currently on a 6 month volunteer teaching placement in the very local village of Chimbowe, in the country of Malawi.

As some of you are aware, I have just completed a fundraiser for a compost toilet here at Chimbowe. With those funds I was able to complete this project in one week! So there is now one composting toilet ready to go. However, in Malawian culture, males and females do not share toilets. So another one has to be constructed so that all students and staff members of Chimbowe Secondary School can use a composting toilet.

Their current use of a toilet consists of digging a large hole into the ground, using this until it's full, then covering it up and making a new one. This results in the humanure leaching into the underground soil and contaminating it, and it is also very very smelly, attracting many flies, cockroaches and other nasties. However, there is a solution to this. Composting toilets! Put simply, this is a system where after each time one has done their business in the toilet, a few handfuls of organic matter (dead leaves, hay, peat moss) are added on top of it. What this does, is it adds carbon to the pile. Humanure is very high in nitrogen, so adding a carbon source creates an ideal balance of carbon/nitrogen, allowing it to decompose. The carbon source also acts as a bio-filter, meaning there is no smell at all, and also it stops the infestation of flies, cockroaches and other unwanted nasties.

I am specifically wanting to make a 2-pit composting toilet system at the secondary school here. This involves the construction of two above ground 'pits', each of which are one cubic meter. Access doors are built on the bottom of each pit, in order to easily get the compost out once it is ready. One pit is used at a time. Once the first pit is full, (takes about 5 months) it is closed and left to decompose (takes a further 5-6 months). As the contents of the first pit are decomposing, the second pit is being used. Once the second pit is filled, it's time to empty the contents of the first pit for use on crops. Now the first pit can be used again as the second pit decomposes, and this goes on and on.

Putting in such a system could have a really positive impact on the village here. The students will learn an alternative way to deal with humanure. A way in which it is able to go back into the soil safely and improve the quality of the soil that they grow their food crops in. I am hoping this project will have a ripple effect, where students will go home and tell their parents of this system they have learnt about, and perhaps they may implement one into their own home. In Malawi, the current use of fertilisation involves the application of chemical fertilisers. In the long run, this depletes the quality of the soil and for them it is also a very costly expense. Having a composting toilet will reduce the amount of underground soil contamination from untreated humanure, improve the quality of the soil and it will save them money from having to buy inorganic fertilisers.