Abstract:
The lack of desirable, waterless toilet options in urban environments around the world
leads to major issues that will continue to get worse as population density increases.
At the bottom of the economic pyramid, 2.3 billion people lack access to adequate
sanitation accelerating the spread of disease through contaminated water and
leading to the deaths of over a million children per year. At the top of the economic
pyramid, the ubiquitous flushing toilet uses nine litres of water per flush, equating to
the average person using 15,000 litres of water per year. As clean water becomes a
scarcer resource, wasting and polluting water has to be avoided. Developing new
water-saving, desirable toilets to provide a pleasant user experience will increase the
likelihood of adoption of more sustainable options. Defecation is a basic human
function but also a universal cause for embarrassment and disgust. As the repulsion
is visceral and ‘hard-wired’ human behaviour, many of the same issues arise whether
the user is in the poorest slum or a modern apartment building. Designing new
products for low income countries that find a secondary market in a high income
country is an approach called reverse innovation and has a proven record of
producing disruptive innovations by working to strict requirements. This research
discusses how reverse innovation has potential to address the challenges and issues
associated with low-water sanitation to increase adoption of more sustainable
technology. To achieve this, an understanding was gained of the user experience of
different low-water toilets through literature review and an ethnographic study in
Kumasi, Ghana. A new waterless toilet technology was then developed and tested,
primarily targeting the residents of Kumasi before being tested with a secondary
target market in the United Kingdom. There were a number of similarities across both
target markets, confirming the importance of user experience. The technology was
positively received and compatible with user behaviour in the secondary target
market indicating the technology could be transferred and an example of reverse
innovation. This research intends to encourage and inspire innovation in a sector that
effects everyone in the world yet remains an ignored and embarrassing subject.
