Safe toilets for Cambodia's floating communities.

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Safe toilets for Cambodia's floating communities.

Post by CEOCambodiaNews »

Safe toilets help flush out disease in Cambodia's floating communities

Open defecation in villages on Tonlé Sap lake contributes to sickness, pollution and drownings. Now, a pathogen-filtering toilet looks set to change lives
ImageThe HandyPod filter system.

Phat Sanday is – in many ways – like any other village in Cambodia. There’s a school, a petrol station and a clinic.
However, unlike most of the other rural communities, nearly every structure here – at the southern end of Cambodia’s Tonlé Sap lake – floats. The primary mode of transport for the more than 1,100 families who live here is boat.

There is no village-wide sanitation system. Residents, whose livelihoods depend largely on fishing, defecate in the open or in latrines affixed to their floating houses, where waste is deposited directly into the water below. Everything ends up in the freshwater Tonlé Sap lake and river, which merges with the Mekong further downstream in Phnom Penh, the capital. The lake and river are a major source of income for hundreds of thousands of people.

As a result of the open defecation, diarrhoea is common, in a country where Unicef estimates diarrheal disease is one of the leading causes of death for children under five. And there are other health risks.

“Children have died sometimes because there is no latrine … They go around the edge of their houses to defecate – and they drown,” says Hakley Ke. He is a schoolteacher and programme coordinator with Wetlands Work, an NGO that installs sustainable wastewater treatment systems. Hakley, who has lived here since 2008, says that over the past few years concerns about sanitation have become more acute.

Taber Hand, founder and director of Wetlands Work, says the concentration of pathogens like E coli can fluctuate from about 200-400 units per 100ml of water to as much as 4,000 units per 100ml in the dry season. When the levels of pathogens are that concentrated, he says, “it’s septic”.
In 2009, he began designing the HandyPod; a simple, two-container system that filters pathogens out of wastewater. He says the version in use by nine households and a school today, priced at $125 (£100), is the most cost-effective...

Full article: https://www.theguardian.com/global-deve ... e-sap-lake
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bolueeleh
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Re: Safe toilets for Cambodia's floating communities.

Post by bolueeleh »

just dump a few tons of carps into it, carps will eat anything :beer3:
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Re: RE: Re: Safe toilets for Cambodia's floating communities.

Post by cptrelentless »

bolueeleh wrote:just dump a few tons of carps into it, carps will eat anything :beer3:
I had a conversation with this guy about his trip to the boonies, on feeling the urge he asked where the crapper was and was directed to the end of the pier. As he suspended his backside over the water he said there were dozens of fish popping their heads up, ready for a feed. He refused to eat the fish he was served for dinner.
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Re: Safe toilets for Cambodia's floating communities.

Post by SinnSisamouth »

plural of carp is carp
i am on these blocked lists;
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Re: RE: Re: Safe toilets for Cambodia's floating communities.

Post by bolueeleh »

cptrelentless wrote: Thu Feb 16, 2017 2:05 pm
bolueeleh wrote:just dump a few tons of carps into it, carps will eat anything :beer3:
I had a conversation with this guy about his trip to the boonies, on feeling the urge he asked where the crapper was and was directed to the end of the pier. As he suspended his backside over the water he said there were dozens of fish popping their heads up, ready for a feed. He refused to eat the fish he was served for dinner.
sell it to the chinks, chinks eat anything
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Re: RE: Re: Safe toilets for Cambodia's floating communities.

Post by juansweetpotato »

cptrelentless wrote: Thu Feb 16, 2017 2:05 pm
bolueeleh wrote:just dump a few tons of carps into it, carps will eat anything :beer3:
I had a conversation with this guy about his trip to the boonies, on feeling the urge he asked where the crapper was and was directed to the end of the pier. As he suspended his backside over the water he said there were dozens of fish popping their heads up, ready for a feed. He refused to eat the fish he was served for dinner.
Sounds a bit odd to me. The fish do eat it. Food safety is a major concern over the whole of Cambodia, mainly from unsafe food practices - raw fish (only eat well cooked prahok - I can hear the howl of outrage)) etc. Cook all food well and wash veg in clean water. Use soap on plates and cups etc. Wash your hands after defecating or scratching your asshole, keep food cool and eat it before it goes bad, and boil drinking water for 5 minutes. If they are getting their drinking water from the lake, install filter systems as well as boiling. I don't hold out much hope though. The NGOs would need funding for several years and be up to date on changing the filters.
There is sewage pumped into the Mekong and Tonle Sap in Phnom Penh. Why do 1,100 + families need to spend $100? That's $110,000 just for equipment, no speed boat or SUV/ house with servants. LOl. As far as the little kids drowning goes, they could put up some fences for a couple of bucks.

I'm on a roll - plant water hyacinths to filer the water around the villages. Crop it and vermiculture in boxes on platforms to use as compost in raised beds to grow their own veg. etc etc.
Last edited by juansweetpotato on Thu Feb 16, 2017 10:49 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: RE: Re: Safe toilets for Cambodia's floating communities.

Post by Anchor Moy »

As far as the little kids drowning goes, they could put up some fences for a couple of bucks.

Think they mean that the little kids sometimes fall over into the water and drown while taking a crap ?
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Re: RE: Re: Safe toilets for Cambodia's floating communities.

Post by juansweetpotato »

Anchor Moy wrote: Thu Feb 16, 2017 10:37 pm
As far as the little kids drowning goes, they could put up some fences for a couple of bucks.

Think they mean that the little kids sometimes fall over into the water and drown while taking a crap ?
Yes, I think it means they fall backwards into the water. Those places are pretty rickety. I doubt it means they fall down the hole AM.
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